SNL43 Wrap-Up Extravaganza!

One of the unique perks of working collaboratively with six other highly-talented writers is that all of us have our own opinions surrounding the show, as well as the stances and takes that come with it. I thought that it would be a fun idea, then, to take advantage of our different voices and individually share our thoughts on the season as a whole! It’s just a fun thing that we’re doing because we can.

This is a lot more laid-back and casual (or alternatively, a lot more essay-driven) than the sort of Stooge-inspired reviews we’ve been contributing to the site; we’re just gonna share our thoughts on Season 43 as a whole, talk about our favorite sketches, episodes, and experiences, and maybe even share some hot takes to re-roll on others’ evaluations! Vax has also generously calculated average episode scores, and we’ll cap everything off with a best-of selection of our favorite moments from the past season. Let’s roll! -Matt

ANTHONY:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: I usually lump 43-45 together as seasons of the show where I fell off of the show a bit. I would still watch each week, but unless it was a guest I was really excited about like Sandler or Murphy I would never watch live, usually watching the sketches on YouTube the next day instead. While there were a few clear highlights, a lot these years have honestly pretty quickly been lost to the fog. Revisiting it, this is probably the best season of the chunk I just mentioned at least. Obviously, the Trumpwin stuff is pure bile, with the back to back cold opens from Mulaney and Glover possibly representing the nadir of that for this whole era (or just, you know, comedy in general), but a lot of the other problems that would plague the next couple of the seasons (same-y feeling sketches, cast members sticking around despite having shown us everything in their toolkit, “how you do you do, fellow kids?”) are there this season, but in a much more nascent form. Similar to how season 18 has a lot of the issues that would plague 19 and 20, but still manages to keep things together enough for everything to still be fun. Get past the chillys in each episode, and you’re basically there with 43. Still think that Hader episode was pretty lame, though, give or take a sketch or two about poop and old man boners (because, if nothing else, I want to be known as a man of sophistication).

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: The Chance episode. While I still don’t go full 5 on anything there, I’d probably bump a couple ratings up (namely “History of Rap” & “Career Day”, which both deserve probably at least another half a star each). The whole thing is just such a damn fun affair. Chance storms in with this ebullient, kid brother energy that serves as a nice anchor for each sketch while never soaking up too much limelight—it feels like everyone gets some solid bit of business that episode, a sadly increasingly rare feat in modern SNL.

Favorite sketches?: I mean, all the sketches we gave 5 stars to? Which feels like a cheat, but I think everyone chose well. I do want to specifically note “Beers,” “The Race” and “Undercover Office Potty”—Ruby, who some of you may recognize from the comments on this and the previous site, referred to those 3 pretapes from this season as possibly being Beck and Kyle’s three best offerings, and after some thought I think I might have to agree.

Favorite episode(s)?: Mulaney wins this for me overall, but I do have to note the quietly excellent run from Haddish to Ronan.

Hot takes?: Although it was rated pretty highly by Kabir, I’d bump up “The Game of Life: DACA Edition” by about a star. It’s so rare to get genuinely strong satire on SNL, especially in the Trump era, but I think Julio Torres (a guy I can’t gush over enough, though I’ll try) seems to be one of their few writers who can actually leave bite marks. His “Through Donald’s Eyes” sketch is not only far and away SNL’s best sketch having to do with Trump, but one of the best, most fully realized pieces of comedy I’ve seen on the guy period. “Game of Life” isn’t quite that strong, but I think it manages to portray the hoops immigrants have to go through in this country in a way where you can feel the pure rage and catharsis coming from Torres without ever sacrificing the laughs (that expansion pack joke is gold).

I also don’t want to quibble too much with the guy who inspired this whole thing but I definitely don’t rate Larry David’s second episode quite as highly as Stooge, even if I do adore “Beers”.

CARSON:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: We’re in Trump hell. It’s like SNL had a bouncy balloon that they got to play with. Then Trump got elected and that beautiful balloon started to deflate. Now SNL is still throwing the completely deflated balloon into the air and saying “Wheeee!” in the hopes that no one notices. Of course there are bits and pieces that rise above the fray (Eric and Don Jr.), but SNL’s political material has never had a poorer batting average. We still have several years to go, so strap in.

