SNL: Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Bring Back ‘Bronx Beat’…and Maya Rudolph, of Course

What’s the point in letting former SNL cast members guest host if you aren’t going to resurrect sketches and characters from back when they were on the show? We saw this a few weeks ago when Tracy Morgan gently poked our nostalgia buttons with the return of Brian Fellows and it happened again last night with the return of Bronx Beat. However, this wasn’t just a showcase for co-guest host Amy Poehler — it also saw the return of the great Maya Rudolph to the SNL stage. And there was no way the evening’s other guest host, Tina Fey, was going to sit out this chance to reunite with her few fellow Studio 8H veterans.

Like before, the joke of Bronx Beat is that there really is no joke. It’s just an excuse to watch these very funny ladies try on some very funny accents and play with some very silly material. While it’s fun to watch Rudolph and Poehler dig into their thick New Yawk accents and address their topical concerns about the world at large from their very, well, specific perspectives, it’s their rapport with Fey that makes this thing click. As the cousin from Philadelphia, Fey gets to try out an entirely different accent…one that leaves the other ladies bowled over. After all, to them, she sounds like she’s from “Downtown Abbey” or something.