Ariana DeBose and Kate McKinnon buddy up to lead a solid Saturday Night Live
The West Side Story award-winner and returned all-star McKinnon make a great team
TV Reviews Saturday Night Live
“This winter is so dark, Republicans don’t think it should vote.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [Broadway and Broadway-adjacent movie] star!!”
Ariana DeBose’s turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s new West Side Story might have elevated the Broadway star’s profile, but there’s always an added tingle of curiosity when a lesser-known host takes the SNL stage. And DeBose, having just won a Golden Globe for her scene-stealing musical role, took to 8H with an infectious strut, swaying into home base while playfully conducting her own entrance theme. That fully returned all-star Kate McKinnon joined her to belt out some Broadway duets in place of a monologue immediately asserted the show’s investment in taking advantage of what they had in the multitalented DeBose, who brought an infectious trouper’s showmanship to the gig.
It was the first “cast member butts into the monologue” bit of the season, I’m pretty sure. And while sometimes that signals the need to prop up a non-performer (or a performer the show’s discovered is a live TV dud), this was clearly a case of someone recognizing that a Kate McKinnon-Ariana DeBose doubles act would be a really fun and electric way to kick things off. In practice, watching DeBose belt out a medley of Broadway standards while Kate hammed it up beside her was straight-up delightful—McKinnon’s goofing around unable to obscure the fact that she’s got a fine voice herself—and the timely fist-bump on the “gay” in “I Feel Pretty” was especially adorable.
Kate and DeBose teamed up later in a Sound Of Music sketch, in which DeBose’s nanny (recommended to a neighboring family by McKinnon’s spot-on Julie Andrews), turns out to be just as musical as Maria, while being much, much weirder. DeBose’s hosting gig might be partly traced to her role in the Lorne Michaels-produced Schmigadoon!, but she and McKinnon are a match made in musical comedy heaven, as DeBose’s governess (like Maria, “recently kicked out of a nunnery for erratic behavior”) leads her new charges in a loopy rendition of “Do-Re-Mi” replete with references to everything from Homer Simpson to Queen Latifah, to IUDs. “These are children,” McKinnon’s aghast Maria objects.
DeBose lends her character a wide-eyed craziness that powers the sketch, a neat trick opposite McKinnon, and evidence of a backstage confidence that makes for a truly engaged and reliable host. That McKinnon’s Maria gets called out for her own song’s dodgy lyrics (“That’s so lazy,” Chris Redd’s child singer rightly says of “‘La,’ a note to follow ‘so’”), while even Kenan Thompson’s stern father figure is won over to croon a french fry-themed version of “Eidelweiss” is testament to the writers’ knowledge that DeBose could anchor the premise. Also, Kate McKinnon and Ariana DeBose should co-star in something very soon. Musical, buddy comedy, rom-com. Just make it happen.
Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night
The Best: All the DeBose praise aside, no sketch stood particularly high tonight. The one that made me laugh the most was the NBA On TNT, which posited a night where the entire Sacramento Kings lineup (including coaches and trainers) are out with Omicron, leaving the team to enlist fans and facility staff to get mud-stomped by the comparatively healthy Nets, 268 to 1 (at halftime). Kenan’s Charles Barkley is always a hoot, and here we got the added treat of Bowen Yang subbing in for a similarly COVID-afflicted Shaq as former NBA star and fellow giant human, Yao Ming.
Now, Yao Ming is a notably intelligent dude, but I still found myself laughing hard at Yang’s dour big-guy routine, especially since his Yao Ming doesn’t come off as dumb so much as removed from normal interaction by his size. “It’s just a snack for Yao,” Yang shrugs at Barkley’s delight at watching his former NBA colleague devour an entire pumpkin backstage. As for the rest of the sketch, the interviews with the battered fill-in Kings were also goofy fun, with Mikey Day’s diminutive rec league trash talker preparing to flee at the half since “basketball is an impossible sport played by giants and gods,” and DeBose’s winning girls-night replacement player (who has the Kings only free throw point) confiding that of course she asked Blake Griffin for an in-game selfie.
There could be a larger comic point in mocking the NBA’s baffling easing of COVID rules even as Omicron sweeps through the league/nation. But the NBA is hardly the only massive corporation putting money ahead of safety, and, besides, if you’re going to incorporate the daily reality of pandemic life into a your sketch show, sometimes letting that reality act as unspoken background to some silliness has its own comic power to it, as Chris Redd’s Kenny Smith posits that the Kings would need “some sort of Space Jam/Like Mike magical shoe situation” to mount a comeback.
The Worst: If there were no real highs tonight, the same goes for lows. Weirdly, I’m giving the bottom slot to a piece that made me laugh fair bit, as Chloe Fineman came out to continue the Elmo-Rocco feud. For the uninitiated, Rocco’s a rock, and Elmo’s having none of it, with a viral clip on Twitter taking its turn as the internet’s micro-obsession of last week. Now, Fineman does a fine Elmo, even if her actual face peeking out under her Elmo head is disconcerting. And, sure, the sight of everybody’s most chipper/insufferable Muppet pal losing his shit because Zoey keeps gaslighting him that her pet rock deserves the last cookie is amusing. (Even if I like my Muppets less crowd-baitingly irate at each other.) But while I laughed at Che sharing in-jokes with the inanimate Rocco, to Elmo’s fury, it’s such an easy bit—and one so destined to be shared ad nauseam online by morning—that it left me exhausted already. Especially considering how the rest of Update went tonight. (See below.)