If SNL is a show of upward trends and downward trends, seeing the most long-tenured cast in the middle of its run feels, even in hindsight, like a show treading water. We still get great pre-tapes and even some new classic live pieces, but this season really feels like nothing more than the SNL establishment holding sway. And that can be a great thing! I think SNL was at its best during Seasons 14 and 15 when the core group had hit their stride and were enjoying a sort of flow state with their comedy. That’s where we’re at here: everyone is kind of chipping along in the way they always have. Kenan’s the stalwart, Kate the star, Leslie the scene-stealer, Cecily the actress, Beck the everydude, Kyle the weirdo, etc. If you’re down with the formula, you’re down with this era of SNL.

Me? I can take it or leave it. I’m one of those fans who appreciates SNL as a renewable resource, constantly morphing into a new thing each season. We are in the era where SNL evolves much more slowly. This is essentially what the show has been since 2013 and what the show continued to be until 2020 (and what it’s striving to be once again). The “core” overpowers, new arrivals battle for scraps and straight roles, Pete giggles, Kenan reacts, Mikey explains. Round and round we go.

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: Despite everything I’ve written, I am NOT an eternal pessimist. I didn’t exactly get a treasure trove of timeless episodes to review during the 2017-18 season (Hart, Barkley and Schumer are nobody’s favorite episode), but I’m pretty bullish on the Tiffany Haddish episode (even if it was far from perfect), so I can’t complain. That episode had my sole five star review, so that would hold up in the traditional sense of what my “favorite thing” would be.

I think the most general surprise for me is how many pieces I had completely memory-holed in just a few years. I used to be absolutely encyclopedic in my SNL knowledge, but this era eludes me a little more. Seeing everyone’s reviews really forced me to go back and re-discover some real winners (Chantrix, My Drunk Boyfriend, Za, Google Talks, Natalie Portman’s monologue), for which I am grateful.

Favorite sketches?: Here’s how I would put together a 2017-18 Best Of special if I were so lucky to be tasked (12 sketches including four pre-tapes, plus all the rest):

COLD: George W. Returns (Will Ferrell) – An actually funny open.
MONO: Natalie Portman – Clever and ambitious, shows the cast.
COMM: Undercover Office Potty (Bill Hader) – Counting it as a commercial parody to sneak on an extra pre-tape.
SKETCH 1: Family Dinner (Sterling K. Brown)
SKETCH 2: Switcheroo (John Mulaney)
SKETCH 3: Papyrus (Ryan Gosling)
SKETCH 4: First Date (Gal Gadot)
SKETCH 5: Boo Boo Jefferies (Tiffany Haddish)
SKETCH 6: The Race (Saoirse Rosen)
WU 1: Eric and Don Jr. (Larry David)
WU 2: Pete Davidson (Chance The Rapper)
WU 3: White Woman Named Gretchen (James Franco)
SKETCH 7: Za (James Franco)
COMM: Floribama Shore – another cheap excuse
SKETCH 8: Marcus Comes To Dinner (Sam Rockwell)
SKETCH 9: The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air (Jessica Chastain)
SKETCH 10: Girlfriends’ Game Night (Bill Hader)
SKETCH 11: Beers (Larry David)
SKETCH 12: Diner Lobster (John Mulaney)

Favorite episode(s)?: I think I still might stump for the Tiffany Haddish episode.

Hot takes?: I was too nice to the Kevin Hart episode. I mean, I don’t think it was classically bad, but I probably skewed everything a half point too high. Nothing from that episode should have edged out Marcus Comes To Dinner.

JOHN:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: 43 is not widely considered a transition season, as no major cast members left (sorry, Luke), and the new arrivals who stayed (Chris and Heidi) have been quality additions, but have still often been in the shadows of many of those who started before them. There was also no behind the scenes chaos which early season 44 would become defined by. However, I would argue that 43 is still a very important season in modern SNL history, as well as a key transition season.

