Saturday Night Live: “Lena Dunham/The National”
(Episode 39.15)

Considering how gigantically popular Lena Dunham has become in the past few years, we haven’t really seen her in any large roles that she wasn’t completely in control of. Her characters in Tiny Furniture and especially on Girls are always considered not that far removed from Dunham herself, since she wrote and stars as the main characters in both. So putting Dunham on SNL puts her in a position where she’s much less in control, yet for the most part Dunham does a fine job in her first hosting gig.
The opening skit has President Obama addressing the country about Russia’s recent activities in Crimea, leading to a cameo by Liam Neeson who of course hates when things are taken. While it is great to see Neeson jumping into his newfound action star status, and he’s clearly fine with parodying himself as he does here, on Key & Peele and The Lego Movie, I am getting incredibly tired of hearing different takes on the one line from Taken that everyone remembers. I mean, the movie came out five years ago; give Neeson a break from it.
Dunham’s monologue has her poking fun at the sexuality and nudity on Girls, saying that now strangers want to give her personal information about their sex lives. This leads to the cast interrupting to share their various details, then to Kate McKinnon playing Dunham’s grandmother. Throughout the night, Dunham’s performance seems to be combination of understandable nervousness and excitement, but she’s also ready to roll with the punches, go along with her mistakes and just have fun with the opportunity, which works well for her.
Dunham is much more comfortable in both of the prerecorded skits she appears in, which also end up as two of the stronger bits of the night. The first involves four friends in a car singing along to “Ooh Child,” yet whenever it’s Dunham’s turn to sing, the GPS directions interrupt her time to shine. It’s a cute skit that ends with a great twist.
The second prerecorded skit is a Girls parody simply called Girl, about Eve in the Garden of Eden. Taran Killam plays Adam—a combination of the Bible’s Adam and Adam Driver—with Vanessa Bayer showing up as a Marnie snake. SNL has pretty much nailed parodying Girls in the past, so having Dunham involved is just icing on the cake.
Dunham’s best performance of the night as far as the live show goes is in a perfect Scandal parody. She plays a new member of Olivia Pope’s Gladiator team and constantly points out just how insane this show truly is. I basically quit watching Scandal because of the ridiculous things that are pointed out in this skit and Dunham’s fascination with just how perfect everyone in the cast is really sells this one.
The rest of the night consisted mostly of fake TV shows, most of which just went on far too long, the biggest offender being “What’s Poppin,’” a show about rap music hosted by Jay Pharaoh and Kenan Thompson. The show’s musical guest is an all-white jazzy ensemble called “That’s a Rap,” whose raps are bland and filled with flute music. At the very least, it gives Mike O’Brien more time in the spotlight, but goes on for far too long and doesn’t really have an ending.