One Life to Live will end its 44-year run on Friday, but for some of the show's actors, there is in fact life after Llanview.

Four actors from the canceled soap are set to reprise their roles and join ABC's General Hospital for a unique arc.

Kassie DePaiva, Roger Howarth, Michael Easton and Kristen Alderson will return as their One Life to Live alter-egos when production begins later this month in January.

“We have a very exciting story planned for the citizens of Port Charles, with Sonny Corinthos at the center of it!

I am confident viewers and fans alike will be excited for the arrival of John (Easton), Starr (Alderson), Blair (DePaiva) and Todd (Howarth),” said Frank Valentini, executive producer of General Hospital. “Incorporating characters from ‘One Life to Live’ continue the legacy of the show as we weave them into General Hospital.”

DePaiva has played Blair since December 1993. Horwath returned to play Todd last year, the role he originated from a day-player to a long-term character. Easton joined the cast of OLTL as John in 2003. Since March 1998, Alderson has played Starr.




ONE LIFE Fave To B&B!!



Digest can confirm that fan favorite Hillary B. Smith (ex-Nora, OLTL) will join the No. 2 show in the brand new role of a sex therapist. The news comes mere hours after ONE LIFE TO LIVE aired its last episode on ABC.

The actress had hinted earlier today that she had a new job in the works: “There will b other projects. I have one at the end of the month. It will be announced shortly..... Not ABC.”



Finale Reaction from around the web!

The Independent Weekly: Last exit to Llanview - Michael Malone looks back at his work on ONE LIFE TO LIVE

“I’ll always say the fiction of Llanview lasted longer than Shakespeare’s Globe. These were very long-lived shows—30 years, 40 years, GUIDING LIGHT was 70 years. That’s a lot of stability in a very fast-moving medium like television. And it taught other parts of television how to make serials.”



“It’s not that (audiences) don’t want story, it’s just that they have so many more ways to get it,” Malone says.



Boston Herald: Epic ‘One life’ draws to close

Despite drastic budget cuts in recent years, ONE LIFE remained creatively vibrant. The finale reportedly ends on cliffhangers that would tease viewers into an online show distributed by Prospect Park. The company backed out, citing costs, and ABC announced earlier this week that four core performers (Roger Howarth, Kassie DePaiva, Michael Easton and Kristen Alderson) will be reprising their roles on ABC’s remaining soap, GENERAL HOSPITAL.



Boston Herald: Erika Sleza refelcts on Viki

“She made her mark in a lot of people’s lives. That’s attested to in so much of the mail I received over the years,” Slezak told the Herald from her home in Vermont. “Viki is an awesome character. She is so many different things, but she’s such a good person. She was just a lot of fun to play. She had a real sense of right and wrong. She is just a really nice lady who got to cut loose with (her alternate personalities).”



Columbus Dispatch: As ‘One Life To Live’ becomes latest soap to die, fans lament decline of daytime TV dramas

“Doing daytime television was a great training ground and a way for actors to survive financially,” said Kevin McClatchy, an actor who appeared on ONE LIFE TO LIVE and two other soaps in the 1990s. Living in Columbus while he works toward a master’s degree from Ohio State University, the Philadelphia native said he laments the demise of soaps.



New York Daily News: Gina Tognoni, Sean Ringgold toast the end of ABC’s ONE LIFE TO LIVE

“We will definitely be with friends and raise our glasses and send it good vibes,” Tognoni says of the 2 p.m. telecast. “I’m sure I’ll get a little misty-eyed.”



Us Magazine: Stars' Soap Opera Beginnings

The beloved soap opera helped launch the careers of many young stars, including Hayden Panettiere, Marcia Cross and Laurence Fishburne.



Washington Post: Slezak offers preview of what might have been

Had the show gone on, Erika Slezak said at THE VIEW taping, Dorian, who’d been appointed to an empty U.S. Senate seat vacated in a sexting scandal, was going to become president.



Washington Post: ONE LIFE TO LIVE ends its 43-year run

In the penultimate episode of ONE LIFE TO LIVE, Viki gives a lovely tribute to FRATERNITY ROW, and to soap operas as a genre, noting, “When a show has been lucky enough to be on the air as long as ‘Fraternity Row’ has been on, these families become an extension of our own.”



Montreal Gazette: End of the world as One Life to Live fans know it

Over the decades, it tackled teen pregnancy, gang rape, interracial marriage, a black woman passing as white, multiple personality disorders, a gay love story – all back when such topics were taboo on TV.



Houston Chronicle: Quiz - Were you a true OLTL fan?