43 was likely the final roundup for a number of semi-frequent hosts (Kevin Hart, James Franco, Charles Barkley), and very possibly for some legends and past staples (Bill Murray, John Goodman, who both had showy cameo roles). Nasim Pedrad and Vanessa Bayer, underrated SNL ladies of the early-mid ‘10s, also returned for their (to date) only cameos. Then there are Tina Fey, Bill Hader and Larry David, each very important to SNL of the ‘00s and ‘10s in their own ways, and who have yet to host again. There are also the hosts who are likely one-episode wonders, there because of one show or film or another which will be a trivia question within a few years. That isn’t new, but is given an extra dimension due to increased diversity in the hosting pool.

There is also the heavier standup focus—David, Tiffany Haddish, Kumail Nanjani, John Mulaney, Amy Schumer—which continued the theme of past, present and future in this season.

The cast transitions are subtler, but still noticeable. This is our last season with Pete before he became a tabloid magnet. This is our first season with Kate, Cecily, and Aidy officially taking over the spot of longest-serving women in the cast, and where we see the real beginnings of Aidy and Cecily’s paths to Emmy nominations and more recognition in their own right, alongside the beginning of that strange navigating line of when Kate was “supposed” to leave for better things vs staying on the show (and the breaking point of just how many political impressions she could be is handed at any given time). Melissa, meanwhile, gets a number of standout parts, live and pre-tape, and feels like a full cast member—one of the few seasons where that is the case. This is our final season for Beck and Kyle as a real duo, with some last hurrah pre-tapes scattered across the months. Both have adapted to being spread across the canvas, but from this point on, any pre-tape will mostly just be a very welcome surprise.

Moving on to the newcomers, Chris makes an immediate impression with the creativity and artistry he brings to the hip-hop side of the pre-tapes (up to this point often dominated by white men), while Heidi has a highly worthy debut season, immediately notching her place on Update and also penning a number of offbeat, sometimes deeply melancholy sketches which make one think she would have been more at home 25-30 years earlier. Andrew Dismukes, who will not appear in the cast for several more seasons, also makes his mark with unusual sketches like “Fliplets” that test performers—and viewers—in a way many modern SNL pieces do not.

On a political note, this was also something of a last hurrah for the outsized relevance SNL received during the 2016 election season. SNL was never a show that was meant to sustain years of attention for political matters, and never should have tried. The show would continue to plug away with Trumpwin, with the cameos, and so on, but you can feel in the hyperfocus on Mueller and Stormy Daniels near the end of 43, once you get past how incredibly embarrassing the material is, that even they may have been hoping for a natural conclusion to what they’d been blamed for unleashing. Underneath this vague optimism, you also have sourness and defensiveness about these choices, put on display in one of the most dispiriting finales in many years. The season deserved a better ending than that, and so did we.

In some sense, the #MeToo moment which erupted in late 2017 served as a distraction from the above malaise. You can argue that SNL is no place to talk about misogyny or sexual harassment, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but there were a number of substantial pieces this season on the topic of the struggles women face, from centuries of violence and fear (Welcome to Hell) to the inherent phoniness of Hollywood being “aware” for awards show season (The Look). SNL can often seem like they are playing catch up or trying to fit in with the cool kids when it comes to tackling topical material, but this issue was, for the most part, an exception to that rule.

In my final thought on this season as a whole, I have to acknowledge Chadwick Boseman. Black Panther was a huge cultural moment few had anticipated, and SNL, which can often seem out of step with modern times, was very canny in getting him to host. No one could have known he’d leave us only a few years later, but capturing those memories is a key part of what makes SNL such a cultural touchstone of the last 50 years. As much as people will go back and watch Black Panther when they want to relive those memories, many are also likely to track down “the blackest Black Jeopardy ever” on Youtube, just to get to smile or laugh one more time.

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: I already went on quite a bit about it, obviously, but without the John Mulaney episode, I wouldn’t be typing this right now. Beyond my own investment, I also think the episode, overall, holds up well, and serves as a blueprint for what modern SNL can accomplish.

