James Poling

After watching SNL tonight I have a couple of apologies to make.  To be clear, I didn’t watch the entire episode but I did watch the Palin/Wahlberg parts which were pretty much the only ones I was interested in.

First, I’d like to apoligize to Mark Wahlberg for calling him a mary.  He actually managed to show up to SNL and make light of the Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals sketch, contrary to his reaction on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

Apparently he does have sense of humor and ended up doing a pretty funny, self-depricating bit with Andy Samberg.  Kudos.  I underestimated you Mr. Wahlberg, it shant happen again (I’m also sorry because I’m not sure if “shant” should be a contraction).

Now on to Sarah Palin.  I was pretty nonplussed when I heard about Palin being on SNL tonight because I thought it was some sort of attempt to take an apologetic stance for the brilliance of Tina Fey Palin these last few weeks.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Palin’s appearance actually seemed to perpetuate Tina Fey’s portrayal of her rather than refute it.

Palin was pure vanilla on the show.  She didn’t say anything other than what was on the script nor did she make any attempt to discredit any of the so called misconceptions of her.  They even managed to work in Alec Baldwin making fun of Palin to her face.

Granted this was all scripted and was probably supposed to show how good a sport Palin was for taking all this in stride.  But to me, it just came off the same way it would have if Britney Spears would have showed up on the show after being lambasted for the past three weeks.  Which doesn’t have a very Vice Presidentially ring to it.

So my apologies to SNL, Mark Wahlberg and Sarah Palin.  In one episode you managed to reaffirm my belief in the current mediocrity of SNL (aside from Tina Fey), you managed to give me a new found respect for Mark Wahlberg and you managed drive home Tina Fey’s point that Palin is a mindless dolt that is riding this wave of attention like a Paris Hilton at a nightclub.  Nobody’s quite sure why she’s there, or why she’s famous or how the hell she gets all the attention but she keeps that idiotic smile and keeps saying stuff that makes even the dumbest among us feel good about themselves.

Not bad for an hour and a half episode that I fast forwarded through in 15 minutes.