Saturday Nightly Lively

Last night's brand new episode of SNL showed Upper East Siders that Blake Lively can indeed go goofy. After a cold open starring Bobby Moynihan's Amazing Face (which is starting to give me a real Lutz feeling lately, and that's a great feeling), Blake gave a Muppetonologue. What was funny was that the muppets started flooding out one second after my friend Tess suggested that Blake's closed eyes would make her a perfect Janice.

Next came a rerun of the old swine fever "sorry we have to re-run an old swine fever commercial" commercial. Metabonus. Then there was a lady bowling sketch wherein Will Forte's announcer had no clue how bowling works ("Two more strikes and she's out!") and an obligatory Tiger Woods bit. I noticed throughout all of Blake's sketches that she holds up well as a host. She's nearly as devoted a performer as Joseph Gordon Levitt without any of the desperation behind the eyes.

The music video, "Shy Ronnie," might take me a few more tries, but it's abundantly clear that Rihanna has some great timing: "Move the mic away from your face." I think I need to think more about why Ronnie is dressed like he's from the 70s. Perhaps it's his personal homage to rap fashion, like Rihanna's 80s gear. After the video came "Gossip Girl: Staten Island," which I wish had been called "Gossip Mook" or "Gabbin' Girl" or something else. Then there was a commercial for a strange underground music festival that could have been hosted by Jenny Slate but wasn't.

Here's something I will say again: I hate it when anchors look at the Weekend Update graphics. Aren't graphics supposed to be pretend pictures on the wall behind the anchor? Shouldn't the anchor's glance then be backwards? Or are the images transparent, and Seth and Amy are just looking at the graphics through the back? Either way, I'm distracted. Whatever happened to those lazy days of letting graphics help out quietly in the corner? Kevin Nealon, where is your nonchalance? Then, just when Abby Eliott's absence gets noticeable, she pops in with a great Brittany Murphy impression. Bring it on home with "two and a half episodes" and what a finish!

When the sketches get going again, Blake spends ten minutes in a pink camo turtlenecked swimsuit doing booty-go-round-and-rounds in a store that's clearly owned by a rascal-driving, mini-cell-phone-talking Will Ferrell. Then there's a great Keanu Reeves impression and a stick figure's boner on television. The final sketch (Don't Eat that Nasa Guy's Chips) seems to suggest that the writers must have watched exactly what I watched this week: the Simpsons where Homer eats chips in space and that marshmallow experiment video. And then suddenly there's a chair donut and my brain explodes.

I've never done an snl recap, so I don't know how I want to wrap this up. With antm it's easy - I just have to figure out who actually won the episode and if Tyra actually beat that winner. But with this? Maybe I'll re-mention my favorite joke. It was the chair donut.