Favorite sketches?: Choosing not to mention any from my reviews here. As others have already mentioned Undercover Office Potty (which is probably one of the funniest and strongest things of all 46 seasons—and our only real chance to see Beck and Bill Hader shine together), I’m going to instead briefly mention a few pieces—Girlfriends Game Night (from Hader’s episode) where Cecily perched on Bill’s lap, trying her best not to break and very much failing, is a precious memory to me, Get Woke With Tamika (from Tiffany’s episode), which is a fascinating idea about disinformation and misinformation that is both helped and hurt by Leslie’s stumbling performance, Henrietta & The Fugitive (yes, Ryan Gosling breaks a lot, but in this case it’s very endearing and he and Aidy have a very natural chemistry), from Natalie’s episode, the utter, utter masterpiece My Little Stepchildren, Claire from HR from Tiffany’s episode, which is another sterling Cecily performance and a prime example of her easy chemistry with Colin at the desk. Another Update piece was the surprising and welcome return of Jacob Silj, getting a much funnier sendoff than he did in his previous appearance nearly 20 years earlier. There are also Beers, The Race, (both already mentioned) and Customer Service, a delicately written, tender showcase for Kumail and Cecily (let’s ignore who it is about in this one instance). Last, and far from the least, is Restaurant Complaint, which is the type of Anderlette (if this is them) musical goofiness that is right up my alley, and, in the close for Melissa and Chadwick, gives us one of the sweetest moments in SNL history.

Favorite episode(s)?: Mulaney, Chance, Rockwell, Ronan.

Hot takes?: Not to take away from Anthony’s review, but I just do not like the W cold open from Ferrell’s episode. This all felt like yet another example of SNL trying to whitewash its past, in a very convoluted way, using one politician they had given a pass to because they now had something to say about another politician they had given a pass to. There are some good lines, and a good central performance from Ferrell, but it’s just one of those moments where I can’t forget the past enough to not recoil.

KABIR:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: Everyone seems tired. I think the election and politics just sapped the show’s strength in this era. There was so much happening and so much to parody. Couple that with the endless cameos—only a few of which (Larry David) were routinely successful—and the show felt disjointed. There were many memorable political pieces, but the funniest sketches took an apolitical approach.

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: I only covered three shows (Donald Glover, Chadwick Boseman, Jessica Chastain) and they were all middling. I guess I would choose Boseman’s episode overall since it was the only time he ever got to host.

Favorite sketches?: First Date (Gal Gadot), Beers (Larry David), Google Talks (Jessica Chastain).

Favorite episode(s)?: I didn’t review the Larry David episode, but that was probably the best this season.

Hot takes?: This era is functioning as both a history book and a comedy show.

MATT:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: I remember, when I was watching this season live, feeling like it was a frustrating step down from last season and objectively inferior, but upon revisiting it—and for all I know, maybe I’m just jaded from the seasons that followed—I was surprised by how enjoyable it is. It’s got its ups and downs, but almost every episode has at least one or two pieces worth bragging about, and the additions of Heidi, Chris, and even Luke to a sadly lesser extent all gave the season a nice freshness. With that being said, the worst impulses of this season seem to point towards the more downwards trajectory the show will be taking in years to come: an increased emphasis on cameo-fests and watery political material, cast imbalances, and a heightened interest in virality. It almost feels quaint to look back at this season as an iffy one; if it isn’t perfect, it’s still generally likeable and rewarding.

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: The Saoirse Ronan episode. For one thing, it has a lot of pieces that I really love and wanted to ensure were rated highly, like the awesome, oft-forgotten Beck/Kyle pretape (“The Race”). But I also really liked being able to trace around how the episode exemplifies Luke’s tough season and mishandling by the show; it was important that I could give him the credit he deserved and pen a proper defense of the polarizing sketch at the heart of that episode that seemed to spell out how the rest of his tenure would go. #Justice4Luke!

