Willem Dafoe hosting Saturday Night Live is as weird as you’d expect, and as funny, unfortunately
You can cross "seeing Willem Dafoe do lots of boner jokes" off of your bucket list now
TV Reviews Saturday Night Live
“To me, one man’s over-the-top is another man’s engaged performance.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [very, very intense movie] star!!”
Willem Dafoe jokes several times in his monologue about people thinking he’d make a great Joker. He’s not wrong, although here I’ll just say—enough with the Jokers. We’ve had enough Jokers. Heath Ledger was the best, Mark Hamill is a strong second, Jared Leto remains in last place, forever. That bafflingly misbegotten and overrated Joaquin Phoenix thing was not a Joker movie, I don’t care what anyone says.
Ahem. Still, Dafoe’s Joker-obsessed fans have a point. As Dafoe himself noted, he’s not an unexpressive actor. As I’d add, Willem Dafoe has a crazy devil face whose alternately bulging and slitted ice-blue eyes, tombstone teeth, and deeply etched lines are the craziest toolbox a major star has had to work with since probably forever. Dafoe pretended to be hurt by the idea that he’s only thought of on the street as the physical embodiment of outsized, gleefully performative evil, but, hey, it’s worked for the guy so far.
Leading up to Dafoe’s hosting gig tonight, I cast my mind back over Dafoe’s roles to imagine what a sketch comedy Willem Dafoe might be like. His comedies are few and stranded amidst a vast sea of unsettling kooks, killers, and the occasional supervillain. He deadpans exquisitely for Wes Anderson, was game (and, yes, unsettling) in his two Simpsons guest roles, and I’m never going to watch American Dreamz, so there’s not a lot to go on.
As it played out, Dafoe was game for Saturday Night Live, too, his up-for-anything enthusiasm the best thing about what were a handful of genuinely indifferent sketches. And if Dafoe isn’t going to springboard into a late-career comic swerve out of the gig, here’s to watching him lighten up and have fun. That said, Willem Dafoe is not really built for comedy, with his performances a combination of stilted and exaggerated that was—I’ll say it—kind of unsettling.
Onscreen, there’s precious little Dafoe hasn’t done, or won’t do, a fearlessness that carried over tonight into spanking himself with a riding crop, doing a couple of weird dances, and a whole lot of boner and blowjob jokes. The writing tonight was almost uniformly corny in its broadness, which can’t be laid at Dafoe’s feet. Still, there was a fair amount of host-protecting going on (most of his monologue was Aidy Bryant and Mikey Day doing Wisconsin accents), with Dafoe wheeling out for a short ensemble piece or plunked down as framing device. The whole show tonight had a sprung rhythm, with lots of dead spots in the pacing and clunky direction and blocking. (Punkie Johnson crosses right in front of camera on one exit.) That’d be a lot for even a comic powerhouse of a host to overcome, and Dafoe was left stranded much of the night, not that he seemed anything but delighted to be there.
Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night
The Best: Woof. And, no, I’m not putting the dog show sketch here. That’s just the sound I made when casting over my notes and trying to think of a sketch that didn’t make me feel blank and sort of logy. The music video sketch, “Now I’m Up” gets the top spot tonight, simply by being the most professional and polished, if not the funniest such pre-tape the show’s ever done. Also, Chris Redd is always outstanding in these musical numbers, here bringing a truly fine voice to what was an otherwise standard musical list of the sort of thoughts that keep you up at night. He and Kenan made an unremarkable piece of observational comedy into a serious bop—I would listen to this anytime, honestly. Dafoe was used well, too, his late-night commercial pitchman intruding into the bleary-eyed mix for a nifty song and dance riff. Honestly, if those intrusive insomniac thoughts that keep you awake and edgy had a spokesperson, it’d be Willem Dafoe, telling you that you have to die someday.
The Worst: While no sketches tonight were outright dire, so many of the live pieces jerked along to the same busted comic rhythm. Speaking of jerking, the returning joke about a news report gone wrong thanks to some accidentally ribald chyrons was all about the blowjobs, as anchor Bowen Yang calling self-help guru Dafoe’s book Blowing Yourself (instead of Knowing Yourself) sees things play out in exhausting, one-joke hackiness. There are lots of lines like, “That’s a lot to swallow,” and “Hopefully I don’t suck here,” if that’s your bag, is what I’m saying. It’s like a Carol Burnett Show sketch if Harvey Korman were allowed to make self-fellatio jokes. (Just as an aside, for no reason: Willem Dafoe is exceptionally limber.)
The Rest: The Badminster Dog Show continues to suggest that, if a show is flagging during rehearsals, a pack of adorable doggies are kept behind some emergency glass. I love dogs. Dogs are cute. And dogs can be freaking hilarious. That said, this one seems to have been turned over to guaranteed audience “awwww”s to make up for the fact that nobody wrote much of anything after coming up with the whole “Badminster” instead of “Westminster” title gag.
I laughed at Aidy being Aidy, her co-host (along with Dafoe) noting that the contest’s crappy dogs are “just like us—some of them bite kids.” And Redd was great as the owner of the eventual winner, a little critter whose enormous penis necessitates vet visits every time it gets aroused. “I hate saying that, and I say it a lot,” Redd states upon explaining the elaborate penile de-escalation procedure. But even though I joined in on the “awww” train when the supposed meanest dog in the pageant turned out to be a cuddlebug, tenderly licking Kate McKinnon’s judge and Andre Dismukes’ owner while everybody tried to keep a straight face, I felt manipulated and dirty. But I ”awwww”-ed all the same. Dafoe’s into-it but stiff presence didn’t help, I have to say, as a list of one dog’s increasingly absurd list of fears (pineapples, the Netflix startup sound) got trampled by Dafoe’s comically tone-deaf delivery. Cute pooches, though.
The other pre-tape, a commercial parody of those ubiquitously targeted Frank Thomas testosterone-booster ads, was as full of boner jokes as the news report sketch, but at least they were better, weirder boner jokes. With Kenan’s Big Hurt, Kyle Mooney’s Doug Flutie, and Dafoe (as himself) all coming out to cheerfully embarrass middle-aged Mikey Day for supposedly not being able to “get hard” anymore, the gag is that the three celebrity spokespeople are both really into the product, and unashamedly enthusiastic about the fact that they once couldn’t get hard, but now can get very hard, indeed. Making these dad-focused commercials’ subtext text, the sketch playfully skewers the euphemistic pitch behind all these suspiciously unregulated man-potions, stripping Day’s manly insecurities down to the bone. (You get it.) And there are enough weirdo touches to give the initial joke some legs, as its eventually revealed that the product in question is less a pill than some sort of whirring, hiccuping motorized gizmo that sees all three enthusiasts doubled over in artificially induced pain-pleasure. Dafoe, triggered into exquisite torture by the innocent attentions of Day’s wife, Melissa Villaseñor, is used to his best advantage, pounding his chest and screaming in startlingly intense orgasmic delight. (And no, nobody’s making a “Dafoe face” joke.)
