Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Helen Mirren Edition

After last week's Elton John festival of gay jokes, this week's appearance by Helen Mirren was relatively sedate. In fact, the only gay joke at all was an offhanded comment by Mirren about just how gay last week's episode had been. I can't count that in any good conscience, so let's move on to general comments!

After one of the direst openings in recent memory the show scraped the bottom of the barrel with a return to the 'Accountant to the Stars' sketch, which is nothing but an excuse for the cast to do their universally terrible celebrity impressions. A few bright spots followed, as the show cheekily acknowledged Mirren's famous (in England) habit of going topless in nearly every film, moved through a sketch that acknowledged the idiocy of Fox and Friends without really making any specific jokes, finally ending a decent first third of the show with a sketch suggesting that the novel 'Frankenstein' was based on Mary Shelley's landlord, who looked exactly like the '30s Boris Karloff version of the character.

Weekend Update then stopped the show dead and went on far too long, which seems to be its role in the show at this point, and the sketches never managed to regain any kind of momentum after it. Another attempt to skewer Juggalo culture fails miserably, as the show still can't figure out how to improve on the real-life comedy that the Gathering of the Juggalos offers.

Just for the record, here are the numbers:

Rape: 0

Homophobia: 0

In addition to being cleaner than usual, Helen Mirren was a winning presence! There's literally nothing else good for me to say about it.