Before the final credits role, test your knowledge of all the lives of Llanview, Pa., with a ONE LIFE TO LIVE trivia quiz.



WHSV: One Life to Live Calling It Quits

WHSV talked to some viewers to see what they thought about the show calling it quits. Watch it below.


NYC's soap bubble bursts!



When shooting ran late on the Manhattan set of “Guiding Light,” some of its stars’ moods began, counterintuitively, to improve. “We had one actor who had a bar in his dressing room,” explains Kim Zimmer, who played one half of the show’s “supercouple,” Josh and Reva, for more than two decades. Behind closed doors, actor Grant Aleksander would whip up margaritas for his co-stars, complete with fresh-squeezed lime and, if you had time, a salt-rimmed glass.

“We called it Chez Phillippe,” says Zimmer — after Aleksander’s character, Phillip Spaulding. “It was on another floor, tucked in a back hallway. Grant made really good margaritas, and you could put it in a Styrofoam coffee cup and take it back up to the set. Everything gets funny when you’re punch-drunk — or real drunk, on top of that!

“We weren’t fooling anyone,” adds Zimmer. “They all knew we were visiting Chez Phillippe.”

The backstage soap-opera speakeasy is just one of the mass casualties in the death of New York’s daytime drama empire. When ABC’s “One Life To Live” airs its final, inevitably tearful episode on Friday, an era will end for NYC-based TV soaps, which date all the way back to 1950’s “The First Hundred Years,” CBS’s first ongoing serial daytime drama about two couples who were next door neighbors.

Sixty-two years later, following the recent cancellations of its local brethren — “All My Children,” “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns” —“OLTL” is the last show standing in what used to be one of the city’s most thriving entertainment industries. On 66th Street between Central Park West and the Hudson River, ABC’s “OLTL” and “All My Children” were shot, while CBS’s “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns” were filmed on 57th Street near the Hudson. (“Another World” was shot in Brooklyn until its cancellation in 1999, and the soap “Loving” taped in Manhattan from 1983-1995.)

New York soaps, which were at the height of their cultural import in the ’70s and ’80s, spawned countless well-known actors. Soaps even got a shout-out from the mayor, recalls Robert Woods, who’s been playing Bo Buchanan on “OLTL” since 1979.

“One year, Rudy Giuliani talked about how valuable these shows were to New York,” recalls Woods, “how proud he was to have them produced here.”

Today, the decline of the soaps is indicative of a larger trend, in which the travails of scripted characters are being replaced by the real-life antics of people too cartoonish to be fictional — the Kardashians, the Snookis, the Charlie Sheens. Daytime dramas have been slashed to make room for “how to” shows — “OTLT” will be replaced by “The Revolution,” a weight-loss show (which will follow, oddly, a cooking show, “The Chew,” which replaced “All My Children” last fall).

Still, none of them can touch the sheer volume of human folly on display in the soaps, played out to the hilt of melodrama five days a week.

“I’ve had babies stolen, I’ve been shot, I’ve shot people, I’ve had about eight marriages and three miscarriages,” says “OLTL” star Kassie DePaiva, who has played heroine Blair Cramer for 17 years. “We had a public execution of my fake husband — stopped at the last minute.”

And, obviously, “I’ve slept with tons of really good-looking men.”

All that sex, murder, betrayal, espousal and hospitalization has been the bread and butter of a tight-knit community of actors, writers, producers and crew who worked tirelessly to churn out escapist fantasies for a devoted audience. “The beauty of soaps,” says DePaiva, “is that it takes a village to make it work, and you get to work with really hardworking people.”

“I feel so lucky to have been part of the daytime community in New York,” says Susan Lucci, who famously played arch-villain Erica Kane on “AMC” for four decades. “We were all collaborating to make the best show possible, five days a week.”

Many actors fondly recall dedicated production crews, the unseen backbone of the operation.
“They were the most gracious people I have ever met in my life,” says Jordan Clarke, who played Billy Lewis on “Guiding Light” from 1982 to 2009. “I got to work with some great old-timers. One cameraman named Johnny Paola was a silver-haired gentleman who always wore a suit and tie. And I remember the first time I walked on set, a prop man named Billy Sharkowski walked over and said, ‘Hey, Clarke. What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?’ Then he had a carton on set at all times.

“Also,” Clarke recalls, “back in the old days there were huge cables attached to the cameras, and they had three guys on each cable. During the commercial [breaks], 30 or 60 seconds, there was this very intricate choreography to move the camera and the cable to the next scene in a way where it didn’t get tangled!”