The Rest: Speaking of internet buzz, the upcoming gritty reboot of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air got the SNL treatment with Urkel. These fake commercials are so routinely well-produced that we tend to take them for granted by this point, but Chris Redd was great as the new Steve Urkel. Family Matters’ show-hijacking comic irritant is now revealed as the lovelorn genius son of an alcoholic mother, whose nerd-rage spills over into potential violence. “Should I do that?,” Redd’s Urkel sneers as he taunts Laura Winslow’s unworthy suitor with a gun. Quoting horrified reviews as if they’re raves is a reliably funny gag, with Rolling Stone cited here as saying, “Family Matters is the #1 worst choice for a sitcom to modernize like this.” And while the implicit joke is on the never-ending push to mine old shows for often deeply unnecessary new content, the piece is solid on its own, with Kenan’s Carl Winslow now a tormented Chicago cop willing to dispense interrogation room torture along with some tough love, and profanely assuring the troubled Steve that “family fucking matters.”
There’s an element at Saturday Night Live that lives in a cold sweat that someone, somewhere in SNL’s viewership might miss the point of a sketch. So many talented writers emerge from their time at SNL bursting with sketch ideas that don’t rely on someone in the cast asking “Are you saying that [insert premise of sketch in a skeptically comical manner]?” (For evidence, see: Bob Odenkirk, Tim Robinson, Natasha Rothwell, Julio Torres.) In the Sappho sketch, Kate and DeBose team up for their third collaboration of the night, in what might have been something if not for SNL’s stalwart need to point and shout, “See? That’s the joke—right there!” As a couple of lesbian classics professors whose excited translations of a newly discovered scroll from the ancient Greek poet of woman-woman love Sappho gradually reveals their inability to separate their personal lives from their work, the two queer women, once more, make a fine team.
Jokes about a marginalized community are always better on SNL when it at least appears like the jokes are written by people inside that community. And all the jokes here about gay women (too-hasty cohabitation, too many pets, a lack of love from their gay male brethren) are, in McKinnon and DeBose’s hands, the sort of lived-in lines that make the sketch feel less of a hacky cliché-fest than it might otherwise. But the professors’ presentation of Sappho’s supposed poetic laments (“Nancy, we just met/You’re scary and a bitch/Please move in with me”) are repeatedly interrupted by audience members making skeptical faces and asking, almost verbatim, “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you two just imprinting your own issues onto this long-ago text?” Yeah—yeah they are. That was the joke, and we got there without any help. Ugh. There’s even a funny ending to the sketch that gets torpedoed by the impulse, as Mikey Day’s (wait for it) skeptical presenter offers to translate one final stanza, reading, “I went to the doctor/I went to the mountains/I looked to the children/I drank from the fountains.” You can hear someone in the writing process saying, “Look, I get it, but let’s just play the song over the ending, just so people get it.” We got it.
Sarah Sherman has clocked in for a couple of SNL’s two-person local commercial sketches in her first year. She’s good at them, although, like so many idiosyncratic performers hired by Saturday Night Live, being slotted into a pre-existing and predictable sketch format seems something of a waste of potential. Still, she and Pete Davidson (doing more with a characterization that usual) are funny in the sort of sketch born from wee-hours TV commercials for struggling local businesses. Here, it’s a formalwear shop, the married proprietors of which boisterously advertise their oddball wares, including a limousine constructed from two conjoined Toyota Corollas. What’s souring here is how the sketch veers into one long joke at the expense of the couple’s singularly unimpressive teenage son, Donovan (Andrew Dismukes).
Everything about consolation date Donovan (presented as an option for parents worried about their daughters being “penetrated” at the winter formal) is depicted as repellent, from his bathroom habits, to his social awkwardness, to his perpetual “swamp ass,” and it curdles what seemed like another sketch about low-rent hustling businesses into the relentless pummeling of a child. I dunno—there might be some intention here to paint the surly Donovan as some sort of creepy incel (his mother calls out his “huge computer and two ugly friends”), but, as game as everyone is, all the punching down just felt like piling on.
Weekend Update Update
Michael Che mocking “Oath Keepers” seditionist Stewart Rhodes was emblematic of what turned out to be the best, sharpest Update of the season. Rhodes, the white supremacist C.H.U.D. recently arrested for his role in plotting a violent, right-wing coup, wears an eye patch, leading Che to mock Rhodes with various pirate jokes and other eye-related wordplay, all while repeatedly asserting, “That wasn’t an eye joke.” They were eye jokes, with Che gleefully taking license to mock the self-proclaimed militia leader. Che never brought up the fact that Rhodes’ eyepatch resulted from violent conspiracy theorist Rhodes shooting himself in the face while working as a (checks notes) firearms instructor, but he didn’t have to. He also never mentioned Pete Davidson’s infamous joke about right-wing Republican Dan Crenshaw’s own eye patch on Update, but, again, he didn’t have to.
It was a series of low-blows and cheap shots, and it worked splendidly and repeatedly because the target has, by his actions, put himself on the firing line. (Presumably without proper eye protection.) Davidson found himself the target of bad-faith conservative ire for mocking Crenshaw, with Fox News pointing to former soldier Crenshaw’s war wound as off-limits for jokes. And while Crenshaw (holder of some seriously ugly opinions and repeatedly linked to fringe hate groups) rode the wave of outrage to force Davidson to apologize on Update, Che’s broadsides against Rhodes were a cheeky riposte to the idea that civility trumps all when it comes to mocking a true and proven asshole.
There were some clunkers along the way on Update tonight (Che joking about Biden taking naps is about as lazy as it comes), but both Che and Jost were more focused and, well, nasty than they’ve been in a while, and I’m here for it. It’s a nasty America right now, Donald Trump’s shocking ascension allowing Republicans and other aggrieved white people to think that it’s safe to yank off their masks (COVID and Klan) without peril. Well, peril is what’s needed. When GOP Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) got roasted by stalwart and beleaguered anti-COVID health professional Dr. Anthony Fauci (the fed-up Fauci’s mic caught the doc calling Marshall “a moron”), it was because Marshall was grandstanding about Fauci’s government salary by threatening to make Fauci’s pay public (even though it’s already public). Jost doubling down by joking that the offended Marshall didn’t know what “moron” means is mean—and necessary.
