It seems lately that Jenny Slate, the short-lived SNL star from the 2009/2010 season, has been popping up all over our TV screen. So we thought we'd take a look back at some of our favorite Jenny Slate TV appearances (plus one viral viral video sensation)! Check it out:
We first saw Jenny Slate on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's recurring series 7th Floor West, a spot-on parody of The Hills. Jenny played Jenny, an NBC page who Jimmy finds attractive and eventually hires to be his assistant:
That bit must have caught the eye of Lorne Michaels (who is the executive producer of both SNL and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) because shortly after that Jenny was cast on Saturday Night Live. Though she only lasted one year, we were always big fans of her work on the show, especially her recurring character of Tina Tina Chanuse:
After leaving SNL, Jenny created the adorable viral video sensation "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On". Jenny co-wrote the film and voices the titular character of Marcel, a tiny shell wearing shoes. The video was so successful (it has over 20 million views on YouTube) that it later spawned a sequel video and even a hardcover book. Check out the original "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" and the sequel below:
I know we just posted about last night's season finale of Saturday Night Live, but we didn't actually watching it yet (don't worry, we DVRed it. No spoilers!). That's because last night, we had tickets to see standup from the one and only Aziz Ansari! Currently, Aziz stars on the NBC comedy Parks & Recreation, but he has actually been on many other TV shows in the past. So let's take a look back at some of our favorite Aziz appearances.
Aziz Ansari's first major TV appearance was as one of the three creators and stars of the MTV sketch comedy show Human Giant. Co-created with Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, the show ran for 2 seasons on MTV, and featured the trio appearing in various sketches (many of them recurring throughout episodes), along with some pretty great guest stars. This first sketch is from a recurring sketch called "Shutterbugs", which features Aziz and Rob Huebel as managers of a child talent agency. Special guest appearance by Bobb'e J. Thomas (Role Models, Tracy Jr. on 30 Rock).
Here's another recurring sketch from Human Giant called "Illusionators", a parody of Criss Angel's Mindfreak, featuring a guest appearance from Rob Riggle (SNL, Daily Show).
After Human Giant, Aziz took on many guest starring roles on TV shows, such as his recurring role as Ed the Intern in season 8 of Scrubs. Here's a little compilation of some of his best scenes:
Aziz also had a memorable appearance on the HBO comedy Flight of the Conchords as a racist fruit vendor.
And now, Aziz stars on the hit NBC comedy Parks and Recreation as Tom Haverford:
But Aziz has done much more than just television. He has appeared in many movies, such as I Love You Man, The Rocker, Get Him to the Greek, Funny People (as alter ego RAAAAAAAANDY), and his first starring role in last summer's 30 Minutes or Less.
But in addition to acting, Aziz is also a great stand-up (hence we got tickets to see him). In his signature style, he has talked about a wide range of topics, such as marriage and children, stories about Kanye West and R Kelly, making fun of his cousins Harris and Darwish, thread counts on luxery linens, and buying ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. Aziz released his first Comedy Central special Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening in 2010. Here's the cleanest clip we could find from the special: (other clips are funnier, but we try to keep this site relatively clean. You can check out tons of other Aziz standup clips on YouTube)
Aziz's second special, Dangerously Delicious, will make its TV debut tonight (May 20) at 10:00pm on Comedy Central. But, for just $5 you can download the extended, uncensored version on Aziz's website. We bought it, and it was hysterical. Well worth the $5!
And last night, we were in attendance for Aziz's 3rd comedy show, Buried Alive. It was a really funny show, and great to finally get to see Aziz live. If you want to catch him on tour, check out his tour dates! Highly recommended!
Stephen Colbert is best known as the host of the late night political comedy talk show The Colbert Report. But the host of the show is not Stephen Colbert, it is actually Stephen Colbert. You see, Stephen Colbert is a character played by an actor and comedian named Stephen Colbert. While the two have much in common (such as their names), they actually quite different. For one, the real Stephen Colbert is an actor who has played many different characters on many different TV shows, before landing the role of playing the host of The Colbert Report. So let's take a look back at some of the lesser known Stephen Colbert TV roles before The Report.