Lucci remembers the group effort that went into shooting one of her trademark over-the-top scenes. “My co-star David Canary and I once had what amounted to a 13-page food fight in a hotel room,” she says. “It was highly choreographed by the fight coordinator. So not only did David and I stay through our lunch to go over the choreography, but so did the crew. The whole thing had to be done in one take, because it ended with my smushing grapes over David’s head. We ended up shooting it at nine at night, and we got it done in one take. It was so collaborative, and so much fun!”

When they did get to leave the building, the actors still stuck together, and close by, says Hillary B. Smith, who has played Nora Buchanan on “OLTL” since 1992. “We used to go to Santa Fe’s [bar] on 68th Street and hang out there,” she says. “We’d run lines and prepare for the next day.”
And the next day — every day — meant a rigorous routine of memorization, preparation and performance. “7 a.m., script memorized,” says DePaiva. “You do a quick rehearsal with the director from 7 to 9:30 a.m. And then taping. You can be done at noon or nine at night, depending on where your scenes are.”

The atmosphere on set may have been bustling and fast-paced, but rarely was it overly serious.
“There’s not a time that goes by that you won’t hear gales of laughter from the crew, from everyone,” says Woods. A fan of pranks, he says he particularly liked to mess with actor Phil Carey, who played his father. “I would use black thread from wardrobe — you can’t see it on camera — and I’d tie it to a phone. If the phone rang, it would just float up out of its cradle. Or if someone had to pick something up you could pull it away from them when they’d reach for it. Or I’d drop a rubber chicken into the scene.”

Vincent Irizarry, a veteran soap actor who has worked on “GL,” “OLTL” and most recently “AMC” as uber-bad guy Dr. David Hayward, says his habit of working through lunch has been the source of cracking up a set on more than one occasion.

“There was a wedding taking place, a big production, and I was sitting in the front row. I remember Kelly Ripa was up there and they’re saying their vows, and my stomach makes this sound like I was starving! It growled right in the middle of the vows, you could hear it on the boom. They go ‘Cut!’ and Kelly turns around and goes, ‘Oh my god! Are you kidding me?’ ”

As lighthearted as the atmosphere on set tended to be, soaps were on the cutting edge of introducing serious social issues over the years.

“It’s not all evil twins and separated at birth,” says “OLTL” head writer Ron Carlivati. “At the same time as we have evil twins, we also try to tell stories that are relatable to our audience.” For example, he says, the show recently ran a story line about bullying, a topic ripped from the headlines.

Judith Light, who went on to prime-time fame in the ’80s sitcom “Who’s the Boss?” had a star-making turn on “One Life To Live” in 1979 as a housewife moonlighting as a prostitute. In her climactic courtroom scene — which would win her an Emmy — Light’s character broke down on the stand and confessed all. It was a must-watch moment, but even Light was shocked at the sincere outpouring of emotion she got from fans. “I received so many letters from prostitutes who said, ‘I so desperately want to get out of the life, I want to be as brave as you were.’ ”

“Agnes Nixon [creator of ‘AMC’ and ‘OLTL’] was certainly at the forefront of breaking down barriers,” Lucci says. “Gender and race, and every way I can think of. ‘OLTL’ had the first story line around an African-American multigenerational family; it was so well-received. On ‘AMC,’ Erica had the first legal abortion, that was very groundbreaking. They had a gay story line [featuring teen star Ryan Phillippe].”

Carlivati, who’s taken the “OLTL” characters to many odd and improbable places, including heaven, says the secret to a successful story line is knowing the character as well as the fans (who will hold you accountable) do. “As long as you write the characters true to who they are, you can send Viki [Slezak’s longtime character] to Mars,” he says. “As long as she has the appropriate reaction.”

“[The role] was a hell of a lot of fun,” says Slezak, who won six Daytime Emmys over the years. “I loved when Viki cut loose and acted as the host of the [different] personalities.”

New York soaps afforded actors like Slezak and Woods the unusual opportunity to play the same role for decades in what amounted to a reliable, high-profile profession. “It was a sustainable, valuable job for many actors in Manhattan,” says DePaiva. “Some wonderful theater performers would work [on soaps] during the day and moonlight on Broadway at night.”

“The reason it was so wonderful for actors in New York,” says Smith, “was that we were here for theater, which we did for the passion, for our art. And daytime was the closest thing to theater on TV.” Plus, she says, “it was a way to pay the bills. It was a great way to have a steady job in an industry without steady jobs.”

Soap stars have watched the decline of the daytime drama since the ’80s. “I saw a chart showing the revenue, and it looked like a plane diving to the ground,” says Clarke, who is one of the rare actors making the transition to the Internet; he currently stars in the online soap “Venice,” as does Smith.

