This Saturday's episode of SNL featured something for both music nerds ("merds"), comedy nerds ("cerds"), and everyone in between ("dorks"). With Rainn Wilson of The Office serving as host and Arcade Fire as the musical guest, discerning viewers ("hipsters") everywhere watched the episode with drool cups in hand, ready to see if such a heavy dose of cool and funny acts could somehow, through some kind of magical hipness and humor transference, make SNL cool or maybe even funny.
Well, after about the first 30 seconds of that interminable CNN opener, that feeling disappeared pretty quickly. Rainn Wilson was a fine host, and the Office parody in the beginning was good, as was the digital short (for once), but Wilson alone is not enough to make the 18th reincarnation of that "Nooni Nooni" sketch funny.
As for Arcade Fire, they were good. But they may have taken the part of "rock band on a live TV show" a little too seriously:
Guitar smashing? Really? Again?
I'm definitely not a music nerd ("merd"), so maybe there's some kind of context I'm unaware of that makes that moment as terrific as Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, but it seemed more than a little ridiculous to me.