Stick Figure Night Live! is a series of stick figure comic “recreations” of episodes of Saturday Night Live. Just as the show itself is performed live, the comics are drawn “live” while watching the show (with the occasional assist from DVR or some digital clean-up post scanning).
Before this episode started I thought to myself how it was interesting that Paul Simon was on…especially in a season where Paul McCartney and Elton John were on, as well as a parade of cameos and guest spots by past cast members or hosts. And then to see in the opening credits “a cartoon by Robert Smigel!” it seemed like this can’t be an accident, there’s clearly some kind of effort being made to bring back some “classics”.
And that got me thinking what if this could somehow set up a “Lorne Michaels’ Last Season” thing where, say he were to announce a retirement, he did a whole season of revisitations…maybe where each episode is hosted by a former cast member, so you’d start with Chevy Chase and go down the line chronologically…I don’t know, it was an interesting mental dalliance having nothing, really, to do with this particular episode…
…which by virtue of it’s pretty heavy rotation of familiar sketches made for a pretty smooth stick-figuring, for the most part.
Though after Ed Helms’ unitard-clad opening number it’s a shame he sort of was a “regular guy” in most every other sketch he appeared in. And no “Hangover v. Bridesmaids” sketch or…yeah.
Admitting a Robert Smigel bias I can’t help but favor his TV Funhouse. He’s awesome and as soon as it started I thought, ok, this’ll be cool, I’ll set it up like a newpaper comic strip and recap the whole thing in four or five panels…and then the cartoon got real, literally, and I decided any condensing I did wouldn’t do it justice and would read as mockery instead of a tip of the hat. So, to that end, here’s the TV Funhouse featuring The Ambiguously Gay Duo which, as I said above, is worth checking out:
Next week it’s the season finale with Justin Timberlake and Lady GaGa. Until then!