Phelphs Phails as SNL Host

Oh, haha. Jamie made a play on words. Anyways, I was at a friends house yesterday and we decided to watch SNL, which hasn't been that great lately, except for the occasional episode when they have a great host (Lebron, Peyton Manning, Seth Rogen, etc.) And then the show goes and does two things, each with a completely different level of awesomeness.

1) They get Tina Fey to come back (maybe more than a one-time fling?) to portray Sarah Palin, who looks almost identical (in her "Tina Fey glasses" as Amy Poehler, playing Hillary Clinton, says,) like the actress.

2) Then they go and do something stupid: get Michael Phelps to host.

Now being the host of SNL is kind of a big thing, at least in regards to the show. You have the first sketch after the opening one (the monologue,) and you're in a large number of the skits. So why did Lorne Michaels choose Phelps? Because of America's utter infatuation with the swimming phenom, something I , as a Canadian, can not understand. Now I understand he shattered records in Beijing on his way to a record 8 gold medals, but as anyone who saw his interviews during the games can attest to, he's no comedian. He even had trouble answering simple questions during the interviews, acting like an awkward teenager, which at 23, he still kind of is.

America's infatuation with Phelps extends so far that some people (like Nina Mandell, in an SI.com article here,) actually think the performance was GOOD. Maybe they're swimmers themselves, and have inhaled too much chlorine, because his performance was atrocious. Worse than Vinny Chase in Medellin. Anyways, Skit-by-skit, SNL tried to hard to turn Phelps into something he's not, a funny person.

To get him comfortable, two separate characters were used in HIS opening monologue. They also tried to recreate the originally hilarious skit starring Seth Rogen (who was the host) and Kristen Wiig as the extremely ugly children of Bill Hader and Amy Poehler, who are having a sort of party with a few friends, who keep getting interrupted by these grotesque children.It was funny with Rogen, where his size and too-small shirt made it even funnier. Switch Rogen's character with a 6''4' behemoth, and its not so funny.

The one bright point of Phelph's night was the final skit, which made fun of his now infamous 12,000-calorie diet. Check it out on YouTube if you can find it.

There were a few other funny moments, including Weekend Update correspondents Nicholas Fehn, the headline guy, and the new, hilarious "Alaska Pete." The best moment of the night however, was the opening sketch, featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler reprising her role of Hillary Clinton.

Unfortunately, because of NBC's decision to remove all NBC videos from YouTube and switch them over to Hulu, (which is unavailable in Canada,) the video cannot be found by Canadian residents online. To my knowledge, please comment here if you find a way.

Check out my new post regarding my displeasure towards NBC for leaving YouTube by clicking here.