Saturday Night Live recap: Jason Momoa can’t muscle through a clunky ep
It's choppy waters for the Aquaman star during this week's pre-Thanksgiving edition
TV Reviews Jason Momoa
He’s our biggest host of season 49—literally. Six-foot-four superstar Jason Momoa returned for his second hosting gig on this week’s Saturday Night Live, with musical performances by Canadian pop star Tate McRae. (He previously hosted back in 2018, with Mumford and Sons as his musical guest). This time around, he’s promoting his Marvel sea-quel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which hits theaters on Friday, December 22.
For Momoa maniacs, consider it a very early Christmas gift, especially given that this is technically this year’s Thanksgiving episode. (The November 25th edition will be a re-run of the Bad Bunny ep, with the show to return live on December 2 with host Emma Stone.) Alas, despite clear gameness from the jolly buff giant, this week’s sketches couldn’t quite match his enthusiasm.
Cold open: A panda and a president
Bowen Yang to the rescue! Just like Mikey Day’s President Joe Biden used Yang’s “slim-thick” panda to distract from hard-hitting topics like his Middle East policy and his handling of the border crisis during a press conference, the SNL standout mercifully livened up an otherwise tired political opener: “As the rare person who identifies as Black, white and Chinese, I feel like I’m in the unique position to unite many peoples of the world. I’m just like another hot Blasian icon, Tiger Woods!”
Monologue: Jason Momoa is, oddly, too short
Did we initially gasp thinking Jason Momoa had shorn his beloved locks à la Harry Styles? The answer is not no. But the hair gods are on our side: that famous mane is still long and luscious. What was chopped short, however, was the host’s opening monologue, which was low on actual jokes and high on Hawaiian pride. The action star shouted out his mom in the audience (“If you see her, be careful, she’s still recovering from giving birth to me”), downplayed his Baywatch beginnings (“You really don’t want to get stuck in the B-hole”) and highlighted his sustainable water company, Mananalu, which he says means “Suck it, Dasani” in Hawaiian. It was a jarringly speedy opener but Momoa has enough natural charm to distract from its brief duration.
Best sketch of the night:
Several bits made use of our host’s considerable size and strength, including a Castaway-inspired romp starring Momoa as a shockingly buff deserted-island survivor, Chloe Fineman in the Helen Hunt role and Andrew Dismukes as her husband who is deeply uncomfortable about their passionate reunion. But the best of the bunch was this sports mockumentary on Charna Lee Diamond (Sara Sherman), a pre-Billie Jean King tennis pro who hosted her own “Battle of the Sexes” match against a male opponent, Momoa’s Ronnie Dunster, a.k.a “the largest man who’d ever played tennis.” Ronnie’s sheer heft meant that not only did Charna lose the game, she also lost her entire intestinal tract when Dunster lobbed a serve directly through her stomach, leaving behind a Death Becomes Her-style hole in poor Charna’s torso. (We can already see Gay Twitter getting their Halloween costumes ready for next year.) Extras points for the ball boy scooping up Charna’s head from the court.
This should have aired a month ago:
Did the writers’ room just download TikTok? The problem with Saturday Night Live not being live every Saturday means that, sometimes, the show is late to respond to a cultural moment. Case in point: this musical number about a group of women (Ego Nwodim, Punkie Johnson, Chloe Troast) wondering what their partners (Jason Momoa, Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day) are thinking about. The answer, of course, is the Roman Empire, a viral trend that circulated on social media earlier this fall. Even The New York Times, a publication chronically behind where digital trends are concerned, covered it back in September. Yawn.
MVP of the night: Bowen Yang
In his four years as an on-air talent (he joined the writing staff ahead of the show’s 44th season), Bowen Yang’s face has become nearly as reliable as Kenan Thompson’s for eliciting an easy, solid chuckle, always just on the brink of breaking. And this week’s ep put that quality to good use, first in the cold open, then as a flight attendant offering commentary on a parade of holiday-travel archetypes (“a woman who took her Ambien a little too early,” “a gentle parenting father and his evil, out of control child” and so on) and most especially during “Weekend Update,” when he popped up as disgraced U.S. Representative George Santos who was recently found to have spent campaign donations on Botox, OnlyFans and designer clothes. “George, this is serious. They’re calling for your expulsion,” Colin Jost told him. “Well then, girl, ‘expul me!” Yang’s Santos sassed, a quip we want a T-shirt of immediately.
