SUNDAY MORNING LIVE: Jeremy Renner Reassembles the Avengers for 'SNL' and Chris Christie Visits 'Weekend Update'

Welcome to the eighth edition of Sunday Morning Live, The Bill Kuchman Chronicle's look at the latest edition of Saturday Night Live. All of your questions about the Jeremy Renner-hosted episode will be answered after the jump.

How'd Jeremy Renner do?

Renner hosting SNL was always a dangerous proposition. He's become a great action star and established himself as a serious actor with The Hurt Locker and The Town, but the guy's never been known for his comedy. Even in a film like The Avengers, Renner was a pretty one-note character emotionally. From when he first took the stage for his monologue, Renner was visibly nervous, stuttering and repeating his way through the beginning.

The gimmick to Renner's monologue was the idea that he had written songs for all of his movies, but that those songs had never actually been used. He went over to the piano to play a few of those very songs, and this is when the monologue hit a snag. Renner began playing the piano but no sound came out. This means one of two things. One, Renner was actually singing but was going to fake play the piano to a backing track that failed to start playing at the right time. Kind of an Ashlee Simpson thing. Two, the SNL piano is not actually a piano, but instead a keyboard built to look like a piano. This would actually make a lot of sense considering how wired together everything is. Either way, Renner moved along and performed songs from The Avengers, The Bourne Legacy ("You know I'm gonna shoot somebody!") and The Town. (Because of the songs featured in the monologue, it looks like NBC hasn't put it online yet.)



The other Renner sketch that really stood out came at the end of the show. The host played a man charged with the simple task of identifying his brother's body at the morgue. Guess included: "Steven Tyler," "Yao Ming," "Oh, it’s you," "Is it two people?" and "Oh my god, it’s JFK! We solved it!" had me cracking up.


What were the best sketches of the night?



If Renner is hosting your show and you happen to have a bunch of superhero costumers sitting around, you might as well do an Avengers sketch. With Jason Sudeikis as Iron Man, Bill Hader as Thor, Taran Killam as Captain America, Kate McKinnon as Black Widow and Bobby Moynihan as the Hulk (his second time playing the Hulk, actually), Renner reprised his role as Hawkeye. The rest of the Avengers quickly realized that Hawkeye has little actual use to their team, especially after he runs out of arrows. "My arrow thing only holds 11. Twelve if I really cram them in there, but it’s not safe."



Mitt Romney never appeared on SNL during the six years he was running for president, always wary of looking unpresidential as a part of comedy sketch. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie obviously has no such worries. Coming off his Hurricane Sandy performance, Christie visited the Weekend Update desk. This guy is a natural in front of the camera. He and Seth Meyers appeared to get along well, even after Christie pointed out that when you ignore him, "it makes you look like a real Seth Meyers."


With the David Petraeus affairs the big political news this week, how'd SNL cover that?

SNL definitely didn't let the fall of CIA Director David Petraeus go untouched, hitting the news in both the cold open and the first sketch after the monologue.



The show kicked off Saturday night with Petraeus, having Paula Broadwell read a very 50 Shades of Grey-esque version of All In, her Petraeus biography at Politics and Prose. Cecily Strong had the honor (dishonor?) of playing Broadwell, adding to her already impressive SNL résumé. Not bad for someone in her freshman season. "No, David, it makes me feel like a dirty girl, I whispered."



After Sudeikis had disappeared for long parts of last season, I forgot that he does a killer version of Wolf Blitzer. Sudeikis' Blitzer was back to cover the Petraeus scandal, with The Situation Room focusing on Jill Kelley, the other other woman in the general's life. Interestingly enough, Strong played Kelley too. As I've been saying for weeks now, Strong is SNL's star castmember now.


It sounds like SNL is slowly figured out how to live in a post-Digital Shorts world. Did they build on that this week?

SNL definitely did push forward with its Pseudo Digital Shorts in this episode. The show gave us a short, a cartoon and a fake commercial.



Renner is used to finding himself in armed standoffs in his films, and he got to make use of his experience with a Mexican standoff Pseudo Digital Short. Renner, Moynihan and Killam found themselves having to find some flexibility when it came to making a Mexican standoff work with picking up kids from school and taking a shower. While it wasn't Iran So Far, Adam Levine's cameo fit right in.



The days of Saturday TV Funhouse are long gone, but that doesn't mean SNL is going to abandon the cartoon game. In a sketch that I hope is the beginning of a series, Cool Drones not only taught us about the U.S. military's drone program but also introduced us to Nick, Luke, Bo and Harry, four drones who also perform together as a boy band called Drone Zone. "I pledge allegiance to that booty, girl," indeed. The Cool Drones cartoon was done by Augenblick Studios, the guys behind Comedy Central's Ugly Americans.



It might not be a tropical beach, but your childhood home still has a lot of great features, right? I already know that I'm going to hear the line, "You could always clean out this box of stuff or else it’s going to be thrown out," when I go home for Thanksgiving this week. Those Disney Adventures magazines are collectors' items — we can't throw them out. Geez.


What's next?

SNL is back on Dec. 8 with Jamie Foxx hosting and Ne-Yo as the music guest.


Previous editions of Sunday Morning Live

Nov. 11, 2012: Anne Hathaway
Nov. 4, 2012: Louis C.K.
Oct. 21, 2012: Bruno Mars
Oct. 14, 2012: Christina Applegate
Oct. 7, 2012: Daniel Craig
Sept. 23, 2012: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Sept. 16, 2012: Seth MacFarlane