Favorite sketches?: I’ll just go and list my favorite pieces from the show in a few different categories (in no particular order):

Favorite Live Sketches:
Family Feud (Chance the Rapper)
Za (James Franco)
Marcus Comes to Dinner (Sam Rockwell)
Family Dinner (Sterling K. Brown)
Diner Lobster (John Mulaney)
Switcheroo (John Mulaney)

Favorite Pretapes:
Papyrus (Ryan Gosling)
Beers (Larry David)
The Race (Saoirse Ronan)
Fresh Prince (Jessica Chastain)
Undercover Office Potty (Bill Hader)

Favorite Update Features:
Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend (Larry David)
Pete Davidson on Staten Island (Chance the Rapper)
Willie (Natalie Portman)
Dawn Lazarus (Sterling K. Brown)
Stefon (Bill Hader)

Favorite episode(s)?: John Mulaney’s inaugural gig is, in my opinion, a quintessential episode for this era, and I don’t think many would disagree; it was a ceremonious homecoming for one of the modern years’ greatest writers, and in addition to submitting some classic pieces, he also cast a wonderful spotlight on the featured cast. It’s a great proof of concept for one of the most beloved recurring hosts of recent years. Sam Rockwell is also delightful; character actors always make for fascinating hosts, and his ebullient charm and commitment to the very writerly premises he was presented has put him in the pantheon of great, one-time hosts, a title that I pray to be rescinded one day by a return visit to 8H. Lastly, Chance the Rapper made for a wonderful host; while I think his second gig tops his first, he has perfect chemistry with the cast and makes the fun material even funner.

I have soft spots for a lot of other episodes, especially Saoirse Ronan’s and Sterling K. Brown’s, which I think are flat-out strong and underrated. But I also think there’s some quiet strength to the James Franco and Donald Glover episodes; they’re not perfect, and James’ sullied reputation casts a pall over things, but I feel like there’s a lot to like about both, and they’re carried by a mix of strong writing and great energy.

Hot takes?: While I get why John wasn’t so smitten with the piece, I would’ve given “Marcus Comes to Dinner” from the Sam Rockwell episode a perfect or near-perfect score. I’ve been watching the original era of SNL lately, and seeing all of the more slow and methodical slice-of-life pieces, so I can see how it could have left something to be desired, but it feels like such a rarity for this era to have a low-key premise like this and to execute it in a way that feels progressive. I see it as in an in-between state of slice-of-life and modern SNL’s propensity to get the jokes going as quickly as possible, but I feel like that allows the piece to be accessible and fit in with the show’s present style while employing a more elevated concept.

Additionally, I think “Ned’s Roach Away” deserved more love. I can see how it would warrant a more middling score from Carson because it is rather blunt and unsubtle satire, but something about the insanity of the concept and Charles’ character sell it for me. Lines like “That’s so dumb it makes me mad!” and the visual of cockroaches shooting up cupboards are funny just because they’re funny, and they make up for the more clunky aspects of the piece with wholesale goofiness. The heavy hand plays to the sketch’s benefit for me.

VAX NOVIER:
What are your general thoughts on the season?: Looking back, this year is when the current era of the forever cast really takes off. Apart from one departure (and one firing), it’s been the same group ever since with more people getting added on each subsequent year. I remember Season 43 being a disappointing year, while watching it live, that took all the wrong lessons of what made Season 42 a standout success. Between doubling down on the celebrity cameos and a sense of preachy pandering, it was a rough viewing experience most of the time. This was the first season where I was able to catch every episode during the live airing (except for the first half hour of Kevin Hart, which I’ve gone back to rewatch apart from the monologue).

It started out pretty decent, to be honest, as I felt the episodes that didn’t start with Trumpwin (Gadot, Haddish, Chance, Franco) were strong and provided hope going forward. This all changed during the second half when Jost and Che took over as head writers and the quality dropped on a weekly basis. This problem actually started during the Kevin Hart Christmas show (their first episode as HWs), but it wasn’t apparent yet since it began with a Trumpwin open. From the moment it was first announced, I knew it was a poor decision because after Colin stepped down back in Season 41, there was an increase in quality compared to previous years that ended when he returned to the position. Apart from some scattered gems, the rest of the season washed over me, culminating in the “What I Did For Trump” piece that I feel best represents a desperate dependency on Trump material during this era.