Stray observations
- Sorry, Thanksgiving: that throw-to-commercials pan to birthday boy Lorne Michaels lurking in the side-wings was the real jump scare of the holiday.
- Given the comedic week Emma Stone has already had, her December 2 show with musical guest Noah Kahn should be a memorable one: the Poor Things star has been brilliantly trolling the cast of Anyone But You, late-night hosts, and the entire Internet with her co-star Nathan Fielder as promo for The Curse, their new Showtime black comedy.
- Considering we were very much not born in the year of our lord 2003, we were unfamiliar with the musical stylings of this week’s performer, Tate McRae. However, that dance break was convincingly giving early-2000s pop girl, so we approve. Know your references, children.
84 Comments
Heads up: your hyperlink for The Curse (2023) goes to the AV Club show page for The Curse (2022).
…..Aquaman isn’t a Marvel movie.
“This time around, he’s promoting his Marvel sea-quel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,“Slight correction…Aquaman is not Marvel.
The author was NOT born in 2003, got it???
I strongly suspect it’s because the “author” was created on a computer c.2023.
Ahhhhhh, that’s why men thinking about Rome in September 2023 is ancient history. I’m beginning to get it.
The author has a Twitter/X account and her own website (ChristinaIzzo dot com). She’s definitely real.
At the moment, Zaslav may see an end of year tax incentive and sell the thing for pennies to Disney.
This time around, he’s promoting his Marvel sea-quel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,Uh, no. It’s DC.
Marvel Movie in the Scorsese sense.Also: D-Sea.
DC-quel.
Mare-vel
Marvel Movie in the Scorsese sense.You mean, as in “A Cranky Old Fart Not Knowing WTF He’s Talking About”…?
Considering this is an entertainment site, this is a massive error.
It’s just that thing where the company becomes synonymous with its product, like Xerox with photocopying. Any superhero movie is a Marvel movie now.
In the cyberpunk dystopia part of the book Cloud Atlas films are called disneys.
Is this site even trying anymore? Or was this just written by AI?
Considering this is an entertainment site, who cares.
Listen. At least this week wasn’t clearly written by a robot. We can’t expect someone working at an entertainment news outlet to know the difference between the biggest franchise in the world and its far less successful competitor.
I LOVE the Smell of Sarcasm in the Morning!
DC, SchmeeC is what this AI bot says!
This season has been bad so far.
D+ at best rating is right for this show. This one was garbage.
Aquaman is DC, not Marvel.
Is Christina Izzo a human?
Yes, or I think she is. She does have a Twitter/X account.
I was looking forward to a recap of last weeks episode. But can’t seem to find it anywhere here.
They instead had a “news” article collecting videos from some of the sketches “written” by the “staff.”
It got an AI Club review
🙁
They used to do so, and every week there’d be the chorus of complaints of “I want a review, not a recap of every single sketch”. I preferred the recap, but this is sadly consistent with what at least some people screamed for every goddamned week for gods know how long.
I’ve heard increasing rumors that Jason Momoa is not a very nice guy to work with, going even beyond that Amber Heard profile that reported unpleasantness from Momoa. I’ve heard he’s shitty to tech crews and other “lowly” roles that aren’t front and center on a film set.Something about his shit-eating grin convinces me these things are true. He seems like your average douche bro who made it “big”; I’ve always thought his work was average at best.
Seeing as how we live on Earth-1218, I consider the line that’s got everybody bent in the comments on on purpose.
Not a great ep but FAR better than last week. Why am I always a contrarian to the opinions here
You aren’t wrong, though I enjoyed both weeks for different reasons. I have been watching for decades, there is usually good and bad in every episode and funny is in the personality of the beholder. I laughed at some of the sketches, thought he was game for whatever they wanted to put him in and always seems happy and comfortable on camera. I like this current cast and am looking forward to Emma Stone who always brings energy to the proceedings. Some of the commenters come every week to say how much they hate it—why don’t they go away and watch something else?
I thought last week’s was stronger. I felt like a lot of this week’s sketches struggled, but the PDD video was much better. I think the host this week was a big stiffer than last week.
noooooooo please nooo
1. I’m on TikTok but apparently not the “right” part, because I missed the whole Roman Empire trend, and the audio on the sketch was terrible, so I had no idea what was going on. The repeated slapping put it over the top into “don’t care” for me. 2. No clue who the musical guest was/is, but the dancing was great. The second (somber) tune, with the weird, nasally and somehow back-of-the-palate thing the young ‘uns are doing now is just annoying.
