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"After the departure of its biggest stars, Saturday Night Live's 39th season is finally in full effect. The show has entered recovery mode, riding off its comeback last year with a hefty gamble on five new cast members. There's no more Stefon but \"Live from New York!\" is still louder than ever. For its fifth episode, comedy god Lorne Michael recruited the beautiful Kerry Washington (Scandal, Django Unchained) and Eminem (No description needed) to provide us with Saturday night's entertainment. Here's how it went down:\n\nThe Monologue\n\n\n\n In its cold open, the writers looked inward, making light of a recent controversy by having Kerry Washington hurry off stage to play an arrangement of black women alongside Jay Pharaoh's President Obama, like Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Beyonc\u00E9 (to date, the cast has never included a black woman), and the self-awareness was effective.\n\nBut the monologue was not. Washington's monologue was Scandal-themed, as cast members approached her as Olivia Pope, the McGyver of D.C. Except the constant jibes fell a bit flat; maybe some of the opening's racial significance should've ended up here, just to save itself from mediocrity.\n\nThe Three Best\n\nCareer Week Speaker\n\nNasim Pedrad's main strength is the lengths she'll go to embody a character; her Kardashian and Arianna Huffington impersonations are the best around. And now you can add Heshi, the Yemeni \"professional career consultant,\" to that growing list. With Washington as her sassy assistant, Tammy Fox, and newcomer Mike O'Brien as her awkward techie son, we're not sure if it's the sound effects or the hip gyrations, but the night's first skit was an early favorite.\n\nMiss Universe - Moscow 2013\n\nPlastic announcers Pedrad and Taran Killam co-host this \"fringe country\" beauty pageant, which opens the doors for so many perfect possibilities. And those include Vanessa Bayer as the Soviet-era Miss Moldova, Washington as the utterly confused Miss Uganda, Aidy Bryant as the blunt Miss Greenland and Kate McKinnon as the coked-up Miss Bolivia. A sloppy make-out is in there somewhere, too.\n\n3. Date or Diss\n\n\n\nBecause every attempt to poke fun at MTV's shrinking cultural relevancy will always be a pleasure to watch.\n\nWeekend Update\n\n\n\n\n\nHighlights included: NSA/Obamacare jokes and Cecily Strong loudly giggling off to the side throughout Pharoah's Shaquille O'Neal and Kenan Thompson's Charles Barkley impressions. But both highlights pale in comparison to McKinnon's impeccable job as German chancellor Angela Merkel, who, after discovering Obama's NSA has been tapping her phone, admits she is alone and longing for affection (read: sexting). \"Ein is the loneliest number.\"\n\nMusical Performance: Slim Shady\n\n With The Marshall Mathers LP 2 out on Tuesday, Eminem performed two of the album's tracks, \"Berzerk\" and \"Survival,\" in NBC's Rainbow Room studio. The first included legend-producer Rick Rubin as DJ, and the second dropped the spotlight on Skylar Grey, Eminem's singer-songwriter protege. But, like the expectations for his new album, everything was just alright.\n\nWhat Didn't Work\n\n\n\n A game-show sketch. Because there's usually a 25% chance that they do.\n Pharoah's stuttering yet recurring Principal Frye character. Hearing \"te-te-te-teachers and students\" the first five times was hysterical. Now it's lost its charm.\n A musical guest that only a handful of people;or those who do not remember the first Marshall Mathers LP are excited about.\n\nConclusion\n\n We can watch Kerry Washington for hours. And finding out she's also funny turns those hours into days. In other words, with the help of a few good skits, this was a solid Saturday Night Live."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/saturday-night-live-recap-kerry-washington-eminem>