The Please Don’t Destroy guys miss with this one, a one-joke premise (Martin Herlihy has a 10-year-old best bud) that escalates in noisy chaos more than cleverness. I like these guys, even if the show’s naked pitch to make them the next viral superstars keeps pointing out that The Lonely Island only made this specific type of absurdist backstage stuff look easy.
In the SNL oral history, many tales are told about Lorne Michaels’ expensive insistence on realistic and often elaborate sets in comedy. “Gilda will know,” he’s quoted as stating in response to an NBC exec asking why a wardrobe sweater had to be real cashmere. So I don’t get bent out of shape watching the show invest so much time, energy, and money in creating, say, a quartet of meticulously movie-accurate costumes for the minor characters in the Beauty And The Beast sketch. I’m a little more irritated that SNL keeps thinking that we’re all as convinced a lavishly mounted Disney setting propping up a middling premise is comedy gold.
Here, Pete Davidson’s Beast (no complaints about his costuming, since he’s a main character, and those lower-jaw fangs are ingeniously crafted) whips out his magic mirror to show Chloe Fineman’s Belle just what her elderly father is getting up to in her (kidnapped) absence. Dafoe’s gameness is on display as his home alone papa gets down to some dirty, if indifferently realized and staged, behavior. (Here’s where that riding crop figures in.) With Kenan (Cogsworth), Mikey Day (Lumiere), Punkie Johnson (Mrs. Potts), and Kyle (Chip) all getting into the voyeuristic fun to varying degrees, the sketch is awfully thin. Partly that’s down to Dafoe, who, I’m just calling it, isn’t a naturally funny presence. While his lonely old man lamenting how much he misses all the things his late wife used to do to his ass exhibits an admirable degree of commitment on Dafoe’s part, the guy just doesn’t really speak the comic language. Mostly, though, it’s that these Disney-fied sketches all seem to have the same joke. (Stuff isn’t as rosy and innocent as these animated kids films would have you believe.) And while we all have our own rosy memories of these movies, it’s really time to move on from seeing them as go-to sketch fodder.
Weekend Update Update
Is it a good sign when Peyton Manning gives the best comedy performance of your sketch comedy show? No, no it is not, even if, yeah, the former NFL QB (and former SNL host who did slightly better than most athletes) was genuinely pretty great as he revealed that his newly discovered love for binge-watching Emily In Paris trumped watching any of last weekend’s mail-biting football highlights. It’s the specificity of Manning’s ably rat-a-tat catalogue of the Netflix series that makes the joke, as Manning can barely be coaxed into talking NFL highlights (“All the touchdowns were in the end zone”) amidst his in-depth analysis of what makes Emily’s adventures in love and work so darned thrilling. His reading of “a fresh take on feminism—finally!,” was easily the best delivery of the night. (Even if, you know, that’s sort of questionable, coming from him.) Throw in a surprise beret reveal shot, and you have one of the most unexpected highlights of this season. I know, I’m as baffled as you are.
Jost and Che were, once more, fine. With tonight’s co-hosting gig, apparently they are now the longest-tenured Update hosts ever, and as long as SNL wants Weekend Update to stay a cheeky, largely disposable showcase for personality rather than biting fake news, then they should have a few more years to really put their records out of reach.
Aidy Bryant and Bowen Yang had some fun as a pair of effortfully outré trend predictors. There’s not much to the bit than watching Aidy and Bowen almost crack up as they go unaccountably harsh on their fashion and lifestyle pet peeves. For guys who use posters as decor, Aidy’s hissing, “Pulp Fiction poster—grow up and be a damn painting!” made me laugh in her and Yang’s tag-team hostility. Aidy is so outstanding at what she does that she’s in danger of being taken for granted sometimes. Here, there’s a level of knowing absurdity yoked to ultimate, wild-eyed sincerity of purpose that’s just irresistible.
“What do you call that act?” “The Widettes!”—Recurring Sketch Report
The wacky news blooper sketch can go gather dust as a concept. Way, way back in the filing cabinet graveyard.
While the tenant’s association meeting sketch wasn’t exactly a recurring bit, the change of setting (from school committee, town meeting, etc) roll call nature of these pieces as a template sure is. Here, it’s Alex Moffatt and Chloe Fineman riding herd on the assorted weirdos and cranks taking the mic, allowing us to see who, of this overstuffed and underused cast, is actually in the building this week.
As a conceit, these sorts of sketches serve the purpose of letting nearly everybody get some airtime, while usually zipping by without making much of an impact. Here, the high notes are muted by brevity, and the fact that most don’t really bring an especially well-realized characterization to the party. Kate kills, naturally, as her diminutive final speaker pokes her head barely over the podium to, once more, suggest raising the allowable cat limit from three to seventy-five. Kate McKinnon can land a character with a look, a pause, and a shuffle of prepared notes. Redd does fine, too, as the building’s doorman, smilingly but beseechingly trying to nip in the bud the fact that the building’s mostly white tenants think his name is “Jamarcus.” (It’s Robert.)
Aristotle Athari scores big, too, his Google translate-dependent tenant securing his phone’s help to ask, “I need to milk faucet so make destruction.” (Apparently, he’s planning to tear down a wall. Again.) Athari has slyly asserted himself as someone who can make a small role pop memorably, as has James Austin Johnson, whose barely contained rage about Verizon emerges in a strangled, funny voice. Dafoe is funny enough, channeling his own past living rough in NYC to portray the self-proclaimed “pain in the ass” who bought the top three floors of the building in 1971 for eleven dollars. His “What the hell happened to this city?” reminiscences about hellhole 70s New York include the joys of Iggy Pop puking into your face at CBGB’s, something Dafoe makes especially vivid by suggesting that that is precisely what happened to him at one point. Heidi Gardner, too, excels in these ensemble parades, here inhabiting her irately clueless (about her son’s jackoff habits) mom explode with impeccable Karen energy. These sketches are much of a muchness, but they have their uses, I suppose.