In 1995, Colbert starred in his first major TV show, the short-lived Comedy Central sketch comedy show Exit 57. The show co-starred comedians Amy Sedaris, Paul Dino, and Mitch Rouse.
In 1996 Colbert starred on another short-lived sketch comedy show The Dana Carvey Show. The show ran on ABC for just one season before it was canceled, and starred Dana Carvey fresh off his run on Saturday Night Live. Steve Carell also starred on the show, often being teamed up with Colbert in sketches. In this sketch, Colbert and Carell star as waiters who are nauseated by food.
From 1999-2000, Colbert re-teamed with Amy Sedaris to star in Strangers with Candy, a parody of after school specials. Amy Sedaris starred as a student, and Stephen played her teacher.
Colbert also starred on the Adult Swim animated series Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The show starred Birdman, the character from the old Hannah Barbara carton Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, as a retired superhero and now modern day lawyer defending various other Hannah Barbara cartoon characters in court. Colbert voiced two main characters - the first was Harvey's eye-patched boss Phil Ken Sebben, and the other was Reducto, a paranoid opposing lawyer who was obsessed with shrinking people with his shrink gun.
Colbert also provided his voice to "The Ambiguously Gay Duo", the popular Satuday Night Live cartoon which started out on The Dana Carvey Show. Colbert played Ace opposite Steve Carell's Gary.
Stephen Colbert also of course starred on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as one of the original correspondents (once again with Steve Carell). Here is Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell's popular segment "Even Stevphen", where the two debate religion.
Which brings us to The Colbert Report. The Report is a spin off of The Daily Show, which gave Stephen Colbert's popular on-screen character his own show. Here is Stephen Colbert as Report host Stephen Colbert, in a recent episode of The Colbert Report where he unveils his new avant-garde Super PAC ad:
This past Thursday's episode of The Office saw the return of a familiar face. In addition to David Koechner (who plays Todd Packer), British comedian Catherine Tate returned to the show as Nellie Bertram. She first appeared in last season's finale "Search Committee", as a potential candidate to take over Michael Scott's job as Dunder Mifflin Scranton's regional manager. The position ended up going to Andy, but she has now resurfaced working at Sabre headquarters as the head of the Sabre Store initiative.
While Catherine Tate may not be familiar to us here in the United States, she is actually quite famous in England. In fact, she even had her own award-winning sketch comedy show entitled The Catherine Tate Show which ran in England for 3 season (or 3 series, as they call them over there). Here's a few clips from her show:
Tate has also appeared in some American films as well, such as the 2010 Jack Black comedy Gulliver's Travels.
And now, here's Catherine Tate on last week's episode of The Office. I thought she was hilarious, and from what I've read, she's going to be on for the next few episodes, so she's not going anywhere any time soon!
Everyone knows that Alec Baldwin is amazing as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock. He's won 3 Golden Globes and 2 Emmy's for the role. You may even know that Alec Baldwin has appeared in may films over the years, from older films like Beetlejuice and Glengarry Glen Ross to more recent films such as My Best Friend's Girl and It's Complicated. But, did you know that before 30 Rock he guest starred on many popular TV shows? Here's a few of our favorites:
Will & Grace
On Will & Grace, Alec Baldwin appeared as the character of Malcolm. Malcolm hires Will to work for his charity, but Will soon finds out that Malcolm is actually a secret government agent protecting the identity of Karen's dead husband Stanley, who is actually alive. Malcolm appeared in the last few episodes of Season 7 and the first few of Season 8. Here is a clip from the Season 8 live premier episode:
Friends
Alec Baldwin appears in two back-to-back episodes of Friends as Parker, Phoebe's overly positive and very enthusiastic boyfriend. In his first episode, he appears very briefly at the end of the episode, when he first meets Phoebe. But it is in the next episode, The One with Massapequa, where he truly shines. Unfortunately, it is very hard to find a clip from Friends on the internet (unless you want one that is either not in English or very bad quality) so this brief clip of the episode is the best I could find. I encourage you to go out and watch the whole episode, because he's really quite funny throughout the episode.
