Taraji P. Henson Hosts SNL: What Were the Best and Worst Sketches? | TVLine 

‘s Season 1 finale, Taraji P. Henson (AKA She Who Absolutely Must Be Nominated for an Emmy in 2015) returned to the small screen to host a decidedly above-average episode of

Empire Snarks Back: Cookie Lyon’s 22 Greatest Season 1 Zingers!

Yeah, a few skits didn’t quite live up to their promising concepts — I really wanted that

parody to be great… but the jokes played fairly obviously, and it didn’t give Henson much to do. Still, Cookie Lyon’s portrayer performed with robust energy and a decided lack of self-consciousness that elevated the material she was given.

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Kate McKinnon (the night’s hardest-working cast member) brought back her Ecce Homo “painter” to weigh in on the controversial/hideous Lucille Ball sculpture in Celoron, N.Y. McKinnon’s Gimenez described with glee and admiration the statue’s “Paulie Walnuts” sideburns, serial-killer face and disturbing mouth (which says “I kill you! I kill you in your sleep!”) — and scored the night’s biggest laughs in the process.

has had stronger movie-trailer parodies than this imagining of the animated hit filming a sequel with even greater hip-hop cred. But Henson’s take on Nicki Minaj proved brutally, beautifully accurate, and the last-second inclusion of crazy-creepy Die Antwoord provided a rare recent instance of the show risking going over some viewers’ heads in the glorious name of comedic specificity.

would play with a variation or two on Henson’s super-popular TV character’s name — but an Elmo fur coat and the recycling of the line “You need to stop rappin’ like you from the streets, ’cause you not about that life!” to Mr. Snuffleupagus were pretty genius. As for Cookie vs. Cookie Monster, the blue furry one never stood a chance, did he?

HONORABLE MENTION: HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT

‘s cold opens have been consistently woeful all season, so kudos to Kate McKinnon for opening the show with her unflinchingly ambitious, tight-jawed former Secretary of State attempting to film a social-media announcement of her intent to run for President. “Citizens!” she sternly declared, “you will elect me! I will be your leader!” Darrell Hammond returned unexpectedly as possible “First Dude” Bill Clinton, and from his “Did someone say ‘women everywhere’?” to his relief that ’90s telephones didn’t record video, he doubled the number of laughs in the segment.

Henson fully committed to a Gospel jam about having “made it” in Hollywood (or, maybe more specifically, about finally being recognized by white people). Alas, though, the punch lines here were as leaden as an x-ray apron and left me wondering why the show so regularly foists musical numbers on its guest hosts when said efforts are so rarely memorable or LOL-worthy.

Henson was left utterly adrift — without a single decent one-liner to which she could cling — in a sketch that found her as a prosecutor questioning a high-schooler (Pete Davidson) who sounded positively thrilled by his experience with statutory rape by a teacher twice his age. Not only was the writing on this one utterly lazy, but I wonder if Lorne Michaels & Co. would’ve ever, ever, ever tried to wring laughs out of a similar setup with a female victim and an older male educator. Nope, nothing about this sketch was clever enough to replace the adjective “deplorable” as the main way to describe it.

Your turn. What did you think of Taraji P. Henson’s

hosting gig? Take out poll below, then sound off in the comments!

I thought it was pretty symbolic when Cookie/Taraji skinned Elmo before getting star billing on Sesame Street considering Elmo’s Ensemble Darkhorse status. But seriously, it’s Taraji P. HENSON. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Taraji to go EVEN FURTHER and wiggle her way to the top of the Jim Henson Company?

Jim Henson Co and Disney don’t control Sesame Street. That’s Sesame Workshop (previously the CTW Children’s Television Workshop)

I’m not sure these subtleties would register with your average sketch comedy viewer, though.

The Sesame Street sketch was obviously the best. Kate McKinnon’s Hillary is starting to rival Amy Poehler’s. But otherwise I was left disappointed in this episode. I’ve been a fan of Taraji for years and so wanted to like this episode, but every sketch felt like one bomb after another.

The writing for SNL is still terrible and has been for over a decade. They parade huge and amazingly talented stars on that show to leave them empty handed. I read the same type of tweets about the Rock and Keaton shows. They can’t even seem to make their own vets look good. I felt sorry for Curtain and Crystal failed to shine with their scripts. Too bad Henson isn’t more like Cookie and didn’t demand better scripts. But then she quickly would have been labeled a demanding Diva by the same press. She saved every skit, beginning with her awesome singing voice. But again this set up was always in place, those threatened by her record breaking success were waiting to pounce and pretend that White SNL never fails any of it’s guests. And when was they last time we have had such critical focus or reviews of an SNL episode? I hope she outs the motives behind this nonsense in her upcoming book!

I liked the cold open. It was great to see now-announcer Hammond back as Bill Clinton and Kate was very good exploiting the stereotypes about Hillary.

I didn’t mind the opening monologue/musical number. The lyrics were pretty clever. Yes, the musical numbers don’t often work, but they sometimes do. And really, we did need an excuse to hear Taraji’s voice!

I disagree about the HLN trial. The whole point was that there IS a double standard about boys who are victimized by statutory rape, compared to girls. Of course, the show wouldn’t switch it up, because the dynamic and public attitudes are completely different when it comes to adult men stat-raping girls. Boys who are stat-raped by women often have emotional problems, too, but you can’t escape the fact that those are sometimes mitigated by the high-fives the “victims” get from men and boys who don’t get it. It’s good fodder for the type of edgy comedy that has been sorely lacking on this show for far too long.

The Home 2 trailer was okay, but I thought the Jim Parsons impersonation was a little too insulting. I really like Taran, but if he could do a better actual impression of Parsons, he wouldn’t need to fall back on too much of the gay stereotype.

They went to the Cookie-type trough too often, but I can’t help but enjoy seeing Taraji cut loose after watching her being so reserved on Person of Interest for many years. The Sesame Street bit was well done and funny, and she totally saved the sub-par Connectatron.

Billy Crystal was painful as the father of Jacob The Bar Mitzvah Boy (a character I always enjoyed!) on Weekend Update. Have some dignity, Billy. He was part of one of the best years of SNL (certainly the best of the non-Lorne years), but his timing is not what it used to be and he seems to have taken too many overacting lessons from his buddy, Rob Reiner. As a one-time big-fan, I wish he would just fade away gracefully (stick to talk shows…he’s still fairly funny there).

I thought the Hollywood Game Night parody was funny and had some great lines. I actually laughed aloud once or twice (as jaded as I am).

This is an above average episode overall. I hope Taraji makes it to the five-timers club (and beyond). Her comic timing is amazing (as we’ve seen on Empire).

Weekend Update is improving. It’s still not completely there, but there are glimmers of hope. Right now, I just hope Colin and Michael can finish the season with some funny stuff under their belt…before being replaced at the desk next season.

I like Taraji as a dramatic actress but I don’t think she has a future in comedy.very weak episode.

The only redeeming quality of this episode was that there wasn’t a Kyle Mooney skit.

These writers may be the worst in the history of TV let alone SNL. We all like to say SNL isn’t what it used to be, I’ve seen it in various forms of print since the early 80s, but holy cow it truly is awful this year!!!

Taraji P. Henson Hosts SNL: What Were the Best and Worst Sketches?

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