On a positive note, this was the year that introduced us to Heidi Gardner and Chris Redd, who hit the ground running and provided plenty of highlights for the season. Especially Heidi, in particular, who became my favorite member of the current cast to this day.

What was your favorite thing that you covered this season?: One of the reasons I joined this project was so I could cover the James Franco episode, which holds a special place in spite of all the baggage that comes with it. For once this season, it felt like practically everything was clicking into place, showing what could have been without the regime change.

Favorite sketches?: Top 5 sketches (no particular order):
The Race (Ronan)
Spelling Bee (Franco)
Za (Franco)
Office Breakdown (Ferrell)
Switcheroo (Mulaney)

Top 5 Update features:
Pete Davidson (Gadot)
Every Boxer’s Girlfriend (David)
A White Woman Named Gretchen (Franco)
Bailey Gismert (Ferrell)
Pete Davidson (Hader)

Favorite episode(s)?: The aforementioned Franco episode. Mulaney and Chance were also standout shows.

Hot takes?: It turns out, I’m the only one here who doesn’t care for “Gift Wrap”. For as much as I praise the episode, another reason why I don’t really like the sketch is due to Franco’s performance. His delivery feels distracting, taking you out of the scene and his breaking, in this instance, comes off as a lack of commitment to the material.

And if I had to say anything else, I also feel that “Dinner Lobster” (or “Les Misérlobster”) might be just a bit overrated. Once the concept was revealed, I felt that nothing really stood out apart from the costumes and staging. For that reason, I’m more partial to the “Bodega Bathroom” sequel, even if it sets a precedent for each subsequent by-the-numbers installment.

BLUE:
What are your general thoughts on the season’s musical performances?: I’ll admit, when I first considered reviewing for this project I was afraid to take on the modern era, as my taste in music has shifted further and further away from the mainstream in recent years. I was prepared to spend most of these reviews ripping apart pop acts like the grumpy old lady I am at heart (though not in mind, body, or… well, actual age). As you can see, that didn’t happen here! Not only was I able to find enjoyable aspects to (almost) every musical guest, but I even became interested in a couple via their performances.

Pop music dominated this season, reflecting SNL’s current method of selecting artists based on what’s hot on the charts. Out of all 21 performers, nine were pop musicians, five were rock musicians, four were hip hop, and two were country, while Childish Gambino fits under the category of “not sure what category to put this in.” The latter definitely displayed the most versatility in terms of genre with his set, going from a disco-type dance song, to a song that itself ranges from indie-folk to trap. The rock and country musicians tended to grip my attention better than the pop and hip hop, which is more indicative of where my tastes lie than how well they performed

Speaking of performing, we saw some creative staging during this season, from Arcade Fire’s video screens and flashing lights, Childish Gambino’s laser show and house party stage set, U2’s animated opening, and Halsey’s Hollywood-esque staging. When I think of what makes for a good, memorable SNL musical performance, I tend to think of stuff like this. Playing SNL is the chance for artists to make an impression on the nation, and so I fully support it when they go all-out in the hopes of becoming the talk of the town (or, in this day and age, the talk of social media). That being said, sometimes too many stops can be pulled out, as Arcade Fire’s performance demonstrated- but on the flip side, this can work out very well in the artist’s favor, as Childish Gambino strategically released his now-infamous music video “This is America” shortly after performing on (and hosting) SNL.

I also wish that SNL would take more chances on indie artists who could benefit from the outlet. Despite her overall forgettable performance, Kacey Musgraves was a great pick for that intention- her star would later rise to the point where she’d take home a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2018. Chris Stapleton and SZA were also good choices to shine the limelight on. But artists like Taylor Swift, U2, Jay-Z etc. aren’t exactly hurting for exposure (or money). Giving the people what they want vs. introducing up-and-comers to a new audience is a tricky tightrope walk, and SNL tends to lean towards the former category. However, overall I was pretty satisfied with their picks this season- aside from a certain few artists (hello, Migos & Halsey & Cardi), I had very few negative things to say about any of them.