“I never thought it would happen,” says Woods. “To think that there wouldn’t be soap operas produced in New York! I always thought there would be the serial format on ABC, as long as there was an ABC.”

“It leaves a huge hole in daytime TV and in the days of our fans,” says Slezak. “ABC tells us the audience doesn’t want entertainment anymore; that they only want information. I don’t buy that. I want something that will make me laugh, make me cry.”




Good Morning America's tribute to OLTL!



OLTL Video: Interviews With Many Actors About Their Favorite Moments!





Farewell Interviews with the cast of OLTL!

John-Paul Lavoisier and Farah Fath talk with Michael Fairman about Rex and Gigi’s final storyline and wrapping up their on-screen love story, their memories of their time together at OLTL, and what Llanview has meant to their real life relationship.



Hillary B. Smith and Robert S. Woods talk with Michael Fairman about the legacy of Bo and Nora as one of soaps most iconic couples, their love for the fans, and their sentiments on working together, and saying goodbye to the 43-year old soap.



Kassie DePaiva (Blair) & Kristen Alderson (Starr) discuss playing the popular on-screen mother/daughter duo in the dysfunctional Manning family. In addition, they share their thoughts on working with Trevor St. John (Todd/Victor Jr.), and what the amazing fans of OLTL have meant to them personally and professionally.



Melissa Archer reflects on her time playing Natalie Buchanan and the opportunity to work with Michael Easton (John), Bree Williamson (Jessica), and Erika Slezak (Viki). Plus, Melissa shares her thoughts on the shows (now-shelved) plan to move to the web, and her very special “thank you” to the fans.



Six-time Daytime Emmy winner and the star of the series, Erika Slezak chats with Michael Fairman in a heart-tugging and emotional interview as Erika prepared to say goodbye to her 40 year run as Viki. In addition, Erika explains why she had decided to lend her name to the Prospect Park online project that ultimately fizzled, and what she will miss the most from her time in Llanview.



OLTL Stars Mingle For a Cause!



Current and former OLTL stars (Barrett Helms, David Gregory and Josh Kelly pictured above) came together at Brother Jimmy’s in New York City for Mingle For a Cause's Farewell Tribute to One Life to Live on January 7.





























Top Five Heroines of 'One Life to Live'!



This week, soap opera lovers bid a sad farewell to the ABC daytime drama "One Life to Live" after more than four decades on the air. The final peek into the sassy, sultry and sometimes silly lives of Llanview, Pa., residents airs Friday. We pay tribute to five formidable leading ladies who survived marriages, affairs, divorces, comas, serial killers, disasters, heart transplants and multiple personalities -- and looked fabulous doing it all.



For most fans, OLTL begins and ends with Viki (whether her last name is Lord, Buchanan, Gordon, Riley, Burke, Carpenter, Davidson or Banks). The character originated in 1968 with actress Gillian Spencer, but was recast and seared into our hearts with the lovely Erika Slezak, above, in 1971 as Llanview's calming influence and lone level head -- except, of course, when one of her other personalities takes over.



A diva's diva, Dorian (Cramer, Lord, Callison, Santi, Vickers, Hayes, Laurence or Buchanan) portrayed for nearly 30 years by Robin Strasser, is Viki's eternal nemesis/best friend. The two often were trapped together, whether in avalanches or messy love triangles. Just this past year, Dorian finally wed her soul mate and the show's comic-relief master, David Vickers Buchanan, and headed off to serve as a U.S. senator.



Fierce in the courtroom as Llanview's longtime district attorney, Nora Buchanan (Hanen, Gannon or Colson), played by Hillary B. Smith, also has battled prejudices for her interracial marriage, brain tumors and her son's paralysis. Nora and Bo Buchanan are one of fans' favorite super-couples, highlighted by their popular rock 'n' roll-themed wedding in 1995. One of their weddings, that is.




Llanview's sexy siren Blair Cramer (Daimler, Buchanan, Holden, McBain or Clarke), played by Kassie DePaiva, often is conniving but has a heart of gold. She has tough luck with men and usually ends up with bad-boy Todd Manning and/or the man she thought was Todd, but who turned out to be his twin brother, Victor Lord Jr. ... it's a long story.



Passionate defense attorney Tea Delgado (sometimes Manning), played by Florencia Lozano, first showed up in the late '90s, made a return briefly in 2002 and has been back since 2008. She's also had a long-standing thing for the various versions of Todd, which didn't sit well with Blair, who famously pushed Tea out a window. However, they later became best buds.


Nathan Fillion Reminisces About One Life to Live!



