On February 27th, 2010, Saturday Night Live aired an old school sketch “We Are The World 3: Raising Awareness of the ‘We Are The World 2′ Disaster.”

Land of Punt describes the sketch as old school not because it was culled from vast SNL catalog, but because it reminded us of the Saturday Night Live of yore, you know back when the show was funny.

“We Are The World 3: Raising Awareness of the ‘We Are The World 2′ Disaster” featured several cast members imitating famous pop, country, and rock stars in a spoof of “We Are The World.”

The sketch was ultimately ridiculing the recent “We Are The World” remake for Haitian relief.

While the sketch wasn’t knee-slappingly funny (it was actually riddled with mistakes), it was “fun” to watch all the impersonations. Even if the impersonations ranged from great, Nasim Pedrad’s Shakira, to awful, Will Forte’s Willie Nelson.

SNL used to rely on sketches like these, as well as impersonations, but now they are few and far between.

Sadly, the 35-year old comedy show is more concerned about “going viral” than writing some high quality spoofs.

Fred Armisen – Carlos Santana
Will Forte – Willie Nelson
Bill Hader – Eddie Veder
Andy Samberg – Josh Grobin
Jason Sudeikis – Adam Lambert
Kenan Thompson – Quincy Jones
Kristen Wiig – Gewn Stefani
Abby Elliott – Melissa Ethridge
Bobby Moynihan – David Crosby
Nasim Pedrad – Shakira
Jenny Slate – Lady Gaga
Jennifer Lopez – Rihanna

For his Saturday Night Live monologue, Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed “Make ‘Em Laugh” from the 1952 musical film Singin’ in the Rain.

In the movie the song was performed by the great Donald O’Connor.

The songs composers are listed as Arthur Freed (lyrics) and Nacio Herb Brown (music) but the ditty strongly resembles Cole Porter’s “Be a Clown.” Freed was a producer and responsible for several lavish musicals of the eras.

Singin’ In The Rain is often considered one of Hollywood’s greatest musicals.

Sadly, or expectedly, this was Saturday Night Live’s lone highlight.

Joseph Gordon-LevittonSNL.wmv

To save you from reading the entire article, Kanye West did not make a guest appearance. He was not on the show and SNL did not impersonate him.

The country music sensation wasn’t the greatest host the weekly 90-minute comedy program has seen in its 35 seasons but she was no where near its worst. Swift showed a modicum of comedic timing, spoke clearly, and exhibited decent acting abilities.

Her performance definitely avoided being called an embarrassment.

If only the writing had been better the show may have actually been entertaining. As it was, Saturday Night Live, even with Taylor Swift as its guest host, was inconsistent at best and worthy of only a few forced chortles.

However, with her SNL performance also became the second youngest person to simultaneously host and be the musical guest. Swift is 19. Britney Spears was 18 when she did the double.

The show began with an awful sketch spoofing Fox News’ election coverage. They tried to paint Fox News with a Republican slant but with the exception of the great Karl Rove, SNL spoofed FNC’s democratic anchors and pundits. Besides Fox isn’t necessarily GOP-oriented, it’s more geared towards conservatives. However, Jason Sudeikis did give us a fairly decent Glenn Beck impersonation.

Thankfully Swift’s monologue featured no interruption by Kanye (either real or impersonated). It would have been far too obvious (even for SNL). Instead Swift sang a song about hosting the show. It was witty and cute.

Taylor Swift’s Monologue

Following a forgettable commercial about a barbeque pork restaurant that gives its patrons swine fever (not to be confused with swine flu), Swift portrayed Kate Gosselin in a rather mean sketch about The View.

The SNL digital short looked great but it wasn’t that great of a Twilight parody. It was a bit too obvious and not at all very funny. However, Swift did do a pretty good Kristen Stewart. We enjoyed her constantly brushing her hair behind her ear lobe. Andy Samberg appearing as a mummy was rather droll too… maybe the parody wasn’t as bad as we first thought?

Swift played herself in the obligatory “interview sketch.” Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig played over-the-top reporters from what we can only assume is a fictional show, “Hollywood Dish.”

After a commercial break, Swift played a braces wearing teenager warning us about parents and their bad driving. The sketch wasn’t half bad. Swift nailed the typical teenage girl character.

Next, Swift performed “You Belong To Me.” We have to say she looked better than she sounded.