Saturday Night Live
Alec Baldwin has hosted SNL a total of 14 times, second only to Steve Martin who hosted 15 times (be sure to watch the Academy Awards next Sunday, March 7 when the two of them co-host together). It's hard to pick just one clip from all of Alec's SNL appearances, but I chose "The Tony Bennett Show" because Baldwin's Tony Bennett impression is just amazing. And in this particular clip, the real Tony Bennett pops in and the two Tony Bennetts sing together. Enjoy!
Our favorite new show of the season is a sitcom called Community. It airs at 8:00, the perfect start to the best 2 hours television (8-10 on Thursdays on NBC). While the show boasts a great ensemble cast of actors (including Joel McHale from The Soup, comedy legend Chevy Chase, and recent break-out star Ken Jeong [the naked Asian guy who jumped out of the car in The Hangover]) there's another actor who I didn't really know on the show, but looked very familiar. His name is Jim Rash, and on Community he plays the hilarious Dean Pelton, who is always trying to gain publicity for the school. Here's a clip of him from the most recent episode of Community (You can stop watching after the first minute and 15 seconds if you want, it's a really long clip. Or if you're enjoying it, keep watching!):
That guy looked very familiar to me, but I didn't know where I had seen him before. So naturally, I turned to the greatest website on the Internet (except for this one of course), www.imdb.com! I looked him up, and he has appeared in two of our favorite shows: Friends and Will & Grace! Even more interesting, in both shows, he appeared as a guy on a plane! In Friends, he was in the series finale as the guy who afraid of the plane's lack of "phalange" and in Will & Grace he played a steward who wouldn't let Grace into first class (until Will flirted with him). Don't believe me? See for yourself!
All of our favorite shows are back on TV, and there's so many great clips from these new episodes that we could talk about today, but today I'm feeling a little retro.
Yesterday, A and I saw the show Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway. The show starred John Stamos in the lead role of Albert Peterson (originated by TV legend Dick Van Dyke), however the guy who really stole the show was Bill Irwin, as Mr. McAfee (originated by TV vet Paul Lynde). A and I actually saw Bill Irwin on Broadway a few months ago in a play called Waiting for Godot" (opposite Nathan Lane), and he was really amazing in both shows. However, we never really knew who he was. While waiting outside the stage door last night to get the actor's autographs, I overheard people talking about Bill Irwin, and how he appeared in an episode of The Cosby Show as a performer on stage that Cliff took the kids to see. I remembered that episode, but I never realized that it was the same guy. Well, here it is, from The Cosby Show, Bill Irwin:
Well, today we have learned the bittersweet news that SNL star Amy Poehler has given birth to her baby boy, Archie Arnett, yesterday afternoon. While this is great news for Amy and her husband, Arrested Development star Will Arnett, it is also sad news, as this means that Amy Poehler has ended her 8 year run on SNL. So, in honor of Amy's departure from Saturday Night Live, we give you what is in our opinion, the Best of Amy Poehler on SNL. Hopefully it's not long before a similar DVD is released containing her best SNL moments. So enjoy some clips of our favorites, and feel free to comment and share your favorite Amy Poehler SNL memories!
I know that we have been posting a lot of clips from Saturday Night Live, and we don't mean to focus so much on one specific show, but today is a very special day. Today, one of the most famous television stars of all time is coming to my very own school of Babson College. I'm talking of course about SNL star and future host of Late Night, Jimmy Fallon! I'm a huge fan of Jimmy Fallon, and I am very excited to see him perform at my school tonight. Jimmy Fallon grew up as a huge fan of SNL, and reportedly made a weekly ritual of watching it every Saturday night in his dorm, just like we do! However, while I will be graduating to go off to work as an actuarial consultant, Jimmy Fallon graduated and eventually starred on SNL itself! Most famous for his musical parodies and spot-on impressions, Jimmy Fallon soon became one of SNL's most prominent cast members. Featured here are pictures of some of his most famous impressions, on the left side going down is Buddy Holly, Howard Stern, Larry King, Chris Rock, and Richard Simmons. Going down on the right side is Gilbert Gottfried, Osama Bin Laden, John Lennon, Ryan Seacrest, and Robin Williams. Enjoy below, a collection of some of my favorite Jimmy Fallon sketches on SNL, as we celebrate the work of Jimmy Fallon. I'm very excited about seeing him live tonight! I'll blog about the show tomorrow and let you know how he was!