Before striking TV gold on Firefly and Castle, Nathan Fillion cut his teeth in the soap opera world. After moving to New York in the nineties, he starred as Joey Buchanan on One Life to Live. After three years — and a Daytime Emmy nomination — the Canadian actor decided to move on and well, the rest is history.

However, Fillion, 40, still has a soft spot for the show, whose final episode airs on Friday.

“I’ve heard daytime [television] be referred to as a stepping stone but I think of daytime as a building block,” he said Wednesday at the People’s Choice Awards in Los Angeles.

“I’ve never worked so hard, I’ve never worked so much, I’ve never worked with so many experienced actors who were willing to teach. Who were willing to impart their experience, their wisdom, and the mistakes they made. It was all there for the asking,” he continued.

“I will never forget any of those people. I am here because of them.”


Phylicia Rashad Remembers Her Time on One Life to Live!

The Cosby Show icon and One Life to Live alum Phylicia Rashad stopped by Good Day LA on January 12. During the visit the show played a clip from her time in Llanview and asked her about that period in her life.





Team Of ABC Daytime Show ‘Revolution’ On Potential Backlash From Soap Fans: TCA!



It’s rare that a new TV show is more notable for what it replaces than for itself, but such is the case with ABC’s The Revolution. The daily inspirational makeover program replaces the long-running One Life To Live, and the soap’s die-hard fans are militantly unhappy. At today’s TCA, the first question to the Revolution panel was about how the show would deal with the backlash and keep the angry fans from switching over to NBC’s daytime drama Days Of Our Lives, which airs against The Revolution.

“We can’t replace that show, but what we offer is something different,” said co-host Ty Pennington, the resident design expert whose long-running reality series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was also recently canceled by ABC. “Extreme Makeover was a show that got canceled too, and that was something that was really, really special to me. It’s about change, and The Revolution is certainly about change.”

Said Revolution executive producer JD Roth after the panel, “I would love to have [One Life To Live stars] on the show. I have so much respect for that part of the history of television — how many shows have been on the air for 40 years? My mom watches it, my mother in law watches it. I love the genre in general.” But, he added: “I make TV shows, I don’t program them. I wanted to make a great TV show, and in the end I hope the shows we make will still inspire people. That’s really the goal.” The Revolution is the second lifestyle program to replace a departing ABC soap. In September, The Chew took over All My Children and has been doing well in the ratings.



SOAPNet Exits Airwaves March 23!



Disney Channel has confirmed a launch date for its new 24-hour preschool channel. Disney Junior will replace SOAPnet on most cable and satellite systems at midnight on Friday, March 23.

The new cable network, an offshoot of Disney Channel's Disney Junior block, will launch with the new animated series DOC MCSTUFFINS, about a six-year-old girl who nurses her sick toys back to health.

A handful of viewers will still receive SOAPnt after March 22, but only because a few cable and satellite deals with Disney are still being finalized. Once those deals are done, SOAPnet will completely shut down.

SOAPnet, which initially embraced classic soaps like RYAN'S HOPE and ANOTHER WORLD, brought fans KNOTS LANDING and DALLAS reruns, and developed original programming related to the genre, changed direction in the last few years. The network began airing old movies unrelated to soaps, dropped its original programming and daytime classic reruns leaving fans to wonder what might have been if the appreciation for the soap remained. There was even talk of taking the "SOAP" out of the name.

Disney Junior is looking to target the 2-to-7 year-old audience.


Tanya Boyd Brings Celeste Home to Salem on DAYS!



Now this is starting to shape into the show of old! Soap Opera Digest is reporting Tanya Boyd is reprising the role of Lexie's (Renee Jones) psychic mama Celeste Perrault on Days of Our Lives. Could this mean danger is on it's way to Salem?


Kirsten Storms Returns to General Hospital!



It appears the prayers of General Hospital fans have been answered. After much speculation, Soap Opera Digest is reporting that Kirsten Storms is returning to Port Charles as Maxie. Reportedly, she will begin taping at the end of January and will appear onscreen in late February.


DAYS Stars Shine at NBCUniversal Press Tour All-Star Party!



Days of our Lives stars Kristian Alfonso (pictured above), Alison Sweeney, Galen Gering and Lisa Rinna appeared at the NBCUniversal Press Tour All-Star party on January 6, in Pasadena, California.

The event also featured soap alums Tia Carrere, Mark Valley and Matt Bomer. Carrere will appear in the upcoming season of Celebrity Apprentice. Valley stars in NBC’s legal drama Harry’s Law opposite of Kathy Bates, while Bomer leads USA’s White Collar.





















ABC on General Hospital's fate: 'We'll see'!

