Jay Pharoah Makes His Presidential Debut
Saturday Night Live began its season premiere last night with a touching passing-of-the-torch moment when Fred Armisen literally handed off the Obama impersonation to Jay Pharoah.
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Pharoah nails the President's habit of uhh-ing during his speechs in his big debut. Pharoah gets everything in here. He jokes about the President telling his daughters to go to bed ("I do that to remind you I have two adorable young daughters, and not five creepy adult sons"), brushing the dirt off his shoulder, answering the "are you better off? question. The sketch also Taran Killam make his debut as Paul Ryan.In his brief appearance, Killam packaged everything you need from a Paul Ryan impersonation: jokes about his abs, his fibs, and his budget proposal.
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The one problem with Saturday Night Live's season premiere is they feel the need to do sketches on anything they may have missed over the summer.
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They couldn't resist beating a dead horse doing a sketch about that whole Clint Eastwood thing. Bill Hader did his high-waisted Clint Eastwood impersonation for "Clint Eastwood and Chair," where the actor takes his RNC performance on the road. Sometimes he gets other popular politicians on stage with him, like Jimmy Carter, Mayor Bloomberg, and they made a fat joke about Chris Christie.
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And here's Bobby Moynihan doing his best impression of PSY in a sketch that has Seth MacFarlane awkwardly explaining why they're doing a Gangnam Style sketch. Someone in the writer's room said, "Guys, we need a Gangnam Style sketch." The bit is partially saved at the end when the real PSY shows up and it devolves into them dancing with two huge, plastic horse heads joining in.
Seth MacFarlane doing Ryan Lochte on Weekend Update probably shouldn't have worked, but it does because it's not a stretch to believe Ryan Lochte really does love juice boxes. (Who doesn't?)
And amazing singer person Frank Ocean showed up in a Supreme hockey jersey (a subtle protest of the NHL lockout) to perform a four minute version of the normally nine minute "Pyramids." John Mayer tagged along to do a guitar solo at the end while Frank played arcade games.
