I didn't hate last week's season premiere of Saturday Night Live hosted by Amy Poehler (certainly not as much as most of what I've read on the Googlesphere), but I was pretty indifferent towards it: SNL is back, I'm not really laughing, please pass the Halloween Oreos. This week's episode hosted by Breaking Bad (a great show, that) star Bryan Cranston was a different story. I didn't hate it, because I'm not really capable of hating Saturday Night Live, but I did feel sorry for it.

It's only the second week of the new season, and already the show feels tired. Did they really run out of ideas after last week? Because most of those were already repeat sketches, unless you count the "Tiny Hats" bit they "borrowed" from Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!.

I will say that it was good to see a few more of the new featured performers getting a good deal of screen time -- especially Vanessa Bayer, who has already made a name for herself based on her work this week. More on that below.

Also, it was nice of Eddie Murphy from Delirious to come by and do his rap songs as the musical guest. He brought ballerinas -- because, you know, art -- and performed in heaven. What a great guy. Norbit.

Watch the full Bryan Cranston SNL episode

Sketch Highlights

• "Cold Open: Rahm Emanuel" - So, Rahm Emanuel swears a lot? Of course. You'd be crazy not to do a sketch on that. (Watch the full "Cold Open: Rahm Emanuel" video)
• "Bryan Cranston Monologue" - It seems like whenever the writers of Saturday Night Live aren't sure what to have a host do in the monologue, they have him or her a song to perform. Sometimes, that can be a pleasant surprise -- like when it turns out someone you didn't expect to have a great singing voice actually does. But, then, there's something like this week's song. Bryan Cranston is a very talented actor, but not a great singer. And the central joke seemed to only be that the cast wasn't sure who he was. I say 'central joke' despite the fact that it's only really referred to two or three times. Oddly enough, the monologue did set the tone for the night, in that it was clear that Cranston was never going to stand out -- not necessarily through any fault of his own, but because no one knew what to do with him. He was a bystander on his own episode. (Watch the full "Bryan Cranston Monologue" video)

• "Pepto Bismol Ice" - It sickens me to even think of praising a sketch with the word "cute," but I have no idea what else to say. It wasn't terribly funny, but it was kind of pleasant -- a decent idea, executed sufficiently. Kind of gross, which is what they were going for, but not necessarily gross enough to be funny. (Watch the full "Pepto Bismol Ice" video)
• "Miley Cyrus Show" - Here's the only sketch that anyone is going to talk about or remember come Monday morning, which only means it's going to be repeated five or six times this season. In only the second show, featured player Vanessa Bayer has already found her breakout character with a dead-on Miley Cyrus impression that was not only accurate but managed to say something funny about Cyrus as a person (not so much for the Johnny Depp impression, which was accurate but not all that funny). Once again, host Cranston is pretty much sidelined, but that didn't matter. Bayer's impression drove the sketch, and it was good enough that we'll be seeing a lot more of it this season. And, once again, SNL is capable of writing only two kinds of sketches: talk shows and game shows. (Watch the full "Miley Cyrus Show" video)
• "What Up With That?" - In just its second week of the new season, SNL has already trotted out the old "What Up With That?" standby. I once used to defend this sketch for its craziness, but it's become such a formula now that I can't defend it anymore. Kenan Thompson's face as he tried to restrain from singing was funny, but there's so little to tell this apart from the other "What Up With That?" sketches. It feels now like a lazy placeholder, even with all the energy and the whole cast participating. Let's do the over/under on just how many times the show will repeat this one this season. I'm going 10 total. (Watch the full "What Up With That?" video)
• "Shanna: Basketball Game" - A half hour into the show comes the first appearance of Kristen Wiig, doing her sexy/gross character Shanna. It's the same joke as it's always been, and not a very good one at that. What's interesting in the sketch is Wiig's near-manic need to overperform. One joke -- an extended belch (because yuck!) -- might have been funny if Wiig had frozen her face through the whole thing, but she's totally unwilling to let the laughs come to her and has to keep pushing and contorting in the hopes of sustaining the gag. It's also called mugging. (Watch the full "Shanna: Basketball Game" video)
• "Digital Short: Rescue Dogs" - There was a lot that made me laugh in this week's Digital Short, including the Pizza Hut commercial and the arm gag. If I have a complaint about the Digital Shorts, it's that they often don't have any kind of cohesion or focus to the humor -- the pieces are about too many things with too many different kinds of jokes. That means we laugh as it's going on, but the laughs don't really have anything to do with one another. The best Digital Shorts are the ones with a singular vision, which "Rescue Dogs" didn't have. It was just a lot of ideas smashed together. Still, it made me laugh more than once. A bright spot for the week. (Watch the full "Digital Short: Rescue Dogs" video)
• "The Bjelland Brothers" - I literally have no idea what to say about this, except the fact that 30 Rock's studio audience singing along with the song kind of killed the only joke in the sketch. I don't care either way, mind you, but I'm just saying. (Watch the full "Bjelland Brothers" video)
• "Kid Smartz" - It's funny because it's a grown man kissing children on the mouth. (Watch the full "Kid Smartz" video)

• Original Air Date: 10/2/10
• Host: Bryan Cranston
• Musical Guest: Kanye West