Jost segueing a joke about President Biden’s low approval ratings into a swerve about Jefferson Davis (“another president who had a disastrous start to his first term, yet he became an inspiration to generation of republicans even to this day”) was a cheap shot about Southern voters preference for out-and-proud bigot candidates—and it landed because of its targeted nastiness. SNL’s penchant for playing both sides is cliché at this point, but things have escalated so far so fast in the post-Obama years that playing the snarky middle courts comedy malfeasance. It’s time for political comics to take off the padded gloves, put on those ones with the ball bearings hidden in the knuckles, and start tossing haymakers. That tonight’s jokes were also deftly and maliciously on-target made Update feel as potent and dangerous as its been in years. Political comedy might have proved utterly ineffectual when it comes to counteracting the rise of white supremacist authoritarianism and such, but that just means it’s time to punch harder—and smarter.
“What do you call that act?” “All Things Scottish!”—Recurring Sketch Report
Another show without a repeater? Do I hear music in the air? Is this the promised tomorrow? Seriously—keep it up.
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
By the way, the presidential cold opens don’t count as repeats. They’re my rules. As for tonight’s return of James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden, I’m of (at least) two minds. Johnson’s Biden remains a fine, sly characterization. Apart from his Hammond-like technician’s ear, Johnson provides a guiding conception behind his Biden. SNL’s strategy of seizing upon the easiest-to-perform handles on a political figure can be absolutely deadly, political sketches turning into a predictable series of tics and catchphrases. Johnson’s Biden is a trickier creation. “Old and tetchy” is in there, certainly, but not to the “Sleepy Joe” extent of simpleton hashtaggers everywhere. Instead, Johnson plays the 79-year-old President as beleaguered sore winner, his inheritance of a Trump-triggered disaster zone poisoning his hopes for avuncular good will and incremental progress. It’s not as readily buffoonish as Alec Baldwin’s Trump (or Jim Carrey’s Biden, for that matter), but that’s a good thing.
That said, the cold open’s central premise—Biden blames crowds thronging to Spider-Man: No Way Home for all America’s current problems—is pretty inconsequential in its randomness. I like a weird idea—Biden’s obsession here seems to stem equally from the correlation between the Marvel movie’s record-breaking opening and the subsequent Omicron surge and the fact that he and Jill couldn’t get tickets. But there’s a hell of a lot of stuff going on should the SNL writers room care to write a Joe Biden cold open, and this is what they came up with?
I’ve said before that SNL sometimes finds a fresh and illuminating angle on a current event when the writers come at it from an oblique angle. But having Biden field questions about the pandemic (and Russia’s current posturing about invading another country) and merely steering things back to an MCU multiverse theory about why things are so god-awful is less defiantly out there and more irritatingly inconsequential.
Better was Chris Redd’s turn as new New York Mayor Eric Adams, who’s already proving himself a ripe subject for enduring SNL mockery. With the self-aggrandizing former cop and newly elected Democratic mayor evincing a penchant for attitude over sensible policies (about COVID restrictions, police reform, the relative human worth of “low-skill” New Yorkers), it’s going to be a long (and for Redd, at least, profitable) ride for the people of New York, and the sketch sees Redd pull out an assured and smartly funny characterization.
Introduced ably by a brash, equally “swag”-obsessed spokesperson in DeBose, Redd’s Adams bullies the press corps as they dare to question why, for example, he’s demanding in-person attendance at New York schools while students and teachers are falling to Omicron at record rates. (Apparently, even Adams’ swag couldn’t hold up against the ’rona, as he’s now walking back his stance a bit.) “I’m just playing—unless you like that,” is Redd’s approximation of the new mayor’s tough guy routine, a potent take on a guy whose anyone-but-a-Republican mayoral victory has carried along with it some seriously questionable baggage.
With Redd making fun of the outspoken Adams’ habit of whipping out his “I was a police officer” cred to silence legitimate criticism (“I was a cop for 97 years!”), the sketch tosses in a ripe new New York public figure to SNL’s mix. “You’re all mishearing me and you’re making me misquote myself,” Redd’s Adams blurts upon being called out, a pretty trenchant observation of how politicians elected on attitude and pandering to the “he tells it like it is” crowd wind up shunning those in the press who’ll dare question them with on-the-record facts. Buckle in, New York.
I Am Hip To The Musics Of Today
I was all prepared to ding SNL’s still-and-forever baffling inability to properly mic musical numbers for Bleachers’ muddy vocal mix. Then I re-read Alex McLevy’s otherwise positive review citing Jack Antonoff’s penchant for obscuring his own vocals, and now chalk Bleachers’ fun but slightly underwhelming pair of performances up to a mutual missed opportunity. While Bleachers is essentially Antonoff’s one-man band, I especially appreciated his playful interplay with his sax section in “How Dare You Want More.” Still, it was disconcerting watching a guy so invested in presenting an energetic pop-rock spectacle while straining to catch the lyrics Antonoff seemed so bashful about belting out.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
With DeBose having starred alongside Cecily Strong in Schmigadoon!, it was only more evident that Cecily was not in the house tonight. Here’s hoping it’s just due to her tagging out for a Kate McKinnon-style hiatus to do something interesting. Note: I fucking hate having to speculate on cast members health status in this section every week. Same goes for Aidy and the seemingly absent Punkie Johnson—please be having a good, creative, and restful week off.
I know it was another Kate night, but I’m giving the top spot to Chris Redd. He had Urkel, Eric Adams (a potential franchise), and the NBA sketch. Plus, Kate wins so often that I’m grading on a curve now. My rules.
