Saturday Night TV

SNL continues a really erratic schedule, but it's new this week and next, before (I think) going on another hiatus:

• Hellboy: Blood and Iron: The second in the animated Hellboy series (after Sword of Storms) had a one-time-only airing on the Cartoon Network tonight. So if you missed it, you'll have to wait for the DVD. Like the first one, it wasn't extraordinary, but the animation was cool and the voice acting again featured much of the cast of the live-action movie. This one focused on Bruttenholm (which is apparently how the name pronounced "broom" is spelled), voiced by the great John Hurt, and vampires. And vampires are pretty cool.
  
  They told the story in a pretty unusual manner, split between the present day and a flashback to events early in Bruttenholm's career, before he found Hellboy. What made it strange was that the story in the past was told in reverse, with each flashback taking place shortly before the previous one, while the action in the present moved forward. It was interesting, though I'm not sure it accomplished all that much.



• Saturday Night Live: Julia Louis-Dreyfus wasn't bad, but she wasn't given much to work with. When you do a sketch about hot robot-on-robot sex, you're 99.9% of the way to getting me laughing, but somehow they still managed to drop the ball. And they brought out Deep House Dish yet again... either I'm just getting old and I'm not hip enough to get the sly commentary about the dance music scene, or the sketch is lame and it's always lame. Even Weekend Update was weak, with a lengthy boring St. Patrick's Day bit that didn't work, and the return of the Anna Nicole Smith trial judge, which I didn't like the first time. The Chris Rock intro and the Italian talk show weren't bad.
  
  The highlight of the show to me was during the boom mic sketch, when the director suggested that Jason Sudeikis's character put the mic under the frame rather than above it, there was a segment of the audience that reacted with the sort of laugh reserved for especially dirty jokes. If they're like me, it's because they were expecting him to try to put the mic up her skirt, which would've been pretty funny, though I'm not sure they could show that on TV.
  
  Snow Patrol was the musical guest, one of many this year that I'd never heard of (though I recognized one of their songs). They sounded ok, but pretty much exactly like dozens of other bands.

On the Tivo: Halfway Home, Jericho. Every review I read of October Road was negative, so I'm probably just going to delete it.

Caught a promo for Thank God You're Here, NBC's upcoming improv show, that looks pretty cool. It premieres April 9th.