After the news, Swift played the foil to Wiig’s Penelope. Swift showed some range as this character was a little older and more mature than her other roles on the show and yes that includes Gosselin.

Next, Swift dressed up like male thug for another overdrawn and rambling McIntosh (Kenan Thompson) sketch. It was too long, unfunny and banal–none of which were the fault of Swift. The only thing that saved it was Hader cracking up near the sketch’s conclusion.

Taylor Swift In Twlight Parody

In a sketch obviously inspired by a writer’s real-life girlfriend, Swift played one half of two over-friendly female roommates as they unintentionally tortured a date. Swift character was named Anna. We must admit that the bit where “Anna” called from her bedroom was rather funny.

After more adverts, Swift performed her second song, “Untouchable.” It wasn’t bad.

The final sketch of the evening featured a fake commercial for the fake soundtrack to fake film “Bunny Business.” The fictional movie is about bunnies going to work at an office building dress in suits.

Several famous singers were spoofed: Randy Newman, Natalie Merchant, and Jennifer Hudson just to name a few. Swift did a masterful impersonation of Shakira.

Saturday Night Live has done 1001 of these types of sketches but we still enjoy them. Thanks to the bunnies, this was our favorite part of the show.

Taylor Swift as Shakira

All that was left was to say good night.

Maybe our expectations were low, but Land of Punt really appreciated Swift’s effort. She’s a very talent performer whether it’s in a comedy sketch or singing with a band.

Swift actually did better hosting than some actors who possess far more experience in front of a camera.

She also looked stunning (even with braces).

This is far from Swift’s first acting job. Last season, Swift appeared on CSI.

Amy Poehler made a guest appearance during the Weekend Update.

It’s being reported that SNL producers are diligently working to ensure a cameo from West. Blogger extraordinaire Perez Hilton has sources confirming that West will indeed show up for the Nov. 7 episode. However, there has been no official announcement.

In September, at the highly “venerated” MTV Video Music Awards, West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech to proclaim that Beyonce should have won Best Female Video (by the way, West was 100% correct).

The boorish intrusion vilified West and helped Taylor Swift sell concert tickets… a bunch of concert tickets.

It appears that once again Swift is being upstaged by West. After all, her appearance on SNL seems to be more about “Will Kanye show up?” instead of “What will Swift do?” Fortunately, Swift doesn’t feel that way. She’s tremendously excited about her opportunity to host SNL.

“I’ve been thinking about skit ideas for a long time,” said Swift. “There are definitely some hilarious things that have happened to me over the past couple of months that I think will be pretty substantial skits.”

Land of Punt doesn’t expect to see West on the Nov. 7 episode of SNL. West gains nothing by making an appearance.

Spoofing the incident won’t improve the opinions of his detractors. And it will only serve to lose him more “street cred” for what his fans will see as appeasing a white country singer.

Besides, LOP believes West is off “rehabilitating” his image and is physically and logistically unable to leave the clinic appear.

Instead, we predict Kenan Thompson will portray West and interrupt Swift’s monologue. That premise is painfully obvious and completely unimaginative which makes it perfectly suited for an SNL sketch.

As you can read, Land of Punt enjoys deriding Saturday Night Live, but Swift loves the 90-minute sketch-comedy show and is looking forward to appearing in a SNL digital short.

“Of course I’ve been such a fan for a long time, but I’ve gone back and re-watched everything over the past couple of months and digital shorts would be so much fun to do, because they’ve been done so well. Andy Samberg is hilarious,” lied Swift.

We believe Swift is lying because if she had seen a SNL Digital Short she would know that Andy Samberg is anything but hilarious.

Land of Punt predicts that the Swift episode will be the most watched SNL of the season. We base this prediction on the mere fact that Swift sells.

Recently, the 19 year-old singer sold out 15 U.S. shows for her 2010 Fearless World Tour faster than it takes Saturday Night Live to run a joke into a ground.

The fastest four shows to go were in the New York area. Other cities that recently received new Taylor Swift tickets are Philadelphia, Dallas, Detroit and Kansas City.

Swift is the biggest selling artist of 2008. Not even old enough to buy alcohol, she has sold more than 10 million albums and 20 million paid downloads worldwide. She’s had five No. 1 singles on the country charts and two consecutive No. 1 songs on the pop charts.

