Twerking Girl

Saturday Night Live leaked its hosts for the first three episodes. Tina Fey will start things off, followed by Twerking Girl Miley Cyrus, then Bruce Willis. Like Meatloaf once said, “two out of three ain’t bad.”

I’m a smidge disappointed that SNL would reward Cyrus’s late-summer slutathon, using such a flimsy platform to launch the retooled cast. Across the board, I don’t understand why Cyrus is getting epic attention for making a fool of herself on an irrelevant awards show. She can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t perform, so she decides to stick her tongue out and dry hump a stage for six minutes, and it projectiles her career? Compared to Cyus, Justin Bieber's Stevie Wonder. But she “twerked” in a flesh-colored bikini so her songs shoot to the top of I-tunes, her CD sales rocket, her face plasters the cover of every magazine? Then SNL comes calling? Is cheap shock value really this powerful? What’s next? One Direction makes soft porn, wins a lifetime achievement?

Lorne Michaels has put his rookie cast on a suicide mission. Do you understand how hard these newbies are going to have to work to cover over Cyrus’s non-existent chops? Remember when Lindsay Lohan took a stab at hosting last season (maybe the season before)? She was making her big “comeback” and Michaels installed her on the heels of all that hallow attention. There are legendary stories of the cast making commercial-break rewrites to sketches. Why? Lohan couldn't get three lines out. Lohan was a train wreck. And that was a well-oiled team (Hader, Sudeikis, Myers, etc). Lohan's Meryl Streep compared to Cyrus.

How can someone as seasoned as Lorne Michaels buy this five-minute bounce, again? Is it really about ratings in SNL’s 700th season? OK, the whole country will watch, sure we will, and we’ll go to bed thinking SNL's in the crapper. This is too big a platform to showcase Hannah Montana. "But, Brian, they're gonna make fun of Miley all night. It'll be hilarious." I don't care about Miley Cyrus. I don't want to spend a whole show on her. I want primetime presence.

And the worst part is I was looking forward to the new SNL cast. The least Michaels could do is fill the first month with established talent at host, give these comedic kids a real chance to win America. I just didn’t realize that twerking and tongue lapping qualified someone for that job.

Read More: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/miley-cyrus-to-host-and-perform-on-saturday-night-live-20130909

Brian Huba
9.14.13