The almost complete marginalization of Melissa Villaseñor continues to be the damnedest thing. (She got one line in the formalwear sketch tonight.) Melissa famously deleted her supposedly drunken intention to quit the show last year, but I have to agree with her sentiment at this point—she does deserve better.
“What the hell is that thing?”—Dispatches From Ten-To-Oneland
Well, I can’t rightly complain when SNL gives me what I ask for. The last sketch saw a kitchen-ful of Texas-based steakhouse employees dealing with their overbearing manager’s temper, and sentence-ending use of the incomprehensible sign-off, “lurr.” Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson, Dismukes, DeBose, and Alex Moffat all trot out their variations on what the sketch steadfastly contends is a Texarkana accent, as they squabble incoherently over a working salad station. (Honestly, I kept worrying Johnson was going to chop his fingers off.) Big, and broad, and weird, the sketch battered along with everybody clearly having a great time. Is there such a thing as a Texarkana accent? And does any one of the gabbling characters here possess one? I dunno. (I’m from Maine, where we all talk like this, too, apparently.) Not the most consequential sketch, but if ten-to-one is the home for half-realized, oddball premises, then this one belongs there.
Stray observations
- Boy, they’ve cut Ansel Elgort all the way out of those West Side Story commercials, huh?
- Che, on the decision to put author Maya Angelou on a quarter: “Which is not what Black people mean when we demand change.”
- Introducing Bleachers’ second number, DeBose sported a Covenant House T-shirt, which is worth a link.
- “Okay, now she’s joking, but she’s from the Bronx, so is she?”
- “You know what rhymes with ‘cough?’ ‘Tough.’ I mean it doesn’t, but it should.” Love me a good joke about how English doesn’t make a klick of sense.
- Jost jokes that deceased murderer Robert Durst was only the fourth most-hated New York real estate figure—over photos of the Trump kids.
- Che, on the Pope urging everyone to get vaccinated, “especially since priests work so closely with kids.” “That wasn’t an eye joke,” Che asserted once again, in response to audience groans.
- Next week: It’s another SNL alum, as Will Forte hosts, along with musical guest, Eurovision champions Måneskin.
129 Comments
Meh. Had no idea who the host was. Still don’t, really. Is she gay? Seemed like a couple of bits seemed to rely on that info…Overall very weak, a C at best.
she’s in west side story. I dont know why she gets to host just on one thing, but they let her.
She was in a Lorne Michaels show and a Steven Spielberg movie in the last year, if you don’t know who she is, it’s not her fault.
Except nobody saw either. SNL has been having problems lately in that the culture is now so fragmented that a lot of the recent hosts are people I’ve never heard of on shows I don’t watch. Bringing on the guy from Bridgerton worked because it turned out he was really funny and charming but Bridgerton is kind of a niche show on a streaming channel- the amount of people who know who he was is pretty small. The same thing could be said with Ariana in that she was a huge star of something nobody saw. Like they booked her thinking the movie would be a bit hit but it turned out it wasn’t but were kind of stuck with her.
Bridgerton has the second highest viewership of anything on Netflix. Just because you didn’t watch it didn’t mean an awful lot of people did, and knew who Rege-Jean Page was…
True, but if you add up the people who watch the show let alone people who have Netflix and how many people would know who he is?
One estimate is that there are about 74 million Netflix subscribers in the USA and Canada. So you’re looking at around 20% of the audience of Saturday Night Live having an idea who Rege-Jean Page is, probably. Not statistically insignificant!
…if you add up the people who watch the show let alone people who have Netflix and how many people would know who he is?More people than watch SNL, I reckon.
Netflix vs Apple+ peep those subscriber numbers, homey
Now see, here’s an excellent example:
While I know what some of those words mean on their own; I don’t have a bloody blasted clue what all of them in that order. “Well, I’m old.”
I mean, the point is still valid because the second-highest viewership in Netflix isn’t anything like the second-highest viewership in primetime in 1980. But the bigger point is, who cares as long as they’re funny?
He’s the guy with the ass.
(I didn’t see it either)
Your criticism just doesn’t land. She’s famous for singing and dancing and acting. They booked her because they knew she wouldn’t struggle.
It was pretty obvious she’s extremely talented. One of the things I thought made the episode a weaker one is that they didn’t know what to do with her. I think they gave Kim Kardashian more screen time than they did with her and it made the episode feel flat.
She also just won a Golden Globe, and we all know how much SNL looooooves award winners.
famous for singing and dancing and acting?
What, no line of sneakers? No froofy sparkling wine drink? No vag-scented candles?
As I commented above: this kid ain’t working that hard.
Complaining that a host isn’t famous enough is just never a criticism that I have any respect for. Look at the early years, where obscure people from odd corners of showbiz could pop up and hosting SNL could be the first time people had heard of them. Buck Henry, for instance was just a writer and appeared in minor bit parts at most before becoming a regular (like at least once, sometimes twice a season) host in the “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” era. Generally, I’m actually pleased when a host is announced and I’ve never heard of them (and they’re not a singer or athlete) because that often means the show will be about the sketches and not about the host’s celebrity buzz. Being all “duh, more famous equals better” is the stance of a simpleton.
i’d much rather have a talented nobody host than an unfunny athelete or musician
Buck Henry, for instance was just a writer
Not just any writer — he co-created GET SMART! with Mel Brooks, and was Story Editor for all but one of the 139 episodes.
Though I doubt most people even remember this exists, he also created and was Executive Producer on the short-lived superhero comedy CAPTAIN NICE
starring William Daniels(!) as an unprepossessing police scientist who invents a formula that gives him Superman-like powers for an hour, and fights crime both because he finally can — and to win the heart of Sgt. Candy Kane (Ann Prentiss), who as Carter Nash (his secret identity) he can barely talk to without stammering. (I wonder if Daniels even remembers starring in this….)
When I don’t know who someone is or what they are famous for, I just chalk it up to “Well, I’m old.”