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
Just stop. Sorry, that’s not helpful. Just stop it. Dammit. Deep breath…
Okay, so what happens when SNL decides to combine its traditionally unfocused and watery political cold open with its penchant for name-checking what those darned kids are up to these days? You get this—thing—where James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden brings in a youth consultant to counter Russian misinformation tactics with (another deep breath) memes and TikTok videos. I saw the warning signs with that TikTok-centered sketch earlier this season, the mini-movie app’s virality proving a shiny allure for SNL to prove just how old and creaky its sensibilities can look when it tries to get down with the youth of today.
And here, as with the Biden Spider-Man cold open, Johnson’s still canny and well-observed Biden is saddled with a non-premise and asked to react. The “Biden, ain’t he old?” jokes are proving as tiresome a writers’ crutch as Alec Baldwin’s Trumpy fish-face already, and we’re only a year in. Here, confronted with the bewildering array of Russian meme warfare on display, Johnson’s Biden is called on to blurt “Malarkey!,” and otherwise look benignly puzzled at all this newfangled disinformation and GIFs and whatnot, and it’s all too irrelevant to be truly annoying. A draggy exercise in doing the least possible with seven minutes of valuable and potentially fruitful network airtime is an ill-advised way to kick off your 90-minute comedy show.
I Am Hip To The Musics Of Today
In contrast to my gripes about those Disney costumes, I say, give Katy Perry all the giant mushrooms she wants. Any initial conception of SNL’s musical element being co-equal with the comedy/variety portion of the show went out even before it began, really, so I’m here for any time the show allows a performer to go full performance art. Is Katy Perry in a vacuum-sealed dress, flanked by identically kitted-out mushroom dancers art? Well, it’s certainly more interesting than the usual rushed and perfunctory musical slots, and Perry’s perfectly pleasant pop meshes just fine with a swirling, Alice In Wonderland backdrop of psychedelic imagery and “Eat Me” fans. Honestly, I have to admit that sometimes I check out a little during the musical guests, but I didn’t do that tonight.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
I keep stumping for you, Melissa, and god knows you deserve more than the two nothing roles you got tonight. But fluffing lines in both ain’t helping, even as I acknowledge that the stress of only getting a line or so every two episodes only ups the pressure.
I’ve been helpfully informed by you kind commenters and Twitter types that Cecily’s absence can be attributed to her tagging out to star off-Broadway. Break legs, Strong.
Aidy gets the top slot tonight, and, no, it’s not damning with faint praise. The episode wasn’t anything special, but Aidy Bryant is.
“What the hell is that thing?”—Dispatches From Ten-To-Oneland
Too abrupt and yet too drawn-out is a comic mix that’s tough to pull off, so, kudos, I guess? Here, though, the office sketch was all setup, a feint toward a whole new direction, and then a clumsily truncated payoff. Dafoe’s office temp is reentering the workforce, has bought a whole lot of pizzas for the law firm’s all-nighter, and then disastrously joins in on the lawyers’ bored finger-tapping and glass-pinging impromptu musical screw-around by hurling an office chair out a 15th-story window. “I thought it would bounce off the window and make a cool sound!,” Dafoe’s abashed Jeremiah exclaims. I like a sketch not beholden to a pat formula, but this really could have used a stronger center than Dafoe, as hard as he tries to imbue the sketch with a live-wire energy. Blame that expressive face, I guess, but watching an actor not known for comedy furiously mugging to sell a joke is more squirmy than funny. (He really does nail Hedi Gardner with that stapler, though, with a solid, blind, over-the-shoulder hurl.) That does sort of describe Willem Dafoe’s traditional effect on me. So, well done?
Stray observations
- Telltale pandemic detail: The decelerating whirring of fans or air purifiers each time Dafoe introduced Katy Perry.
- Poor Ego Nwodim had two exposition-heavy, explaining-the-joke roles tonight. Yup, she got double Mikey Day-ed.
- Fineman’s consultant, introducing herself to the President: “I’m Mikayla, spelled the worst way.” (I guessed on the worst way to spell Michaela.)
- Aidy’s irate tenant wants to ban all teens from her building, since they “huff White Claws and do 69-ers” right outside her door.
- Aidy’s dog show co-host banters, “Now, Judas, it says here that you and I are married!”
- One of the dogs is said to be allergic to “anything that is or isn’t duck.”
- We’re off for a while, but return strong with John Mulaney joining the Five Timers Club (alongside musical guest LCD Soundsystem) on February 26. See you then.
151 Comments
“I’m Mikayla, spelled the worst way.” (I guessed on the worst way to spell Michaela.)ooh, fun. Mykeighlah?
Mykeighleigh
McEhle
MeyekaylahMuhmuhmuhmymikayla
Wasn’t that a Knack song?
M’Kalyh
That’s my Klingon name.
Glory to you…. AND YOUR HOUSE
AND the house you rode in on!
oh god this one feels like a Martian villain on Supergirl.
https://michaelbaystransformers.fandom.com/wiki/Mikaela_BanesYour mileage may vary.
MuhKeighLuh
McAla
Ghoti
You invented a new worst way to spell Michaela, congratulations!
Can you all find somewhere else to clear your phlegm?!
Siobhan.
Make Kale Ya.
“Willem Dafoe jokes several times in his monologue about people thinking he’d make a great Joker. He’s not wrong, although here I’ll just say—enough with the Jokers. We’ve had enough Jokers. Heath Ledger was the best, Mark Hamill is a strong second, Jared Leto remains in last place, forever. That bafflingly misbegotten and overrated Joaquin Phoenix thing was not a Joker movie, I don’t care what anyone says.”How is this rambling incoherence the opening to an SNL review? Please pass the baton to someone else Dennis.
“Rambling incoherence” is right. Everybody knows Mark Hamill is the best.
You notice how “Joaquin Phoenix thing” got shoved to the front of the quote? Well, despite the Kinja interface seemingly giving the user the option to link to other pages (that’s what the little chain link icon used to be for), you can’t! Yeah, at some point that functionality disappeared and Gawker Media, or whoever owns this mess now, decided there was no need to remove the link icon. Nor was there any need to fix the bug that arises when you quote text with a hyperlink in it.This is just embarrassing to watch. Now there’s nothing left but to look forward to the inevitable YouTube mini-doc about the A.V. Club once the site goes under.
The only thing I could think while watching that Office Song sketch is ”Cool, you wasted Tim Robinson while you had him on, now you’re straight up stealing from his material…”
I can see the similarity, more down to how much ITYSL material this past season was in an office setting, but that type of absurdist material is much older than anything Tim has done. SNL was doing office sketches in the ‘90s that someone might say were like ITYSL. I also wouldn’t say they wasted Tim – he was happy to not be in the cast, had 4 or 5 good years at the show before he left, and has repeatedly come back to guest write.
