Life, Larry, And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness “Lincoln”

Normally, this show has three or four skits.  This one had two depending on how you count it because Larry played the same character for most of the episode, interacting with a somewhat psychotic Mary Todd Lincoln, as played by the great Katherine Hahn.

Bill Hader’s Honest Abe I found less impressive for some reason.

For starters, there is another bit where Larry is an Eastern dandy in Tombstone, Arizona, playing poker with Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp, and one of the other Earp brothers, Don Johnson and Timothy Olyphant, probably the best two actors to cast as Western heroes in a comedy, playing Wyatt and Doc.  Which is which?  I don’t know.  I don’t much care.  Wyatt and his brother spend time defending the fact that “Earp” is a common name in western Eastern Europe.

Then it turns out Larry doesn’t know how to hitch a horse, the Clantons get upset, they arrange for a gunfight, and Larry chickens out and rides away despite being mostly responsible for what happened.

But he spends most of the episode as Larry Butterfield, Abe Lincoln’s buddy, the idiot who suggested he go to the theater after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.  He goes too, initially to sit between the Lincolns because Abe kinda wants to murder Mary Todd by this point.  And…I’m not overly fond of that joke.  Plus, Hader is a bit distracting as Lincoln.  Hahn makes for a nice over-the-top First Lady, particularly when Abe is stuck delivering messages between Butterfield and Mary Todd until Mary Todd tells Butterfield to go away, something he’s rather happy to do because he thinks the play is terrible.

And he walked right past John Wilkes Booth on his way out the door.

The second segment works better when Andrew Johnson charges Butterfield to get the grieving Mary Todd to vacate the White House so he can move in.  Is Mary Todd still grieving as she claims?  That seems unlikely.  It looks like she just loves living in the White House.

She does eventually murder Butterfield.  That may serve him right.  The theater was still his idea.