By Rachel Lutz, Staff Writer
Three weeks after its spring premiere, “Thursday Nite Live” is back on television, with what seemed to be more effort put into writing funnier skits. If “TNL” keeps going at this pace, Hofstra is going to have some pretty bold skits they might need to watch out for.
The boldest skit of the night and funniest by far, was a parody of MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” For those of you who haven’t seen the real thing, “TNL” wasn’t that far off. The cast was painted orange, and the girls’ hair was in perfect poufs. In the skit, Ronnie, a character on the show, had skin cancer from his constant tanning, and the rest of the house wanted to cheer him up by putting on a terribly performed skit of their own invention called GTL “Gym-Tanning-Laundry.” Understandably, he wasn’t cheered up in the least, because tanning is what gave him the cancer in the first place. Another great line in this skit was Ronnie calling one of the girls a “kumquat – a small, orange fruit.” So while the cast of “TNL” displayed more acting skills than the cast of “Jersey Shore,” they should watch out- rumor has it that season two might take place in Long Island’s very own Hamptons.
The Equipment Room Rental skit was awesome. Professors expect our full trust sometimes, and, because they’re teachers, we give it to them. Unknowingly, though, sometimes it’s a scam. At least, in this skit it was.
Another great clip was the “Pedal File” infomercial. Basically, instead of filing your nails on a stationary bike at the gym and running the risk of falling off, this nail file can be clamped on to the bike to get you feeling “safe, secure, and not uneasy at all!” I hope to see more of these ridiculous commercials in the future- they’re great.
Some of the sketches that needed a little work during the episode were the juggling fire skit (the picture was really dark and hard to see), the FCC editing skit (that beep gave me a headache after a while, though the concept was good), and the campus tour skit (yelling and screaming isn’t funny, keep the volume down!). “The Legend of J.J. Jefferson” (a short comedy film on man-rape) was advertised a lot, but in a strange way. Man-rape really isn’t funny, and the people in the commercials just laughed when they were asked about it.
There were a lot of commercials and public service announcements for clubs on campus. SGA, All-in Poker Club, Ha Ha Hofstra, and HTVi all had commercials during the episode. Some of them were funny and some of them were too long. But, as with all commercials, you have to sit through them to get to the good stuff.
The “TNL News” skit was decent, but there wasn’t a rant at the end like I had expected. Instead, there was a new segment called “Nice News,” which ultimately failed; instead of news on kittens and bunnies, the reporter got stuck reading the teleprompter that had news on it about a suicide bomber. The main anchor showed no sympathy, saying that if we all just got along, then there would be no need for the news! Unfortunately that’s so true.
The musical guest, Erin Willett was really good, just for being an acoustic guitar player in front of a microphone. Her lyrics were really memorable, and also applicable to college students; “These years they come and go, yet they stay in our soul.”