I thought Willem Dafoe was fine. I didn’t really get the idea that he was a dramatic actor incapable of comedy – the one time I could see this was in the final sketch, which I liked, but where he was sort of put into a Walken role when that probably isn’t his style. To me he was genuinely very funny in the Nugenix pre-tape as well as the Beauty and the Beast sketch. I did not care for the latter as a sketch, due to how clunky it was (although it was better than the last few – they have done so many of these BatB sketches and just keep reusing the costumes they made a decade or so back), but his part, and how he threw himself into the insanity of spanking his ass, wailing, shouting…again, I thought he was great. The part where he left the horse picture up also amused me. I’ve seen the “song about something relateable” pre-tapes too many times now, although I did appreciate the craftsmanship. I was tempted to say the same about the Nugenix piece, seeing it as just another cheap joke about dicks, but they really committed to the absurdity of the whole thing, ending perfectly on Willem screaming and contorting in closeup. This as also the perfect use of Mikey’s ordinary-guy-reacts routine – his saying, “I can get very hard,” amused me more than anything he’s done in a while. This episode had many of the usual flaws in modern SNL (leaden political cold opens), and many specific to the last decade (the “funny news” sketch, the “cute dogs” sketch [even if the dogs were very cute – the one licking Andrew Dismukes’ face stole the show], the “we don’t know how to pace or end a sketch”), but I was much more positive about it than you because I was just glad they let us see the whole cast and used the whole cast for some type of comic purpose. Only Melissa was completely put into straight roles (I hope her awkward flub doesn’t mean they will put her back in the cast cupboard. People like Andrew, Punkie, Aristotle, James, Sarah (even I don’t need all the shouting) do so much to get laughs out of any sly line or reaction. They are the show’s future, and the night tends to feel much less self-satisfied or stilted when they are on. Much as Pete or Kate or Aidy can still provide moments, applause breaks for one look or one line are a time a cast member should have already left. This episode course-corrected on some of that lack of purpose for the newer people. I hope that continues. As for Update, I enjoyed the piece with Bowen and Aidy much more than I thought I would, but I hope it’s kept to this one appearance. Something about the looseness, the deliveries, and their almost breaking just works once. Peyton’s material was fairly thin, but his delivery was just great – that golly gosh response on Emily in Paris teaching us a new outlook on feminism…”finally” – hilarious.I’m not really sure what you mean about SNL’s “naked push” to make PDD the next viral superstars…they haven’t been in a live episode since November! Not all of these work, but this one was one of the stronger entries for me. The kid was a natural comic presence, he worked well with the PDD guys, and the idea escalated into something weird, stupid, and funny, and had ideas that actually built up and then came together at the right time. I did not get any Lonely Island vibes from this short – it was much more like ‘90s sketch comedy. And, wonderful as LI may be, I enjoyed it more than about half of their SNL output, to be honest.
I’m so mystified that SNL hasn’t really embraced the nu-comedy, post-UCB craftsmanship that Comedy Bang Bang (for example) does. SNL is stubbornly wedded to shouting, stiff, overproduced flopsweat delivery of sketches without heart, lines without reason. The show is so aggressively woke it’s almost a church. There’s no joy, no play. Everyone else in comedy is mining emotions from characters. Even Will Ferrell’s most shallow characters had depth.
I liked the episode less than you did but more than Perkins did. I think Perkins’ fixation on Defoe as a “dramatic” actor who supposedly can’t do comedy is odd. It seemed like more of a preconception he had going into the episode than anything that was actually on display. Anyway, one of the basic pleasures of SNL is seeking these serious dramatic actors do silly comedy sketches. (Then there’s the even more low brow pleasure of watching non-actors, jocks, politicians etc. and seeing if they can act at all). I don’t think there was a single sketch where Defoe approached the material in some special “dramatic” way that didn’t read as comedyThe material on the other hand I thought was largely pretty weak. As you say the cold open and the local news sketch were both really bad. I liked the Beauty and the Beast sketch better than most other people seemed to. I thought Defoe’s over-the-top performance was great. The Nugenix pre-tape was a little on the nose but was still funny enough. The other pre-tape about trouble sleeping was okay not great. I liked the ten to one slot about the office a lot and didn’t notice Defoe dragging it down at all.For the rest of it and the non-Defoe stuff I didn’t like the Please Don’t Destroy thing at all for some reason. I’m continuing not to find them funny or a worthy successor to Lonely Island or Good Neighbor or anything really. I didn’t like the co-op meeting one and am generally put off by these sketches which exist for no reason except for everyone to get a chance to do somethingBizarrely the highlight of the night might have been Peyton Manning in Weekend Update
I didn’t think he dragged the last sketch either, I just thought it wasn’t quite in his range compared to a few others. On the one hand I think sketches that are poorly put together and just there to show the whole cast aren’t the best idea, but on the other hand, it’s also the main way we are going to see most of the people we don’t see. I wish they were better sketches (the early ‘90s may have fared best at being able to write ensemble for a cast the size of what we have now), but still, something where I get to see JAJ or Aristotle or what have you get a funny line or two make me feel more involved than something like that endless Gaslight sketch last week that was just Kate making faces.
Dafoe is screamingly funny in The Life Aquatic, and also he’s having a blast in Shadow of the Vampire. And if I were a writer for SNL, I would have done something like that, where they catch up with Max Schreck, vampire actor, today in a mockumentary interview segment. But it would have to be filmed, because I feel like Dafoe does better when he can refine the takes, and his live stuff here was little too broad and directionless to detriment of the funny. The Co-Op meeting, while not a great skit, at least used him to his best advantage… i.e. basically doing a LouReed impression and being both funny and menacing.
Why do I always have to search for these reviews to find them
The same reason they constantly hide half the damn comments – this site sucks ass.
I don’t get why there aren’t episode reviews of shows like 1883 (or Yellowstone), but we still get very detailed weekly reviews of a dying dinosaur like SNL.
… because The AV Club has sneeringly determined that Yellowstone is a dumb show that only old, white middle Americans like. I watch plenty of prestige TV. You know what else I watch? Yellowstone, because it’s ridiculously, melodramatically entertaining. The Ringer writes plenty of unironic pieces on YS; you should check them out.
Really? You’re going to culture war about Yellowstone? Are You Megan McCain?Lots of people like it. At this point, it’s probably cooler than SNL. It’s good, and trust me when I say there is no latte-drinking Brooklyn hipster sneering at your taste in TV like the villain of a teen movie. No one actually cares that much about you. There are so many shows on tv. SO MANY. AVClub isn’t going to review all of them.