Why “I’m old” and not “I don’t know this person”?
I would be interested to know when she was booked. It was obvious that WSS wasn’t going to be a hit by around mid-December, and I’m not sure they would have booked her anyone that point considering all their troubles with Omicron. I think their mindset was as follows – 1) she’s stealing the notices (even more prescient than they expected as she seems to be the main one from the film getting anything) 2) she is (presumably) NYC based 3) she has experience in a live format so while they are focusing on COVID stuff she won’t need to be coddled 4) bigger “names” probably were not rushing to a potential superspreader like SNL in January. As you said, the days of wider name recognition for SNL hosts are gone because everyone is in their own world. We’re moving closer back to the days in the ‘70s or ‘80s when they had to just get anyone they could. Even Will Forte, much as I adore his run on SNL and am overjoyed (if nervous) that he is hosting, is someone I don’t think they would have had back in better circumstances, especially this time of the SNL season which usually tries to have film actors/potential Oscar nominees, rather than someone who is doing a middlingly received Peacock spinoff series last seen on SNL in 2010.
Is she any less famous than Jon Hamm, who has done great as a host? The group of people who watched Mad Men was pretty small, and I say that as someone who loved the show.
I see your point. I feel like Mad Men, Hamm in particular, had enough of a buzz to enter the larger culture as a whole. My point is that culture today is so fragmented it’s harder to get hosts who the larger world knows. Having hosts people know about is much easier when there was the so called mono culture.
I would argue that the monoculture is very much in full effect, it’s just centered on Intellectual Property (e.g., Marvel; Star Wars) and corporations (Spotify; Netflix) rather than individual artists.
Are you comparing the popularity of Schmigadoon to the popularity and reach of Mad Men? I mean she’s not even the lead in Schmigadoon (or West Side Story). I do think she’s super talented and was a solid guest, but this analogy seems way off.
The final season of Mad Men averaged 2 million people per episode. West Side Story made about $34 million domestically, which suggests it was seen by well over 3 million people. In both cases, we’re talking about something viewed by a relatively small fraction of the population. It just doesn’t feel that way for many of us when it comes to Mad Men, because we are part of the group where many of our friends and family watched the show.
Guys! SNL is booking people this dude isn’t aware of! Get Lorne on the phone and change this immediately! What the Fuck are we doing here?!?Also fuck you if you think Bridgerton was a huge hit. This dude says it’s niche.I am so ashamed! Don’t worry random AV Club commenter. We have Lorne calling you now, to fix this massive fuck up.
I’m waiting on West Side Story VOD (next week—ish or end of the month I think) and didn’t know she was in a TV show last year, but anyway I thought she was pretty gold here, very chipper which worked.But “Stop Seeing Spider-Man!” was my favourite bit of the night, then Urkel. But it’s super rare the political cold open is my favourite bit.
She was in the filmed version of Hamilton on Disney+. Though her role was not up front, a few people saw that. She also had a prominent role in Schmigadoon on Apple TV+ and was charming as hell. Aside from all that, there’s nothing wrong with having talented but not necessarily household names host the show, particularly when they are as talented as DeBose.
Do you think that most people outside of the comedy movie nerd scene knew who Buck Henry was in 1975?I’m fine with whoever they get as long as they’re funny. And I do the, “Hey, who the hell is [x]?” thing, and then the monologue generally answers it immediately, and I say, “Oh,” and move on.
IDK the SNL schedule, but I suspect she was booked after they saw that the movie was struggling at the box office. As the actor getting the most awards buzz, she’s there to promote the film (and herself). It’s not a coincidence that the opening monologue was a medley of songs from the movie.
She was also famously in Hamilton as a very visible member of the ensemble.
Yeah, she’s “the bullet.”
Very important member of the ensemble but also easy to overlook. At the same time, I was hoping they’d do a sketch parodying that role anyway. Hell, could have even worked as a parody of The Matrix Resurrections.
what Lorne Michaels show? What channel was it on? What movie? How many people went to see it? was her name in all the advertising?
Is Kieran Culkin’s name in all the advertising for his show? What about Jonathan Majors or Simu Liu?
bad comparisons. Kieran Culkin is a name who’s been famous for decades, and is currently the most meme-able character in a show that’s been running & popular for 3 seasons. Simu is the lead character of a $200M+ grossing blockbuster, his face is the poster, in the ads, etc.
Debose plays the…2nd female lead (and got less ink than the EGOT 3rd female lead), in a movie that grossed $10M. But yeah, as i replied elsewhere: i’d rather have a talented no-name than a lame athelete or Paris Hilton
um, yes it is. She’s not working hard enough.
She’s Broadway famous. Translation: not famous.
She is this goddess.https://youtu.be/39UCSfQwO8E
It’s one of the few guests in SNL I knew beforehand but whatever, if you didn’t know her then she is unknown.
Marlo Thomas is That Goddess!
well, she’s a Broadway performer, acclaimed for her work Schmigadoon and is being dubbed the break-out star of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. All of which you can learned with a 2 second google search.
You seem like a real fun guy at parties. Granted no one knows who you are, and hope you aren’t allowed to procreate.D at best.
Totally agree. There have been much better shows that were graded B-.
youre being very generous, this was the worst i may have ever seen, in a long while. Update was two min long and i had not one laugh all night.
Same, but I still prefer relative unknowns to extremely-knowns like Kim Kardashian, especially if the former has discernible talents.
Google. Use it.