“I love being around people who I feel have a different kind of creative genius,” Swift exclaimed. “And the funny genius is definitely a fascinating one to be around.”

It’s too bad Swift won’t be around any of those types of people when she hosts SNL on Nov. 7.

When we heard the news we immediately thought someone said “Fallon.” But after further investigation we realized a cast member actually said the mother of all dirty words live from New York.

Brand new cast member Jenny Slate uttered the forbidden expletive during a sketch called “Biker Chick Chat.”

Wow, SNL spoofing a talk-show they almost never do that!

Throughout the sketch Slate frequently uttered the pretend f-words “frickin’ ” and “friggin.’ “As soon as she let the real thing go, she puffed her cheeks as a countenance of career-ending fear washed over her face.

SNL boss Lorne Michaels stood up for both his foul-mouth actress and his wilting show. He said Slate should be spared because she’s a rookie and he doesn’t want the première of the show’s 35th season to be remembered for one word.

Michaels is right, the premiere, which starred Megan Fox and U2, will be remembered for one word—unfunny.

While it’s heartwarming for Michaels to stick up for his actress, he’s probably leaping for joy that his old, bloated, tedious comedy show is actually being talked about.

However, who would have thought that a show with Megan Fox would be known for someone other than her saying something stupid.

The most famous utterance of the F-word occurred in 1981 and came out of the mouth of Charles Rocket.

Because Slate waited until 12:40 a.m. to talk like a sailor, she probably won’t face disciplinary action from the FCC.

By the end of the summer, Fallon will have hosted “Late Night” well over one hundred times. Hopefully by then the seat time and the sheer repetition will have eliminated the jitters and nervousness that plagued his rather successful debut.

Fallon's premiere drew a 2.3 in the metered-market household ratings. Fallon had the highest-rated late-night debut of any talk show since 2002.

Beyond just getting comfortable with his craft, Fallon has a few other things to do before he’s firmly entrenched as a viable late night talk show host.

For starters, his monologue need to improve. His first one was bland, unfunny and tedious. It was made worse by blatantly reading the cue cards. For more see below.

When he’s doing a bit, like the very funny “Slow Jamming the News” he was fine. However when he was forced to be Jimmy, like during the awful Z-Morning Zoo stunt “Lick it For Ten,” he was quite obnoxious—often mumbling, stumbling and talking just to avoid dead air.

His interview with Robert De Niro (who’s in the Land of Punt) was so scripted it was hard to tell if Fallon can actually interview a celebrity.

Most of the show was about him and there was several references to his days on Saturday Night Live. Justin Timberlake and Fallon rehashed their “Barry Gibb Talk Show” sketch.

You knew this was coming as Fallon has to remind everyone why he’s famous. Fallon will be falling back on his days at SNL and the connections he made there in the first few weeks of his show, at least until he’s comfortable and gets some show legs.

After that it will be interesting to see how he handles a Tuesday show in the middle of “nothing-going-on” with John Cena and musical guest Sara Bareilles.

Another challenge facing Fallon is overcoming the stench of being the worst SNL cast member of all-time. For some, he’s ruined goods and they will never come around to his brand of comedy.

Since he’s not anywhere near as cool or as funny as Carson, Fallon needs an edge. People don’t want to fall asleep to the happy-go-lucky pretty boy who can do mediocre impressions. They want to fall asleep to someone who’s more messed up then they are.

However, whether it’s show one, show one-hundred or a year from now, it’s doubtful Jimmy Fallon will ever be worth staying up late.

Fallon’s monologue:

“As you know New York City was hit with a huge snowstorm. And I woke up this morning and said ‘please let it be a snow day.’ Not even a delay. Nothing.”

“I’ve been getting so much encouragement. Last night, Rush Limbaugh called me up and said he wants me to fail. That’s so nice of him. He didn’t even have to.”

“The good news, President Obama announced that he plans to bring the troops home from Iraq in 18 months. The troops actually responded and said, ‘Thank you, but the economy’s better over here.’ “

“In California, a 16-year-old boy had sex with his 24-year-old teacher. Traumatizing. Doctors are saying it will take years of therapy just to wipe the smile off his face.”

“Despite the recession, Microsoft is planning to open new stores to compete with Apple. Microsoft says they’ll be just like Apple stores except the staff will freeze when you ask them a question.”