The whole selling point for the show with people seems to be that it isn’t “cool” – many of these think pieces revolve around how if you watch Succession and don’t watch Yellowstone, you are an out of touch liberal who needs to find God (in so many words). The funny part is that when I went to look at some of the fan comments for last season, many were very negative, complaining that the show was stuck in a rut and Taylor Sheridan no longer cared due to having various spinoffs and other projects. As always, the people who use these shows as weapons rather than wanting to talk about them tend to be several steps out of pace with the opinions of many of the actual fans.
The AV Club had a piece not long ago about how Yellowstone is worth talking about. I feel like there is more interest in trying to use Yellowstone as some sort of political or sociological weapon than there is in actually talking about the show. People had plenty of chance to talk about the show in those features. Yet instead they are just using the SNL recaps to do so. It essentially proves the site’s point in not giving that show regular coverage.
The Ringer is even more search-resistant than AVC, which is something I didn’t think was possible.
“because The AV Club has sneeringly determined that Yellowstone is a dumb show that only old, white middle Americans like.”The parts of my family that love this show tend to be old, white and American, so it’s not the most off-base suggestion.
I miss when the AV Club used to review cartoon shows.
The Steven Universe and ATLA/LOK reviews and comment sections were where some of my favorite AV Club memories were made. I’d love to recreate that with something like Craig of the Creek but alas.
A reminder the AVC didn’t review the first season of Succession while it aired. Their TV coverage isn’t what it was. I dont kind the idea of SNL recaps, though the current reviewer is the wrong person for the job (he shouldn’t be calling anybody unsuited for comedy; physician heal thyself)But it’s all moot anyway since AVC is shutting down in a few months
Here in the California Bay Area, there was this chain of electronics stores, Fry’s Electronics, that used to be an institution. Sure, if you needed a component like a capacitor you’d go to Anchor Electronics, but for most other stuff, like, say, an external hard drive, you’d make a lunch run to Fry’s and buy one and get reimbursed out of your company’s petty cash. I don’t think it’s overstating things to say that Silicon Valley companies needed Fry’s in order to get work done on a timely basis.Well, a couple of years back—just before the pandemic, if you’re wondering—I went to the San Jose site for an external hard disk drive adapter for one of our work PCs, and the place looked like a ghost town. And I asked one of the guys working there if the store was going out of business.He assured me that no, they were just clearing space for more stock, and soon Fry’s would be going strong like it always was. This turned out to be a lie, and things were so bad that Fry’s couldn’t pay their suppliers.So I’m expecting something like that here. Just before they shut things down for good, there will be an announcement that things are going strong here at the A.V. Club, and we can expect more pop-culture related content in the weeks and months to come. That’s when you’ll know they’re down to their final days.
That’s sad. Fry’s was an institution in the Bay Area for decades but there’s fewer hackers now and people would rather get stuff shipped from Amazon.
so bummed when they closed the Campbell location…and the Burbank CA location was such a 50’s sci fi nerd paradise (and the best of all Fry’s locations aesthetically).
Not just the bay area. We loved them in SoCal too. RIP Frys.
Money. They used to review every single show. Now, most get a pre-show review and that’s it. But this one gets comments and views, so it stayed.
Dennis is leaving AV Club before long, and I wouldn’t be surprised if SNL reviews end with him. Not that they’ll be replaced by Yellowstone or anything else, just one fewer in the already paltry amount of shows they cover.
Or Simpsons. Yeah yeah everyone says Simpsons suck now. And yes, many do. But they still pull off a classic now and again. The Cohen Brothers spoof with Brian Cox was brilliant. But no, apparently SNL is cool and Simpsons are for lamewads. Well screw you comedy gatekeepers!
Their TV coverage has dwindled heavily. The Arrowverse shows used to be a fixture of their coverage, but they stopped covering Batwoman and Black Lightning and didn’t review the first episode of Naomi until after Episode 2 aired. They also used to review most of the rest of CW’s lineup (such as Nancy Drew and Charmed) but stopped covering those shows too.
What gets recaps and what doesn’t has never made much sense, particularly in the G/O media era. My guess is these SNL recaps do good numbers and so the suits/bean counters/what have you keep them around. Starting to recap a new show, even one as popular as Yellowstone but without an established audience for AVC recaps, is a riskier proposition and they’d have to find a new recapper
There was just so much less content even 10 years ago, it has to be hard to assign finite recapping writing talent to an infinite content universe. I think SNL gets recaps because everyone knows what SNL is.
Dying? DYING?Hmmm, these dinosaurs are more resilient than I thought.
Aren’t these “reviews” paid for?
It’s like they didn’t even realize there was a third Psych movie!
Reviewing prestige TV is pointless without ZMF or those guys who would post reviews in the comments that were longer and better than the posts themselves. Plus nothing on TV currently “owns.” Succession and Righteous Gemstones are both good shows, but there’s not a lot of OWNAGE.**Except for Brian Cox yelling HE RATES YOU! over and over. I felt ZMF smiling and spiritually powerbombing me there.
Yeah but at least they reviewed the new straight-to-streaming Ice Age sequel everyone on this site has been clamoring for.
SNL is an institution, and even non-AVC regulars might stumble across these reviews from a Google search. I imagine coverage of prestige shows and the like have historically not drawn a substantial amount of clicks. Unfortunately, it’s the same explanation as many other websites — it all comes down to metrics.The recent changes to the site will also likely guarantee we won’t see the kinds of reviews you want. More click-bait than substance is coming.
It’s disappointing. They also just randomly stop reviewing prestige TV shows mid-season.
it really is mind boggling. it feels like Perkins must have dirt on higher-ups or something
Hey but we get a recap of the Sex and the City revival no one asked for!!!
In fairness the Sex and The City revival is tailor made for the Wokeness Uber Alles aesthetic of the current AV Club
Anyone else surprised Kenan didn’t break out his David Ortiz on the occasion of his election to the Hall of Fame?
Exactly. For a show looking for easy wins, you would think they would have made an effort to fit this in. Disappointing.
Eh. How many times can they do the exact same joke, which makes less and less sense each time they do it. If they used it to make an actual joke, about Bonds/Clemens/Schilling, that would have been funny.
I tend to agree. Not a big fan.Apparently this one was meant to happen but never made it to dress rehearsal.
God that opening sketch sucked. How did their political sketches get worse?
it was really brutal huh?