On the one hand, yes, the Dismukes character is being humiliated by his parents, but Dismukes is so good at these roles, it really takes the material up several notches. I like that this particular sketch ended with he and his father both having a goofy danceoff while the mother was screaming right into the camera – fun rather than a cruel punch line. This sketch was one of those “Pete is trying” bits where even an old Sandler impression is fine because you are happy he is enjoying himself and not phoning it in.I do hope we get more stuff soon where Sarah can do something without yelling.Ariana is very likeable, charismatic, and was game for anything, which seems to scare the show a bit. Someone like Kieran Culkin (who is a wonderful actor but also not necessarily suited to SNL’s format) got several standout sketches, while Ariana played supporting roles until she finally got some chances post-Update. She really did a great job in the Sound of Music sketch, but while I am glad she got the showcase, I just have no interest in those types of sketches. I don’t think I ever have.The monologue is everything that tires me out about Kate’s later SNL years – the whole thing seemed to be much more about her than about the host. Maybe Ariana was nervous and Kate wanted to help her out, but it felt like attention-seeking to me, especially the faces she made. Chris Redd was just fantastic as Eric Adams. I was kind of surprised to see SNL go there again after 8 years of barely touching de Blasio. I hope we won’t see this impression again because it will just be diminishing returns, but whatever happens I’m just glad that he got this big chance to show his chops.Urkel just felt like a way to plug the new Fresh Prince on Peacock and had a very thrown together premise otherwise. I wanted to like this much more than I did. I’ll give kudos to Kyle for somehow still getting those teen roles after 9 seasons…I wanted to like the cold open, and I tried, even with all the Dana Carvey-esque repetitions about Spiderman, but once we got to the “we don’t know how to end this” Pete appearance, I threw in the towel. I still prefer this type of piece to having 500 cast members up there rushing through the lines of the day, but it just wasn’t up to much. The Spiderman extra was a cute touch though.Update was fine, overall (Che and Jost are usually reliable), but Chloe’s piece felt so cloying and also somewhat dated, even though it hasn’t been a full week since the Elmo clips went viral. Such needy headline chasing only works for me if the performance and writing are worth watching. I loved the last sketch. It’s fitting that we get a yelly, incomprehensible blabberfest right before Will Forte returns, because those were some of his absolute best moments on SNL. That’s what I always enjoy seeing, in the right hands. (and dammit, SNL, let Alex Moffat have pure nonsensical fun more often)Poor Aristotle – not even in anything. He was in this cut pre-tape, in a bit part:
“I do hope we get more stuff soon where Sarah can do something without yelling.”That was pretty much all Leslie Jones did, and it got her a Ghostbusters role AND a game show, so imagine what it could do for Sarah!
In the last season or two Leslie started to branch out, so I guess there’s always hope…
Cecily is doing an Off-Broadway show right now. I’ve heard good things about it.
Pete channeling Adam Sandler for his bits (prom dress sketch) really works for him. Should stick with that.The Urkel sketch wasn’t particularly funny, but I kinda want to watch that show.
Everyone keeps saying it’s an Adam Sandler impression, and all I can hear is Nick Kroll’s Coach Steve from Big Mouth.
Bleachers were so freakin’ good. Such a fun couple performances.
Counterpoint: they’re fucking terrible and should be banned from ever performing in public again.
I don’t understand how nobody mentions that the performances were basically Springsteen/E-Street karaoke. Not bad, certainly, but it’s an elephant in the room. Or is it that just understood to be the point of the band and I look like a dope for pointing out the obvious?
I am not hip to the musics of today, so I hadn’t heard of them. And at the end of their first performance there was that “Want to hear more?” ad. I said to my husband, “Thanks, I’ll just listen to some Bruce Springsteen.”I mean, they’re fine…but they sounded like a Springsteen tribute band to me, and I’m not even a mega-fan.
As someone who lives an hour away from Texarkana, I can definitely say that most people don’t speak with that “Cajun”? accent. There might be a few Cajun since it’s so close to Louisiana, but for the most part… no. NO! Also, people there pronounce it “Tex-ER-kana.”
Weird. People on the Arkansas side pronounce it Tex-ar-KA-na. Or at least they did 20 years ago before I left that cursed state never to look back.
I was unreasonably disappointed that the TNT sketch didn’t include a Candace Parker impression
Wouldn’t work as well if there’s not a Shaq there for her to constantly roast.
Are you saying that, like Rich Evans, Leslie Jones says,
Personally had a lot of fun with this episode and every sketch had at least one point that had me smiling. The fact that Ariana was such a charismatic and likable presence helped a lot.My favorite sketch was that Adams press conference as that was just vicious in the best possible way. I don’t know if they will bring it back, but I think Adams can be happy that the internet age has affected how those kinds of sketches affect perceptions as otherwise that would be hanging over him for a while.
As a non-New Yorker, I think the criticisms of Adams are mostly wrongheaded, but DeBoise and Redd were awfully funny bringing that attitude to the podium.
The only thing I liked was the Urkel sketch.
Cecily is, indeed, doing something interesting, although the piece seems to have gathered some dust from the reviews. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/theater/search-for-signs-of-intelligent-life-review.html
Sadly I doubt the “no repeats” streak is going to last longer than a week, with Will Forte hosting in support of the MacGruber show next episode.Don’t get me wrong, I love Will Forte, just seems like the odds are pretty high that they’ll do MacGruber and/or some other recurring bit of his.
Sudeikis stuck to one old bit, I have a feeling Forte will too.
I count two. Biden and the “What’s up with that?” dancer though that’s more of a Kenan bit.
True. I suppose I don’t count political impressions, and yes, I always associate WUWT with Kenan. Forte didn’t have a character like that (he was the first announcer in WUWT but not especially memorable – certainly not enough to bring it back again), and he hated doing political impressions.
He had some stuff. Forte was the teacher in the Gilly sketches and most of his other recurring characters were with other cast members rather then stand alone things that could be brought back. The only three I can think of off the top of my head are The Falconer, Tim Calhoun and, of course, MacGruber.
There’s also Jeff Montgomery, the sex offender, which he tried to get on again for several years (including after leaving the show). Don’t think we’ll see that one again. And the coach who does funny dancing. That only worked once, but you never know.