This seems like a fine week to be filling in for my estimable colleague Ryan McGee, given that Radcliffe has spent much of the past year honing his live performance skills on Broadway. As Hugh Jackman indicated in his brief cameo as Daniel Radcliffe earlier this year, there are definite advantages to having celebrities who have at least some experience in a live setting, and from the moment tonight’s episode began it was clear that Radcliffe has become highly comfortable with this kind of environment, making for a strong central performance that could weather even the weakest material the show could send at it.

However, before we get started, I figured in honor of Radcliffe’s presence we should adjust our grading system accordingly. As a result, I’ve adopted – just for this week – the system of evaluation for the Ordinary Wizarding Levels at Hogwarts. While this means that we need a legend to interpret some of the below, I feel it’s only fitting (and gives me the potential to label something particular awful as “Troll,” which seems too good an opportunity to pass up).

O = Outstanding

E = Exceeds Expectations

A = Acceptable

P = Poor

D = Dreadful

T = Troll

Let the exams begin – hope you all brought your timeturners!

Mitt Romney for President: Like last week, the show opens with a basic direct address campaign commercial, in this case for Mitt Romney as he prepares for the South Carolina primary. However, also like last week, the result is incredibly one-dimensional, taking a single joke (that Romney struggles to appear human to voters) and a single event (his comments regarding enjoying firing people) and just throwing them out there without much in the way of structure. Sure, the breakfast order conceit was an attempt at comedy, but it was just the same joke that kept being adjusted slightly. This isn’t political satire: it’s a political impression thrown onto the screen and left to wiggle around for a while. [Grade: D]

Radcliffe’s Monologue: While there was not necessarily anything surprising in the monologue, moving quite quickly into a discussion of both his recent run on Broadway and his role as Harry Potter, it was nonetheless a very strongly delivered piece of comedy. The jokes weren’t necessarily all that strong, but Radcliffe was remarkably confident, despite simultaneously appearing slightly nervous in that British way we find so charming. The pacing was brisk, but Radcliffe didn’t feel like he was tripping over his lines, and the sense of timing was so far removed from last week’s Charles Barkley monologue that it was almost like whiplash. You can tell that Radcliffe’s time spent on Broadway has served him extremely well in performing in front of a live audience, and he elevated a typical “Host’s major project turned into a series of jokes” monologue into something really enjoyable. [Grade: E]

Ricky Gervais: Awards Host: There’s something extremely dull about doing a Ricky Gervais sketch, although Sudeikis’ impression is fairly solid. The problem, more than anything else, is that Gervais’ schtick is already kind of tired, and yet the sketch largely ignores any more incisive commentary to focus instead on the ridiculousness of that schtick being applied to these other outlets. There’s room here to actually say something about the limited charms of Gervais’ persona in these settings, and the sketch somewhat implicitly drew attention to this, but instead it chose largely to marvel in how ridiculous and hilarious it would be for Gervais to make jokes about dogs or plants. The substance was simply lacking here, although the jokes themselves were occasionally clever (even if they could have been cutting as well). [Grade: P]

Target Lady: I don’t have any particular affection for Target Lady, although it’s a fun character that has perhaps been unfairly marred by the overuse of Wiig in recent seasons. Like all recurring sketches like this, it very much depends on how ably the host can participate and how well the various segments and jokes are pieced together. In the former category, Radcliffe was strong again here, enthusiastic and game for the ponytail-sporting white trash employee who just wants to stare at Target Lady’s ass and take her to see Tintin (while, of course, baring his buff bod). The actual jokes? Eh. It’s one of those scenarios where I would love to see a version of this sketch really kill, just to defeat expectations, but the same ol’ pattern had no traction for me here. Performances aside, this one just couldn’t get off the ground. [Grade: P]

You Can Do Anything!: It’s possible this sketch has recurred in the past, although even if it hasn’t it’s nearly identical to other similar talk show oriented sketches. The three-guest structure means that we’re going to get some pretty brief bits, but what I like about this one in particular is that it uses the three guests to make a single argument. It’s a simple joke, an indictment of the YouTube generation with their “Twitter fame” and the like, but each guest offers a few solid jabs at the same argument. While Killam’s juggler didn’t get much to do, Sudeikis’ singer-songwriter was fairly solid, and Radcliffe was again very compelling as a delusional, over-educated – in poetry and clowning – irish dancer/calligraphist. While the jokes didn’t do much to expand on the basic premise, Radcliffe’s performance in particular indicated a commitment to that premise which I found admirable (especially given that he does a mean jig). [Grade: A]