I thought it was funny. Not as funny as when we had a complete moron as president who gave them mountains of material, but still funny.
This guy is a bigger moron
Biden. He is so boring that its hard to make anything he does funny.
Probably true, though even their Trump sketches are terrible. Granted this is for different reasons mostly, but both that one and Biden have a problem of there not being an underlying joke in these sketches. It’s just… impressions.
Trump was so full of it, you could get comedy out of just reading his Tweets (back when he had them!).Biden? You could do comedy with Biden, but your humor would have to be a lot sharper than SNL’s has been for a long time.
I guess that is the joke?
He’s boring! Da-dum-kssshhh!
It’s literally the opposite problem they had with Trump, where the real Trump was even more outrageous than the fictional SNL version.
I know. It’s almost unbelievable
I had hope Fineman would be able to rescue it, but they probably should have opened with her character and written a better segment.
They’ve been awful for 20 years or so. Sad to say I thought this was still one of the better cold opens of this season because at least one or two small moments worked for me…
I liked it. I’d much rather they try something based on a concept than an unfunny regurgitation of headlines like last week’s opening
Peyton Manning loving Emily in Paris was the best thing SNL has done for a long time.
Also, exactly NO ONE should be surprised that he was the best part of the show. The live NFL commentary show he does is Eli is pure gold, and of course he starred in one of the best pre-filmed bits ever (playing sharply against type):Things a pop culture writer covering SNL should be aware of.
is anyone else not really impressed with johnson’s biden and trump? they aren’t very funny and lack the kind of manic energy other impressionists provided. the trump one especially, i don’t care how “wellcrafted” it is, trump’s word salad ramblings are not what most people think of when it comes to trump. idk, maybe i’m missing something.
I’ve said it before, but Johnson has the exact wrong-shaped face for elaborate character makeups.
I think his Trump is fine, much better than Baldwin’s – I just don’t want to see any Trump impression. His Biden has the same problem as any Biden I’ve seen in recent years – there’s just nothing to work with comedy-wise. The most you tend to see is someone doing a whispery voice and trying to marvel on weird fixations or play a comic relief form of dementia. However, if the political writing for SNL was not so bad, Johnson would likely be ale to do a better job. If the sketches were not 10 minutes long that would help too.
we need to take away the snl writer’s twitter accounts until we figure out what’s going on.
episode was fine and i appreciated dafoe’s commitment, even though yeah the material just wasn’t there.i suppose they deserve some credit for not doing a spider-man or lighthouse sketch…but also maybe they should have?the size of the cast is really starting to buckle the show. i never really felt it in the way that others have pointed out before, but every sketch this week felt like it had over 10 people in it. there’s just no room for anyone to breathe.on top of that, half the cast are stars in their own right and get applause just for showing up. it’s kind of wild how peoples snl tenures are kind of turning into their entire careers. i don’t dislike aidy or kate mckinnon, but i feel like any momentum their careers had is already gone. and frankly, their work on the show hasn’t been anything special. ditto someone like pete davidson, who i’ve gone back and forth on over his run but he’s just way too comfortable, smirky and famous now. it’s distracting.
To be fair, Kate’s attempts to jumpstart a film career haven’t been very successful. I’m also not sure that Aidy is beloved beyond the reviewer’s odd love for her. Kenan can stay as long as he wants – millennials have been watching him do sketch comedy since 1994.
aidy definitely had buzz for a few years and shrill was well received, but that kind of speaks to my point that their careers feel held back by snl. they don’t get to really do those next steps and they pass them by while they’re still on the show. kenan is maybe the only person to make career snl cast member work, but he is just uniquely built for it.also as much as i like kenan he IS part of the problem, too. i’d hate to see him go but at the same time the cast needs to be chopped down. it really felt unwieldy this episode, and the earlier ones this season where some cast members weren’t present were better episodes, straight up.
But in the past Kate would be on her own failing in her film career, she wouldn’t be continuing to take up space on SNL. Dana Carvey didn’t come crawling back after Master of Disguise tanked
To be fair, Master of Disguise came out 9 years after he left the show.
I think my problem with Kate is that she seems to play the same character in literally every movie I’ve seen her in. It’s just a variation of her SNL characters. There’s some people that manage to pull this off well, like Keanu Reeves or Adam Sandler, but for the most part, it gets boring.I have the same problem with The Rock. I skip most of his movies too.
I’m sure some SNL obsessives have Takes about this, but it feels like the plan is to keep the core cast intact until Season 50. But I think it needs a full teardown ASAP. (I guess they can keep Chris Redd.) I’m not even watching it live this year for the first time in literally decades, and the main reason is that I’m tired of the cast.
Why would they need to keep the cast intact until season 50? I’m sure everyone would come back for the big reunion extravaganza.
i think it’s ego/hubris/complacency/laziness. they probably want to be the ones who are there for the ‘historic’ season, and lorne (who is old as shit) just wants to coast until retirement.then what happens, i dunno, i wonder who takes that role.i agree with those who think love chris redd. he is one of the best utility players the show has ever had.also mooney’s saturday morning all star hits on netflix was really, really, really funny.
In our house, we actually watch Kenan’s sitcom with Chris Redd.We like it, in a network sitcom sort of way. Kenan’s funny. Redd is funny. Fortune Fenster is funny. It’s funny that Don Johnson is playing Kenan’s father-in-law.My only point, really, is agreeing that Chris Redd is funny. Kenan’s show only takes like 22 minutes to watch if you FF through the commercials, so every few weeks we take an hour and binge through 2 or 3 episodes and probably laugh more than we do at any particular SNL episode.
I think Lorne wants to coast until the 50th and then quit, and a big cast change requires effort. Also, the risk of going into a 50th anniversary with like a new 1985-6-ism disaster of a cast might take some shine off the anniversary; better to go in with safe mediocrity
Interestingly, this season, especially the first half, is one where various longtime cast absences and bringing in new people actually did enliven the show for me and some others. When Kate returned, so did many of those woes, but still, it’s felt much more like a turnover season than the last 2 or 3.
Katie, Aidy, and Cecily need to move on. They’ve starred in other shows! Pete Davidson too. He doesn’t feel as over it as the others but it’s getting there. Kyle Mooney has run his one joke into the ground and he’s also currently starring on another show. And I feel sorry for Melissa, but the show doesn’t need her and Chloe. I feel like she’s kept around so twitter doesn’t get mad if they need to do an AOC sketch. And I’d have no problem giving the Please Don’t Destroy guys a segment every night if they were funny, but they hardly ever are, so maybe cut them back to every third show. Kenan can stay as basically what they originally wanted George Coe to be. And Punkie never made an impact, sorry. I don’t know why they kept her last year if they didn’t keep Lauren. Mikey, Alex, Heidi, Chris, Ego, Andrew, Bowen, Chloe, Melissa (I guess), Kenan, three new ones. That would probably be better. Let the cast breathe.