The slapping was weird.It was so hard.
I Googled. Tate McCrae. Never heard of her; Not overly impressed. Born 2003. Here ya go.
Most of the SNL reviews of the last few years don’t even mention the musical guest at all, so I suppose the brief stray observation counts as progress.
It feels like a parody or something ironic that the NYT picked up as being serious:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/style/roman-empire-men-tiktok-instagram.html
Love the chances that Sarah Sherman gets SNL to take.
SNL: the nation’s #1 source for second-hand embarrassment. Can’t they cancel this unfunny shitshow already lol
It hasn’t been funny in years* ,At this point they may as well pivot to scrapping it as a show , and just pumping out a load of Youtube shorts /Tik Toks instead.(also they the current bunch of writers can go fuck themselves for the shitty Colin Farrell/Brendan Gleason Oscars ‘sketch’, and I use the term loosely , from last year )
The only thing less original than SNL is comments like these. Yes, the entertainment value of the show waxes and wanes, but I still find at least something amusing every week that makes it worth watching.
Same. This episode wasn’t a highlight, but there have been some standout sketches this season already. Every sketch isn’t a homerun, but I still find it consistently worth watching. People who think it should be cancelled or is never funny, why are they still watching? Like, just ignore it? It’s not hard. What are the chances they are going to put something amazing in that late timeslot that will be a better use of its time? They’ll just slap a rerun of S.W.A.T. or something in there.
None of these people ever seem to remember that SNL has always been hit-or-miss by its very nature and seem to long for a past that doesn’t actually exist. Even in the two Golden Eras, not every episode and certainly not every sketch was an instant comedy classic. As always with the “it’s not like the good old days” crowd, they only remember the good and either don’t remember or are not even aware of the countless bad sketches from back in the day (perhaps because they’ve only ever seen sketches in isolation).
Agree, I think a lot of them only watch like highlight reels that feature the best sketches. I started watching in the 80s. I was a kid and didn’t understand half of what was going on, but I got a bunch of good laughs even if it wasn’t all hilarious. People seem to love Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and that one never gelled for me, but hey, the show isn’t put on for me specifically. It’s a comedy lab. There will be successes and failures, and everyone won’t like everything. People have been saying SNL should be cancelled since the 90s (that I can remember). We would have missed out on a lot of great stuff if NBC had listened.
Well then it is a good thing it is not my job to be original, creative, funny, and entertaining professionally!
I’m sorry to say this, but most of the SNL episodes from the last few seasons are just NOT funny/edgy/innovative/crazy/etc. It’s all just Gen-Z “Irony” drivel .There’s literally nothing memorable about any of it. We turned Jason’s episode off after the also disappointing news. I know there’s funny people out there Lorne. Go find them please. Bring back the fun. Bring back the crazy.
I disagree. There’s very funny people in the cast. But it’s too big and their excellence gets watered down by the mediocre SNLers. I’d cut the cast way down. Sarah Sherman is great. She’s a star. I’d also keep Heidi, Ego, Bowen, Troast and James Austin Johnson. I see something in Marcello, so maybe him. The rest goodbye. Keenan and Mikey are always strong and I’ll miss them. They lean too hard on Keenan (rightfully so) but it’s time to try newer and exciting. Dismukes is fine but feels like a Poor Man’s Mikey. Goodbye Che and Colin. I want to a new take on the news. I’m imagining Sarah Sherman’s energy (maybe with Bowen?) being a helluva lotta fun. Chloe does good impressions but isn’t funny. Punky, Molly, Devon and Longfellow…Thanks for playing.
Why does Che giggle after every sentence? Is he embarrassed about his output?
I’ve developed a shaky theory about GenZ humor. It aims to be ‘absurdist’ but not in any meaningful kind of way. They just slap completely unrelated sh*t together and that makes them laugh.
But then, that’s the world right now so….
I don’t think that’s true: Ren and Stimpy was absurdist but not in a meaningful way…except for Don’t Whizz on the Electric Fence, that’s a life lesson right there.What it does is aim to be absurdist but in the post Robot Chicken/Space Ghost/Sealab 2021 world the material comes off as a pale copy.
Ren and Stimpy was absurdist satire, though. It was clearly mocking post-WW2 era nuclear families, as well as the animated shows of that time. At least at first, it did lose some of the satire as it went along and just got, well, dark.