But it will undoubtedly be MacGruber.
The Falconer please.
Strong is likely out until early February. She’s doing a revival of The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life Off Broadway, a one person show that has two performances on Saturdays.
Cecily Strong is out because she’s making her NYC stage debut in a limited run revival of Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which runs until early Feb.
Which is easy to find out and you would expect a “writer” about SNL to know.
I don’t get why a reviewer would write “she’s off doing God knows what” when it’s so simple to find out. You don’t even need to be some showbiz/comedy/Broadway fan. The New York Times had a review of the play, for example. Writing twelve thousand words a week about Weekend Update prevented a 10-second google search?
Oh I saw the original of that. Cecily would do it well!
I would disagree there was no recurring sketch. SNL has previously done the expensively-produced “dark/gritty turn on a childhood favorite” parody with both Dwyane Johnson’s “Bambi” and David Harbour’s “Oscar the Grouch”, both of which were far superior.
I would say that’s more of a recurring theme than a sketch – it’s something that is very familiar in various media (I remember when Mad had a “dark Annie” strip that involved her cooking Sandy and feeding him to an impoverished Daddy Warbucks).
I didn’t catch the first musical number, but Jack Antonoff should have conceded center stage to Blu DeTiger for the second song. She was mesmerizing in the background.
Looked her up on Wikipedia to see if that’s a stage name. It explicitly states that it is her birth name. That’s funny to me.
Was that her name? Yeah, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
LOL. I’m just glad she has pronouns in her bio, as if anybody above the age of 2 wouldn’t know how to address her. I’m assuming the blue-haired midget is a “they/them”… Just written all over its face.
I was too mesmerized by the other guitarist in the background – the one that looked like he was literally a 12-year-0ld boy? Like for reals – does he have a pre-teen in his backing band?
Saw some bad news online (r.i.p. Rachel Nagy of the Detroit Cobras) and tried to power through anyway but only halfheartedly watched this episode. Seemed like every sketch made its point and then stuck around at least two minutes too long. And while most of them always do, it really grated on me this time. Though I did appreciate “Family F****** Matters.” Sarah Sherman’s bits usually turn in unexpected ways, so I was willing to ride it out, but boy she needs to lay off that loud braying. Also, the Eric Adams sketch should’ve opened the show, much more energetic and electric than the creaky Biden multiverse thing. Anyway, I stopped paying attention during the Sappho sketch once I realized they were going to have the audience point out the joke again, and finally turned it off halfway through Texas Roadhouse. And again, we just lost a stellar voice in music, a phenomenal interpreter of obscure 60s R&B, and I’m very sad.
You and me both. She was pretty fuckin’ cool and will be missed.
That is tragic. I literally remembered how much I love them last week and was rocking my socks off to them on Thursday. 💔💔💔
Tell me you don’t understand comedy without saying you don’t understand comedy:“There could be a larger comic point in mocking the NBA’s baffling easing of COVID rules even as Omicron sweeps through the league/nation. But the NBA is hardly the only massive corporation putting money ahead of safety, and, besides, if you’re going to incorporate the daily reality of pandemic life into a your sketch show, sometimes letting that reality act as unspoken background to some silliness has its own comic power to it.”The goal of SNL sketches is . . . to be funny. Yet Perkins’ overriding obsession in these reviews is whether the sketches are sufficiently aggressive in going after the things Perkins himself is angry about this week, so much so that he almost seems frustrated when he enjoys a sketch that is mainly light and funny.
The rules about Covid were kind of implied in that teams in the NBA are having to scramble to get players because of Omicrom. Teams have had to use players who’ve retired or play in lesser leagues because half of a team’s lineup are all out sick. It’s a little ridiculous that the NBA is having to resort to having to find players to fill out a bench but you gotta keep that TV money coming in.
I’m not sure what your post is supposed to tell me — I know the situation with Omicron and the NBA. The issue is that Perkins seems to view SNL primarily as a didactic exercise, where the primary goal should be to hammer home Perkins’ values. This sketch is funny, and Perkins thinks it is too, but he seems to be struggling with whether he can like it, since it doesn’t criticize NBA greed aggressively. He eventually concludes that it’s OK to like the sketch, because sometimes he thinks the message may work better as an “unspoken background” to to the sketch. But this treats comedy primarily as a tool to convey a political message, rather than something that has value on its own. This is a common feature of his reviews — on a weekly basis, he judges Weekend Update by whether it is sufficiently hard-hitting about the newest outrage from Donald Trump. The fact that Che and Jost might focus on other topics, or might even make a joke about politics where the punchline isn’t “Republicans are Klan members and the country is a Nazi hellscape” regularly outrages him. I take a back seat to no one in my loathing of Trump, but this seems like a dumb standard for evaluating comedy.
Yo, Snowflake! Feeling like you’ll melt being exposed to some actual quasi-Left humor instead of nice, safe, uncontroversial NeoLiberal “comedy”…?
Yep. SNL is a sketch comedy show. It should be graded on how good a sketch comedy show it is.
Lurr!
Ler – if cc is an authoritative source
SNL isn’t funny at all, he has to do something for a hook
I always thought that these reviews were unnecessarily dismissive but could never put my finger on why until now. I think you hit the nail on the head.
That was a Top 10 SNL for me. I’ve never laughed that much. Hilarious. The only bit that wasn’t landing for me was Elmo and the Pet Rock. It started to make me feel uncomfortable, like I was getting an LSD flashback.
Weird, I guess I thought the whole point of comedy WAS to hold entrenched power structures accountable. But I guess I don’t understand comedy.
It appears you do not.
It’s the same reason the writers around here love “Don’t Look Up” so much. It’s allegedly skewering of whatever political target they think it’s going after despite being a dumb movie.
