The second Jeff Bridges took the stage for his opening monologue last night, you knew he was in his element. Bridges looked so at ease and thrilled to be there, even if he was just playing himself as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. He played to his audience’s expectations very well and effectively was the very image we have in our heads when we think of Bridges as this great, scruffy, but mostly benevolent man out of time. I suspect Bridges knows he doesn’t need to try very hard to win his audience over, and that’s why his monologue was as good as it was. He knows he can get by just by doing his Lebowski bit, then bringing out the Cookie Monster and jamming out with him to “Silver Bells.” It’s just that easy for Bridges because no matter how much he may jokingly protest to the contrary, he really is a slightly more self-aware version of the Dude, if such a thing isn’t totally contradictory. He knows he’s spent most of his career stumbling through different roles and looking great while doing it. So yes, Jeff Bridges can absolutely just get by doing a duet with Cookie Monster. He’s just that good.
And the best part about this week’s episode is all he needed to prove his Dudeness was just show up in a couple of sketches. As with any Saturday Night Live sketch, the bulk of Bridges’ sketches were driven by their one-note concepts, which in this case was sending up his public persona as a laid-back, kinda manly WASP. These bits are funny on paper, mostly because seeing Jeff Bridges as a Hasidic Rabbi asking for a glass of Manischewitz is so against type for Bridges that it’s inherently funny. In other words, the saving grace in even the most strained sketches from last night, like the one about the recently unearthed “original” Jewish version of It’s a Wonderful Life, is that they work so well in theory that it doesn’t really mater how good they are in practice (though really, Bill Hader’s monotone imitation of TCM and former At the Movies critic Ben Mankiewicz was pretty dead-the-fuck-on). This generally worked to the show’s writers’ advantage, considering that a lot of the sketches from last night, with or without Bridges, were better in theory than in practice.
So first, the good, non-Jeff Bridges-related news: A couple of the more topical gags this week worked rather nicely, as in the cold opening and the bit where they made fun of Time Magazine’s recent Man of the Year pick. Bill Hader’s Julian Assange was terrific, even if he’s just basically saying what should by now be obvious. (Mark Zuckerberg as man of the year over the Wikileaks guy? Yowza.) That sketch confirmed what I’ve always suspected about the current cast: The comedians that have the most seniority on the show (Samberg, Hader, Wiig, Armisen) are the rare few that are good enough to make even middling material work. Hader’s impersonation was hilariously cracked, his shticky cackle too good to be completely driven into the ground, even when Hader leaned on it too hard. It’s a shame that some of the other “older” cast members weren’t as prominently featured in this week’s episode: Armisen’s Obama and David Patterson impressions are usually pretty strong, and Wiig’s Nancy Pelosi is always a hoot.
Also, I have to say, as someone that doesn’t actively go out of his way to listen to Eminem’s music, his performance with Lil Wayne during the first of their two musical numbers was pretty impressive. It took Em a while to warm up, but once he got to his solo verse during that first number, he was pretty much unstoppable. Seeing the veins bulge out on his neck as he kept going and going breathlessly was amazing. The man was clearly working very hard to get people to shut up about that Kanye fella for a second, and boy, did it pay off. Lil Wayne fared better during his second number, but still, Em’s solo rant in their duet was pretty unassailable.