Oh yeah it certainly was but I wouldn’t call it ‘meaningful’ by any means. Space Ghost, Sealab 2021, etc… were absurdist masterpieces but were a long way from meaningful.Absurdism being meaningful is kind of a contradiction of terms right off the bat…
Haha that’s true. I suppose maybe it’s more of a value proposition: if you don’t find some sort of value in the absurdism, then maybe that’s what BreadnMaters is referring to.Funny when you look at Wikipedia’s lists of “absurdist fiction” and see works like Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five and The Metamorphosis (and Bojack Horseman??) that all of those have strong elements of satire or critique in them, so I wonder if absurdism and criticism/satire are actually intrinsically linked?
It also says: “the “moral” of the
story is generally not explicit, and the themes or characters’
realizations — if any — are often ambiguous in nature.”I mean I guess you could say those books have a general ‘War/bureaucracy sure is some crazy bullshit nonsense, isn’t it?’, but I think by the ‘90s it had kind of lost that thread. Think about it, Tom Goes to the Mayor kind of carries it but Tim&Eric certainly doesn’t as far as I can remember.
Gen Z humor is absurdist and tries to be shocking, but in an apologetic way if the humor shocked you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable or will potentially cause backlash on social media. Bonus points when it co-opts therapy-speak in such a loose manner that it comes off as more of a meme rather than a fundamental understanding of the concept.
All these nerds talking about how Aquaman is DC not Marvel, but no nerds questioning why all those men in the Roman Legion had beards.
One of the worst episodes I can remember seeing.The first half was just awful.
It was extremely obvious that Momoa can’t handle live TV — he was in almost no live material. Update was *super* long. too.
Saying Black, white and Chinese is such horsepucky. The fallacy with this crap is nobody is going to literally find all the different White people and give them their nationality. Oh hi Polish American Steve, hi Irish American Seamus. Yeah right. American White is just as much as identity as American Black. There are WASPS and the White is the W. Treat everyone as a noun and a human that they deserve to be as someone with human rights and dignity.
Would you reconsider this comment if, hypothetically, the joke was that Yang was dressed as a panda when he said that line. For background, a panda is an animal native to China (thus Chinese) that is typically black and white in coloring.
Should that be too difficult to imagine, there’s a video clip embedded in the article that you can use to visualize the scenario.
I’m pretty sure HeavyMetal “HM2K” 2000’s complaint had to do with the capitalization inconsistency.
*farts*
When was there last a must see SNL episode?I’ve seen better comedy on Lego masters
Okay, well, Andrew Dismukes is really pretty good. The Remember Lizards bit on Weekend Update was one half-baked joke that he managed to sell through a complete commitment to the bit.I can see him starring in some funny movies after he leaves SNL.
I’m loving the recurring musical duos on Weekend Update; the grime parody with JAJ and Walker from last season had me in stitches. This generation of SNL seems allergic to recurring characters/sketches (which is probably a good thing) but I hope they continue throwing in those bits.
I don’t care how old he is – Jon Lovitz should be playing George Santos.
Yeah…yeah! That’s the ticket.
i’m always fascinated by the large number of writers on SNL, but the output quality is really bad. If you’re lucky, you may get 2 good sketches in one episode. Just fascinating.It’s so smelly how 2 out of the 3 Please Don’t Destroy members dads worked at SNL as writers.Actual untapped talent goes unseen due to all this nepotism.
I generally enjoy SNL episodes, but this one was really, really bad.
No more sad ballads!
I thought the Cab Driver sketch was the best by far. A simple, silly premise in a relatable setting that works with Mamoa who exudes High confidence/Low intelligence. “Per Night? What is that, a holiday for cats?” was the best joke of the night.
The text of this review makes it seem like an okay but not great episode, but a D+ grade suggests a really bad episode. (I thought it had a couple of pretty decent sketches and Momoa was mostly fine. I liked the short monologue.)
Can Emma Stone just co-host with Nathan Fielder this time around, please? Their two-segment long bit on Jimmy Kimmel last week was delightful.
Aquaman isn’t Marvel, it’s Dark Horse.
I had no idea who Tate McRae was but I’d certainly enjoy fornicating with her so that was a win for me.
When did “ep” become ok to use for people who are too lazy to type out “episode?” Most annoying!
Did I miss the Roman Empire thing? Oh wait, I actually missed this episode of SNL too.