Spin the Bottle: I’m always fairly wary of pre-taped sequences, as there’s a chance they’re brilliant or a chance that they’re just there to kill time. While I appreciated that this was not just a recycled bit from a previous episode, and that Radcliffe was featured prominently, the one joke here was pretty weak. The “He Keeps Kissing Hobos” joke was not bad, per se, but it kept escalating without much in the way of increased returns. While I did think Jay Pharaoh’s particularly creepy hobo at the end was a nice note to end on, I had been pretty much over the sketch beforehand, which suggests it outstayed its welcome. [Grade: P]

The Delaware Fellas: I was concerned that this was going to be yet another soundtrack compilation sketch, so I was quite relieved to see that it was at least slightly different (albeit still built around the same narrator-driven structure which sort of robs the sketch of any sustained interaction between the actors and the audience). The idea of the sketch – a low rent Delaware version of “Jersey Boys” - was pretty lame, and the joke songs did little to extend beyond that basic premise, but I liked some smaller details, like the fact that Joe Biden gives ratings in “Trains” and that Kenan Thompson was somehow the most aggressively quasi-Italian out of the four characters. In addition, I liked the energy level here as well: Radcliffe, Wiig, Killam and Thompson had some strong energy here, and that kept the thing from completely falling off the rails (which would surely be a perfect pun for Joe Biden’s review scale). [Grade: P]

Hogwarts 2020: We were promised a “Harry Potter” sketch at the end of the monologue, and here it is. The sketch is effectively “Van Wilder: Hogwarts,” what with Harry hanging around at the school a decade after graduating while his classmates become professors and have children of their own attending the school. While I was a bit taken aback by how shockingly non-canonical it was (and yes, I am aware how nerdy that statement just was), the sketch delivered on its basic premise and again featured a strong performance from Radcliffe. Also, while it shouldn’t be surprising given his track record, Bill Hader’s Alan Rickman was pretty spot-on, which made his Snape a highlight. While the notion of Hagrid marrying Luna might need to be scrubbed from my brain, this was ultimately a charming bit of fan service given Radcliffe’s pedigree, and an acceptable divergence into the obvious. [Grade: A]

I can imagine that the SNL bookers felt this was a logical pairing of host and musical guest given that Lana Del Ray and Radcliffe are both British, (she is not British, you should've googled.) but I also have to believe they saw an opportunity to feature an artist who is basically a living SNL character. Watching Del Ray’s performance of “Video Games,” it struck me that she is really a parody of herself, a Ke$ha-like figure whose identity is pure construction. The difference, though, is that artists like Ke$ha throw that identity in our face, while Del Ray simply waifs her way through the performance, revealing in nearly every moment just how delicate and vulnerable her tableau truly is. There are moments where her voice is genuinely haunting, but there are also moments where it amounts to a dramatic reading, and other moments where it’s like she forgets she’s supposed to be singing, or invents a new character to perform a particular line because she was so far into another key that she might as well just go with it. It’s the kind of performance where you half expect the show to follow it up with an exact replication of the performance with Kristen Wiig or Abby Elliot doing an impersonation in order to further capture the Baudrillard-esque spectacle of it all. I honestly couldn’t tell you a single thing about this song, as I was simply too mesmerized by everything else on display, but suffice to say that my fascination with Del Ray has little to do with her music. [Grade: D]

Weekend Update: There’s not much to be said about the collection of jokes in this week’s Weekend Update, a fairly standard assortment of topical news pieces without much in the way of a highlight (although it oddly featured the night’s second reference to Sarah McLahlan’s SPCA ads). Instead, Weekend Update was “A Tale of Two Guests,” divergent in both cleverness and in comic success. In the first case we have something that I truly thought we were done with, which is Bayer and Armisen’s “Friends of Dictators” characters. Yes, against all logic, the death of Muammar Gaddafi was not enough to kill these one-note characters, so now the same set of tired jokes are being trotted out for yet another dictators (in this case North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. Look, folks: we already have to deal with a surplus of world dictators, do we really need to also use them as the subject for lame Weekend Update guests? That’s just not even fair. By comparison, Daniel Radcliffe as Casey Anthony’s adopted Yorkshire Terrier was an inspired bit, both because it zigged when you thought they would zag (undercutting the expectation of an impression of Anthony herself) and because it was yet another instance in which Daniel Radcliffe totally stepped up to the plate here. It’s not a complex character, but it was remarkably well-realized (and well costumed) given the circumstances, and it’s great to see Radcliffe stepping into the kind of role that would normally go to one of the regular cast members (rather than playing himself, or mimicking a celebrity, or the like). Update would be better served by more dynamic, less formulaic character types, so this one-off bit was most welcome, and elevated the segment despite the dictator revival. [Grade: A]

