Seems like Kevin Hart is everywhere these days, and I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. I don’t have strong opinions of him one way or the other, so I went into his latest projects with an entirely open mind…and I think they’re more successful than not.
Saturday Night Live: It’s great to see an actual comedian or actor host the show as they’ve focused this season way too much on male pop star hosts (this season alone, Bruno Mars, Adam Levine, and Justin Bieber have hosted and Justin Timberlake is hosting next week). And Kevin being a standup shows in his way around a stage, being a lively, high-energy host way more content to elevate the material than simply stand around reading cue-cards (looking your way Jeremy Renner). Still…the material was pretty weak this time out, ranging from inoffensively silly (a Steve Harvey show sketch about horse phobias) to stupid silly (a Z-shirt sketch that only delivered when it bled into a completely different sketch about a funeral). I was especially disappointed in a weak Walking Dead parody (come on SNL, you can’t do better than this? If ever a show was meant for a parody, this is it), and then they reallllly blew it with a Shark Tank parody that made me wonder if they’ve ever seen an episode. [My initial excitement that they were finally taking the show on was quickly diminished when it was apparent that only Kate McKinnon as Barbara Corcoran cared about getting it right.] But Hart’s refusal to let anyone else be the star of the show (there was a Barnes and Noble sketch where he was supposed to be the straight man, but he wound up cracking up anyway) may have actually made this episode more watchable. Even his rambling, but endearing monologue made narcissism look good. Grade for material: C…Grade for host: B+
The Real Husbands of Hollywood: Probably one of the best shows BET has ever had on. Is it perfect? No. Is it the best reality TV parody I’ve ever seen? Also no (that would be Yahoo’s Burning Love series). But it does deliver on a consistent basis, and each episode is only about twenty minutes when you watch it on demand. If I were Hart, I might narrow the main cast down a bit (start with Boris Kodjoe, who’s about as good at comedy as I am at juggling…FYI: I can’t juggle) and focus on what really works on this show: Hart’s megalomaniacal, bastard version of himself, J.B. Smoove’s madcap sidekick, and Robin Thicke’s sly straight man, always dragged into some petty feud with Hart. And I think the episode where they worked on Nelly’s work-out video was a lot funnier than the much-publized charity fight with Sugar Shane Mosley one. The episodes run fast, and with a little more fine tuning, this show could become very funny rather than inconsistently great. Grade: B
Kevin cracked me up on SNL! best show in a while.