This is only the fourth PDD pre-tape to make an episode, and their first since November. The others were just put on Youtube. Some of the sketches they write but don’t appear in get picked, but not the last few weeks.
I think they kept Punkie partly because they didn’t want the bad press of firing two new female cast members, one a black lesbian. I like Punkie, I think she has a very warm presence and sometimes a funny delivery, but I don’t know if they will ever do much with her. I think they mostly keep Melissa out of sympathy, to be honest; I like her, but it’s sad to see her just there most weeks. At least she got on more this episode, even if she fumbled her lines so badly in one sketch.
I know they’re trying to make Please Don’t Destroy into the next Lonely Island but to the reviewer’s point, it’s such an unflattering comparison and looks worse every time out. Sandberg and his buddies had such an eccentric energy; PDD is just kind of boring.
If they’d done a Lighthouse sketch it likely would have just been Kate or Pete making faces for 7 minutes. I thought last week, where half the cast barely showed up and we got several very long (and in a few cases, very dead) pieces with 2-3 people felt more suffocating than this week. I think having more people gives more chances and less of a need to rely on greatest hits. The problem for me is the overall sketchwriting and how sloppy the show tends to feel. If that tightens up, then you can have several strong ensemble sketches as well as some strong pieces that just have a few people. I think many are staying at the show because many avenues outside of SNL are now closed, some due to COVID, others, like film comedy, due to long term trends. And it is now easier to stay, due to Lorne being a producer of so many shows and also being more lenient about time off. Someone like Aidy can have her own acclaimed show for 3 years, and still come in and out of SNL when she chooses.
I feel it’s holding the show back in a way. The show was always great at creating stars and new characters but it can’t do either now. It’s hard to let the cast members find their voice and get the audience to be excited to see them if they’re in inky a skit or two a night
It’s a double-edged sword because there’s a very vocal subset who insist these people are the show and should stay forever. Several recaps this season would all but say that the show just was not good without Kate there (I stopped reading those as a result).
definitely. it holds the show back as much as the performers. one hand washes the other.
I feel bad for most of the newer cast members because they’re all really good but, as of yet, won’t get a chance to achieve the SNL stardom they’re all probably hoping for. It’s why I feel like a turnover need to happen, the show can’t reinvent itself and create newer stars if they stick with too many cast members. I’m actually enjoying this season more than others but it’s definitely missing that spark that comes when you have a smaller, more cohesive cast
Lord how terrible is this show these days? The way they mis opportunities with Biden is un real
Is it Lorne’s strategy to have so many cast members that the the intro takes up the entire length of the show? Will SNL be the first show to have a commercial break during its opening credits?
“Is it Lorne’s strategy to have so many cast members that the the intro takes up the entire length of the show? Will SNL be the first show to have a commercial break during its opening credits?”Sorry but that’s a good setup for a punchline. Then by the time they come back the end credit music starts playing in the background and they say “well guys? Its been a great show.” They then say their goodbyes to the audience and the rest of their crew. Then the credits roll. They then do a stinger with the please don’t destroy us guys, who then look at each other with glow of their unseen TV permeating on them from off-screen. It then fades to black. That’s it that’s the show hope you enjoyed it…This would of course only work for one episode. Heaven help them if they do a back to back rerun of it
I feel like that chair-through-window sketch would have worked if Dafoe had been the boss, and then went full bruised-ego, refuse-to-take-responsibility after his attempt to join in the fun went horribly awry. Like, if his response was to scream at the room, not be sheepish and apologetic.As written, I think it was just something Dafoe couldn’t pull off and it came out muddled.
We’re all extremely impressed with the way you made a big show of quitting AVC “in solidarity” with the real staffers who chose to remain in Chicago, and got lots of attaboys in the comments for it… and then you’re still here drawing a paycheck weeks later.And I guess we’ll “see you then!” again after the next SNL.Absolutely shameless and pride-less at the same fucking time. Kudos.
Or…maybe he’s doing exactly what he said he would do in his resignation statement – finishing up his current assignments with his TV editor Danette Chavez which should stretch until her departure on March 2
I’m not rooting for anyone to lose their job, but whoever reviews SNL next for this site could maybe retire the trend of describing every SNL host as “game.” That should be the baseline, wouldn’t you say? We don’t compliment them for breathing during the broadcast.
You would think so yes but have you watched much SNL over the years?
How many hosts would you describe as not “game”? I’ve seen every show for the last decade-plus and very rarely has that been the problem to me.
Felicity Jones gave every impression that she was only there because her mother was being held at gunpoint.
I agree. That’s one, and it was five years ago.
So interesting to read this review after finishing the episode. I found this to be a remarkable return-to-form after the last two episodes. The Cold Open and Monologue started the show off pretty clunkily, but I really enjoyed pretty much everything else (to varying degrees).The news report is not super inspired, but I enjoyed the fun with words, cliché as it may be. And the physical comedy with Willem and Mikey was great. The Beauty and The Beast sketch was my pick for the weakest of the night. A weak premise with not much payoff.
Nugenix was hysterical, I’m not sure how you can fault Dafoe’s comic chops. “Sir Willem Dafoe, the pleasure is all mine” was my favorite line of the episode. I also loved his vulnerability as the intern and felt his line delivery about the chair potentially making a cool sound was wonderful. Dafoe is a great actor and he imbued the show with a ton of energy and made it feel more exciting than it would have with any other host.
Katy Perry, on the other hand, felt extremely out of touch in both her numbers The staging was pretty ridiculous and cheesy while the songs felt very much in line with everything she has done in the 2010s- derivative and bland. The 2nd number was presented as an “unplugged” and lower-production number. Then the pre-recorded background vocals got out of time with Perry’s vocal and the strings became totally visible, revealing the complicated house of cards / backing tracks that is a Katy Perry performance.
My biggest concern is that Sarah Sherman is starting to get slotted in only for characters that yell. She is clearly a skilled performer and could pull off roles with more nuance as well. I’d love to see her try to play characters with a bit more range, the kind that are typically being played by Gardner and Fineman.
My opinion: It really seems like Perkins went in with negative preconceptions about Willem doing comedy and it colored his the whole episode for him. Wasn’t last week going to be his last review for AV Club? What’d I miss?