X27B Theater: The idea of this sketch is fairly simple, a sort of “History of Progress”-esque look back at the current generation from the perspective of an advanced society in which your race changes after midnight and New Zealand has peeled off the Earth like a band-aid and floated into space. The jokes that come with this were perhaps a bit uneven, but some of them were delightfully random, and I appreciated the combination of the mundane (Fruits and Vegetables? Not really good for you, it turns out), the sexual/perverse (underwear that masturbates for you), and the topical (Taylor Swift? Definitely going to assassinate someone). Similarly, while the stilted acting within the play was a nice reflection of the stage performance quality, I particularly liked the shots of the audience. Note Abby Elliot’s disapproval of some of the play’s messages, and watch the varying levels of laughter as certain jokes are made onstage. It’s a dynamic sketch in and of itself, on some level, and I appreciate that the cuts to the audience were themselves variable. While this isn’t necessarily a complicated sketch, it’s what amounts to ‘high concept’ on “SNL” these days, and stood out as a definite highlight for me.[Grade: E]

Glenda Okones: This proved to be a fairly substantial week for Kristen Wiig, which is unfortunate given that I’m really not capable of enjoying her when used this broadly. What was so weird about these pre-taped sketches, a series of attack ads that Glen Falls mayoral candidate Glenda Okones took out on herself for some reason, is that they weren’t really spread out over the entire show. They just popped up in the back end of it, lumped together and thus seeming kind of overkill. There were some decent performance beats in here, and a couple of solid jokes (“I’m always honking” made me chuckle), but nothing added up to much, and instead of providing any kind of narrative it just felt like a variation on the same joke over and over again. There was potential for progression here, and it just seemed to be left wholly unexplored. [Grade: P]

The Jay Pharoah Show: On the one hand, I like the fact that we’re seeing more of Jay Pharoah. On the other hand, this sketch falls comfortably into the category of “Host plays themselves,” complete with Radcliffe pimping his upcoming appearance in “The Woman in Black” (which is effectively what he’s here to promote). In the latter case, Radcliffe did a fine job of playing himself, and displayed his consistently strong cue-card reading technique that would carry him well through the course of the entire episode. However, when we return to the question of Jay Pharaoh, this read as a meta-commentary on his disappointing tenure, reducing him to nothing but impressions. The joke, that he knew nothing about Radcliffe at all and simply had a talk show to justify his impressions, was actually kind of clever, but the perhaps unintended microcosm this created relative to his time as a cast member made it all a bit bittersweet. It wasn’t intended to have substance to begin with, perhaps, but the substance it ended up having just sort of depressed me a little, making it not quite as delightful as one would hope. [Grade: A]

All of my comments above apply to Lana Del Ray’s performance of “Blue Jeans,” and I love that she eschews the traditional “SNL” wardrobe change and just performs in exactly the same style in exactly the same dress. While her actual singing is remarkably inconsistent, it’s consistently inconsistent, which is perhaps part of her grand scheme. The thing is that this isn’t a case where Del Ray isn’t a strong live performer, although there are more vocal struggles here than in the actual recordings of these songs. This is just the way she has chosen to perform, a style that makes her memorable even if the music itself fails to make an impression. The second performance makes it clear that she has committed to this, to the point where it almost feels like she’s been standing in that same place for the entire period between the two performances, mumbling rhythmically and struggling to hit low notes while singing about other hobbies and articles of clothing. And while it doesn’t do much to make the singing more successful, I’m nonetheless riveted. [Grade: P]

Concord Exit Poll: Continuing a theme on the night, Wiig runs the show as an exit poller in New Hampshire hounding an amiable but creeped out Radcliffe, who just isn’t given enough to do here to make this even remotely interesting. There’s a couple of decent lines, and some solid line-readings, but this felt like a sketch banished to the final slot of the evening not because it was weird or experimental, but rather because it just wasn’t good enough to air earlier. [Grade: D]

Headz Up from World-Tel: I hate to see them filling time with a commercial this late in the show, and it makes for an anti-climactic ending to the evening. Yes, people are always on their phones, and an app to tell them what’s happening around them to keep them from getting hit by cars or help them engage with their spouse is a decent little bit, but this late in the show it just sort of goes into the brain and escapes immediately after.

Best Sketch: X27B Theater.

Worst Sketch: Mitt Romney for President.

Biggest Surprise: No Digital Short? I’m with Ryan that they’re outstaying their welcome, but this was light on Samberg, and I would’ve though Radcliffe would be game.

Biggest Future Non-Surprise: Radcliffe being asked to return as host.