The Best And Worst Of Lena Dunham’s SNL Debut

“If you’re nervous about giving a speech, just imagine the audience naked … or at least imagine they haven’t seen you naked,” quips Lena Dunham at the very start of her Saturday Night Live opening monologue. Right, so they got that out of the way fast.

SNL has a way bigger audience than our usual cozy girls audience, so I was seeing a rash of very different kinds of twitter rage.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) March 10, 2014

Sometimes, SNL hosts just don’t gel with the ensemble. Often it’s because comedy is not in their wheelhouse (see: Eli Manning, Michael Phelps and Justin Bieber). The best hosts are the ones who manage to match the cast’s energy while bringing their own particular brand of funny to the table; Miley Cyrus of all people demonstrated just how this is done, in the stand-out episode of the current season. Lena Dunham is a great fit with SNL. If anything, she fits in so well that she already feels like an established cast member. This is both good and bad — at some points, her presence feels so familiar that she starts to fade into the background.

While the writing this week wasn’t the strongest, Dunham got to act in pretty much every sketch, proving that her versatility as a comic performer stretches well beyond the self-involved Hannah Horvath. So: how did she do?  

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‘Opening Monologue’

Every show has its thing, Dunham explains in her opening monologue. “Seinfeld had the puffy shirt,” she says, “Home Improvement had the neighbour talking over the fence, and we have very graphic sex scenes.”

People now feel so comfortable around Dunham that strangers approach her on the street and tell her their sexy problems. And this is the set-up for the monologue, as various cast members come to her with their disturbing sexual anecdotes. Kate McKinnon plays Dunham’s horny grandmother, and Aidy Bryant starts the story of her public deflowering with “Tyrese and I had just mounted a merry-go-round…” — before a horrified Dunham cuts her off.

Sex on Girls is a pretty soft target, but at least this wasn’t yet another musical monologue.

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‘Ooh Child’

Saturday Night Live has been increasingly reliant on digital shorts these past couple of seasons, to the point where the ‘Live’ in the title is starting to feel a bit redundant. This one, however, is a cut above. Four friends are having a sing-along in a car — except that whenever Lena Dunham’s character chimes in, the mean GPS lady cuts her off.

It seems like the kind of gag that will get less funny with diminishing returns, like a Family Guy chicken fight — but instead it escalates to a wildly unexpected reveal that the four cheery sing-along friends have kidnapped and bound a terrified Brooks Whelan. “If a court won’t convict you, we will!” shouts Cecily Strong’s character, as she slaps him hard across the face.

I was one of the few people who loved last week’s oddly controversial ‘Bird Bible’ sketch; I enjoy the bizarre direction that SNL has taken in the post-Seth Meyers era.

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‘Scandal’

Sasheer Zamata gets her first big part as Olivia Pope from Scandal, and she does a lot of typical Scandal stuff, like ordering her underlings to place bugs and steal encrypted files. Dunham has the most fun of the whole night as new employee Kelsey, who feels really overwhelmed and has a million questions about what’s going on, but it still super excited to be a part of Olivia’s team.

“I have, like, zero contacts,” she says at one point. “I think this kid I went to middle school with is in Seal Team 6, but he won’t return my DMs.” She then compliments Zamata’s Olivia on always looking like she’s dressed for a formal wedding.

You get the sense that Dunham is a very big Scandal fan, and her enthusiasm shows through in this sketch. I mean, if you could act out your favourite show with the cast of SNL, you’d have a blast too, right?

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‘What’s Poppin’?’

Yet another perfectly okay sketch — the sort that I mentioned earlier, in which Dunham is more of a background presence.  Kenan Thompson and Jay Pharaoh play LeGod Williams and Lil’ Taint Anthony, who host a show about what’s poppin’ in hip hop, and in general. (Can I just add that SNL has been crushing it with character names this season? I’m hoping for the return of Thompson’s movie critic Reese De’What at some point.)

Thompson and Pharaoh introduce a new group called That’s A Rap: white people who dress like hippie versions of The Little Rascals, and aren’t very good at hip hop. It’s a one-joke sketch that doesn’t really build to anything special — perhaps it could have done with another of those bizarre left-turns.

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‘Biblical Movie’

My fellow fan Steph already covered this biblical take on Girls and feminism this morning. There were some very nice touches in this sketch — especially the brief glimpse of Dunham cleaning her ear out with a twig.

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Funnily enough, this is the second time SNL has run a Girls parody this season, after the excellent digital short featuring Tina Fey. Noel Wells did a good job playing Hannah last time around, but since Lena Dunham herself is in the building tonight, Wells’ services are not required. Is she even still on SNL anymore?

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‘What Are You Even Doing? You’re Being Crazy’

In ‘Girlfriends Talk Show’ –  currently my favourite recurring SNL sketch — Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong play a pair of teen best friends who refuse to acknowledge the painful truth that they have outgrown one-another. Lena Dunham would have made a great foil for their  characters – and yet instead, for some reason, we get this: a very similar sketch, but not quite as good.

Dunham and Nasim Pedrad play a pair of middle schoolers making a TV show from their basement. They’ve just hit puberty — and hit it hard — and are very excited to have a boy on their show — even though they promise “nothing gross is going to happen”. Kyle Mooney plays the boy, who sits there awkwardly as they squeal and writhe and twitch all around him. It’s all a bit flat until halfway through, when Pedrad’s character introduces their next guest: Jon Hamm.

Hamm shows up in SNL so much he’s basically a featured player, but it’s always wonderful to have him around. His uncomfortable expression and the wild incongruity of his presence pretty much make the sketch.

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‘Jewelry Party’

SNL likes to hide the really weird stuff in the home stretch, and this is no exception. Mike O’Brien plays a men’s rights activist, and Cecily Strong plays his girlfriend, who is really stoked to be around him because she doesn’t actually understand what a men’s rights activist is.

Dunham plays a work friend who reacts with expected horror to O’Brien’s pronouncements that he fights against equal pay for women and protests at Planned Parenthood clinics. This sketch  doesn’t manage to hit the right rhythm or find a lot of humour in its concept, but maybe that’s the point? It’s about as excruciating as you’d expect a party with a men’s rights activist to be.

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‘The Katt Williams Show’

Dunham plays Liza Minnelli — a topical impression right now thanks to last week’s Oscars. She gives it her all and throws herself into some pretty fine physical comedy, clawing at Jay Pharaoh like a tiger, and sitting around instead of on a chair.

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Too bad, Lena. Kristen Wiig has already done SNL‘s definitive Liza.

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All The Rest

I’m a white guy with a beard, so I’m notionally meant to be The National’s target audience, but this week’s musical guests really don’t do it for me. Apart from them though, the non-Lena Dunham parts of tonight’s episode are all pretty solid.

Cecily Strong has really found her feet on ‘Weekend Update’, while Colin Jost is proving to be a good replacement for Seth Meyers — and also, he’s super handsome. Kate McKinnon didn’t have a hell of a lot to do this episode, which is a pity as, along with Taran Killam, she’s SNL’s most valuable player right now.

It’s a pity that Dunham didn’t have stronger material to work with — the only real stand-out tonight was ‘Ooh Child’ — but as a host, she did a great job. If she ends up as a recurring feature of the show like Jon Hamm, then here’s hoping her next round of sketches has a bit more bite.

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Lena Dunham’s Saturday Night Live is screening on Saturday March 22 at 8.30pm, on Foxtel’s The Comedy Cral.

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Alasdair Duncan is an author, freelance writer and video game-lover who has had work published in Crikey, The Drum, The Brag, Beat, Rip It Up, The Music Network, Rave Magazine, AXN Cult and Star Observer.