I actually thought that was the best cold opening, political sketch they’ve done in awhile. Instead of just regurgitating the week’s news and then hitting you over the head with it, they went with a goofy idea and ran with it. It wasn’t really about issues or (badly) making fun of something but just a plain old funny skit
And as soon as Trump won, I knew the Cubs winning the World Series had somehow ripped the fabric of the universe and sent us careening down a dark timeline.It’s good that people are catching on.In the real timeline, Cubs choked, Trump lost, and Covid never happened.
In the real timeline, did Green Book still win Best Picture? If so, it still seems pretty bleak.
“ Jost doubling down by joking that the offended Marshall didn’t know what “moron” means is mean—and necessary.”Or it’s dumb and obvious.
Will Forte and Måneskin should bring some much-missed weirdness-just-for-the-sake-of-weirdness back to SNL. Or at least I’ve missed it, YMMV.
It should be an ideal chance for some of the ‘weirder’ newer cast members like Sarah, Aristotle or Andrew to be showcased. Of course we are more likely to just get Will reacting to Kate and Aidy wackiness, but I hope not.
I am so, so, so very over Kate & Aidy cracking themselves up.We watched the old Betty White episode – that woman didn’t crack an inch, and the show was that much funnier for it.
No standouts but no duds tonight either. I think I like the Winter Formal Dress sketch the best. DeBose was good as host but for someone that has so much experience in stage performing, I felt it was kind of odd that they didn’t use her more prominently in all of the sketches. She was clearly up for it, but it seemed like she got smaller bits in many of the sketches. That bugged me a bit considering we’ve had hosts in the past that are heavily used, clearly cue card reading, low energy and just awkward fits yet you’ve got a host that has all the skills to make it work, and you don’t go all out.
I think when people are too talented the show struggles with how to use that talent, especially singing and dancing. They gave her a warmed over Sound of Music sketch after giving another variation of that to Ariana Grande, and many others. I felt like she got more chances in the last 2-3 sketches of the night and really showed her skills, but I do wish they’d done more with her, yes – her role in that NBA sketch felt particularly like something a featured player or underused cast member might get. It sort of reminds me of when Alan Cumming hosted – he was impossibly charming and fun and that was a much better episode – but you look back and wonder if they could have really went to town with his talents (although apparently some at the show had to fight to even get him booked!).
Also, I’m not sure I really understand Perkins’ concern that the sketch is “punching down.” The person they’re making fun of doesn’t actually exist. Is making fun of teenage boys for being gross and awkward off limits? And again, there’s Perkins’ weird belief that every sketch should primarily make political points Perkins likes in his suggestion that maybe the kid is an incel, in which case he’d like it better.
[I]t was only more evident that Cecily was not in the house tonight. Here’s hoping it’s just due to her tagging out for a Kate McKinnon-style hiatus to do something interesting.Er, Cecily Strong is currently starring in a revival of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at The Shed in New York. How come you didn’t know that, Dennis?
Gawker writers aren’t paid to do research. Just react react react.
I’m giving the top spot to Chris Redd. He had Urkel, Eric Adams (a potential franchise), and the NBA sketch.It was Redd’s night and a long time coming. He should send Mayor Adams a nice gift.
didn’t really care for the antivax stuff in the opening bit. IDK, too often this show feels like its regurgitating the twitter mentality of the week.
Perkins,: “Can’t SNL get through one monologue without it being a musical number or a Q&A from the audience sketch? They’ve run their course and we don’t need to see either of them again.”*monologue is a musical number that showcases Kate being weird*Perkins: “Wonderful! A comic masterpiece that was a sight to behold! All the stars!”
Dan Crenshaw has put himself on the firing line more than you would ever dream of doing, Dennis.
It was a far from a solid show. The host was lame (who was she anyway?), the skits were all geared toward twenty-year-olds, and the music guest was blah. The only funny skits were the NBA one and the Urkel promo. I’m so OVER politics, so I didn’t even watch the cold open (always watch the show off the DVR to save time). The last skit was stupid instead of bizarre (which is what we expect from a 10-to-1 skit). It was maybe a C-, more like a D night.
That was awful.
Ah, she was the teacher in Shmigadoon…couldn’t figure out where I recognized her from.
This was one of the weaker shows in what has otherwise been a pretty solid season. Debose certainly seems talented (I am familiar with her work in so far as I am aware of the things she is in, without having seen them) but seemed more like she was auditioning for some role rather than cutting loose and enjoying herself. I actually enjoyed some of the sketches, but they only elicited a few chuckles rather than actual laughs or at least a consistent smile. Just a workman-like effort that recalled what the show was like maybe 5 years ago, when there were a few too many “whatever guys, lets just get something to air” episodes rather than actual humor.
By far the best episode of the season so far; you could tell by the audience response! It’s a wonder SNL doesn’t regularly book more Broadway stars considering their aptitude for, you know, performing for live audiences. DeBose was on fire.
As always, I watch SNL on YouTube one or two sketches at a time on Sunday and Monday. In that context, I thought this was pretty good, as it usually is. Because you can just stop watching the ones that aren’t funny.But anyway, Moffat’s Ernie Johnson was a great, great impression. Not a guy that has a ton of showy tics you can get a handle on, but Moffat really had him down.
The thing that has me most worried about Punkie is that she’s credited as part of the Kitchen Staff sketch on YouTube and Alex Moffat isn’t.
looking forward with great anticipation to Chris Redd as Eric Adams. He’s usually hilarious but he seemed to have even more energy in this bit. I just hope he doesn’t overstay his welcome like Baldwin as t***p.
I was bored for large parts of the show. I am not a fan of most musicals/broadway and haven’t seen West Side Story, the original or the new one so all references are lost on me. I doubt I am alone in being thirty something and having never seen it.
so che shouldn’t make fun of seditious dipshits but should also should take the gloves off and get mean? okay dude