Thanks for this! I nominate you to take over the SNL reviews (not sarcasm).
Perkins clearly said that he will keep filing until his editor Danette Chavez officially leaves on March 2nd, which means one or two more of these recaps. I’m not sure why so many people are confused. And you know who’s going to do the recaps after Perkins? Most likely no one so there you go
– I loved the dog show sketch because there are so many of these kinds of over-bred tissue paper dogs that are physically frail and have a million neuroses, and the idea that we’d showcase them is hilarious- I know it reflects my own political leanings, but I haaaate the “Biden is senile” jokes in update. Hate them. They aren’t and never will be funny. In fact, they’re dangerous and pandering.
Aidy was hilarious on this ep. and was that one dog a fuckin Rottweiler and a dachshund mix? Cuz I want one lol……….I like WILLIAM Dafoe (and I enjoy saying William instead of Willem) so don’t get me wrong, but here’s a list of ppl that should have been considered before him.Nate BargatzeBret Kirshner (Bert Kreischer) Peyton and Eli Manning together Annie Lederman and / or Esther PovitskyTim Dillon (yea I know this is probably never gonna happen)Chris Distefano also AND / OR Sal Volcano (I know, but Volcano is funnier)And lastly how fuckin hilarious would it be if they brought Shane Gillis in to host now………..
You’re absolutely wrong: Phoenix was outstanding as the Joker. Leto’s performance is also woefully underrated whilst Hamill’s is overrated.
That there Sarah “Squirm” Sherman is a regular Gilbert Gottfried 2.0, and this time, it is personal.
Why didn’t anyone tell Defoe that Belle’s dad in Disney’s Beauty And The Beast does NOT have a French accent?
I was hoping for anything Dafoe related (Spiderman, Wes Anderson (like maybe something similar when Ed Norton hosted years back), Hell, a Platoon (though dated) spoof could have been interesting), and what we got was bland and dull. I’ve been waiting for a Nugenix satire, only b/c I see those commercials all the time, but it just wasn’t there. Manning was funny, but it dragged and I adore Katy Perry, but she peaked years ago and though the costumes and pageantry was there (as it always has been), the songs reminded me of a cross between something better she had done years ago and then a sad tormented Billie Eilish-ish (sp?) song. When I saw the Please Don’t Destroy Us guys, I was like “Ok, this will be good,” only to be disappointed by the premise.
My wife about falls off the couch laughing when those ads get to the “she’ll like it too!” part. This skit should definitely have introduced their wives as slightly terrified or warning the new couple off of the contraption.
Wonder how many times they had to edit the “mushroom” dancers’ attire before it was network appropriate?
The first thing that hit my mind was the mushrooms looked like that had enormous low hanging balls.
I assumed that was the point.
I keep stumping for you, Melissa, and god knows you deserve more than the two nothing roles Two? She had four. She was the wife in the Nugenix commercial, one of the dog owners (note: flubbing lines in that sketch doesn’t bother me as working with live animals makes thing unpredictable), one of the many tenants and one of the office workers in the last sketch.
Haaaark!
You can cross “seeing Willem Dafoe do lots of boner jokes” off of your bucket list nowThis sounds like it was written by someone who never saw Auto Focus.
Pretty odd to have Jesus frickin’ Christ himself having himself described as having a “crazy devil face”
Willem Dafoe hosting Saturday Night Live is as weird as you’d expect, and as funny, unfortunatelyHow does this headline make sense? Was the show very weird and also very funny? Was it not weird at all and also not funny at all?
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Willem in his Volvo at the Burger King drive-thru.
You know, I’m something of a comedian myself.
I cared not for this, so my only strong opinion here is that, having recently rewatched Batman ‘89, it’s nuts that it seems to be the cool thing to do to gloss over Nicholson’s portrayal of Joker. Ledger was great in a very specific role, but Nicholson was pretty fucking fantastic too. He’s funny, he’s goody, he’s threatening, he has a surprisingly great physicality. Hamill’s voice acting is phenomenal but it’s pretty insulting to say his Joker is a clear #2 and not even mention Jack.
Not great that Manning’s appearance was the best-written sketch. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour or my inner 7th grader taking over, but I laughed far harder at the “Knowing Yourself” sketch than I should have. The writing was just brutal. And beyond a five-mile radius of Rockefeller center, is there anyone who finds the navel-gazing New Yorker sketches funny? This one made worse by the need to run through every cast member in one segment (with Keenan and Kate the only ones to be able to carry off a character with a 30-second appearance). The “+” was a gift, Dennis.
SNL been played out for nearly 20 years at this point, author didn’t even get to see the best of what they’re covering. Sad.
I was hoping they could get Katie into a skit or two, but no such luck. To me, this season has been mostly a throw away, and the last night’s episode was a fine example of that again. Aidy is mostly lost on me, with her characters too similar to each other. Oh well. Who knew that I would laugh at something that Peyton Manning said, where everyone else was laughing too.
Willem Dafoe has a crazy devil face whose alternately bulging and slitted ice-blue eyes, tombstone teeth
When I lived in New York City, my (now ex-) wife and I’s dentist, Dr. Marvin Mansky, was also Willem Dafoe’s dentist. Dr. Mansky said Dafoe had some of the best teeth he’d ever seen and took excellent care of them, so most of the time all he needed was a checkup and a cleaning, which he did twice a year just like you’re supposed to.
Fan sounds that bleed through during some musical guests’ intros are mostly for atmospheric haze for lighting, you can hear it in the mix for most heavy lighting acts. Also depends on how tired the in-house sound board operator is to fix levels :)Also, still can’t wait for someone to listen to their live mix and try at least a little bit better… ugh!
Didnt you quit?
Dennis outright denying that Dafoe has had a weirdly humorous streak running through his career is baffling. Even in many of his “serious” roles, Dafoe has always embraced the ridiculous. Insane take.
I watched this. Skipped thru Katy Perry who looked like Super Mario Bros. It was bad. I like Dafoe, but he could do nothing with this rubbish.
The best sketch was the last one, as usual, in which Dafoe calls pizzas “biggies.: o_0 xD
Anyone else think that hte Katy Perry numbers all looked like scenes out of Happy?
Willem Defoe on SNL? What’s he promoting — the release of Platoon on VHS?
I lmfao at the Nugenix video.
No sketch involving dogs is complete without Cecily Strong.
Katy Perry’s songs are the same ones Taylor Swift writes in the bathroom and then uses as toilet paper. Somehow, Katy finds them and sings them.