Favorite performances?: As one might have guessed, Childish Gambino’s performance of “Saturday” has my heart, but I wonder if I’d enjoy it as much had the song been officially released. Chris Stapleton & Sturgill Simpson also stand out as musicians who just killed it.

Overall rankings: This data is skewed, given that I didn’t review the four musical guests from the episodes Stooge covered, but nonetheless:

1. Childish Gambino
2. Foo Fighters
3. Chris Stapleton
4. Jack White
5. Taylor Swift
6. Dua Lipa
7. Nicki Manaj
8. U2
9. SZA
10. Arcade Fire
11. James Bay
12. Troye Sivan
13. Eminem
14. Kacey Musgraves
15. Halsey
16. Cardi B
17. Migos

Though Taylor Swift is an occasional guilty pleasure, I’m surprised I gave her first performance such a high rating, although the fact that it was the first one I reviewed might have something to do with it, as I was still figuring out my criteria for ratings. The fact that I ranked Nicki Minaj over U2 makes my teenage self cry. (Though Nicki did have the greatest disparity between rankings- four stars for her first performance, two for her second.) I was expecting to like Kacey Musgraves a lot more- if she’d played one of her better songs from Golden Hours such as “Rainbow” or “Love is a Wild Thing,” I probably would have. Other than that, this list was fairly predictable, especially with all the rock artists closer to the top and the hip hop artists closer to the bottom- my bias is showing. Maybe things will change next season.

AND NOW, SOME DATA!!

EPISODE RATING AVERAGES:
4301: 7.1 (Ryan Gosling) – Stooge
4302: 6.4 (Gal Gadot) – Stooge
4303: 6.8 (Kumail Nanjiani) – Stooge
4304: 7.3 (Larry David) – Stooge
4305: 7.2 (Tiffany Haddish) – Carson
4306: 6.7 (Chance the Rapper) – Anthony
4307: 7.2 (Saoirse Ronan) – Matt
4308: 6.3 (James Franco) – Vax
4309: 5.6 (Kevin Hart) – Carson
4310: 6.7 (Sam Rockwell) – John
4311: 6.2 (Jessica Chastain) – Kabir
4312: 6.0 (Will Ferrell) – Anthony
4313: 5.8 (Natalie Portman) – Matt
4314: 6.4 (Charles Barkley) – Carson
4315: 6.5 (Sterling K. Brown) – Vax
4316: 5.4 (Bill Hader) – Anthony
4317: 6.0 (Chadwick Boseman) – Kabir
4318: 7.0 (John Mulaney) – John
4319: 6.0 (Donald Glover) – Kabir
4320: 5.6 (Amy Schumer) – Carson
4321: 5.0 (Tina Fey) – John

Best Episode: Larry David – 7.3 (Runners up: Tiffany Haddish & Saoirse Ronan – 7.2)
Worst Episode: Tina Fey – 5.0 (Runner up: Bill Hader – 5.4)
Season Average: 6.3

HIGHEST RATED SKETCHES

5 STARS:
Levi Wokes (Gosling; Stooge)
Papyrus (Gosling; Stooge)
Beers (David; Stooge)
Boo Boo Jeffries (Haddish; Carson)
The Race (Ronan; Matt)
My Drunk Boyfriend (Rockwell; John)
Chantix (Rockwell; John)
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Chastain; Kabir)
CFT: My Little Stepchildren (Portman; Matt)
Family Dinner (K. Brown; Vax)
Undercover Office Potty (Hader; Anthony)
Diner Lobster (Mulaney; John)
Switcheroo (Mulaney; John)
CFT: Wedding Toast (Mulaney; John)
Chicago Improv (Fey; John)

4.5 STARS:
Henrietta & The Fugitive (Gosling; Stooge)
First Date (Gadot; Stooge)
Kumail Nanjiani Monologue (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Bank Breakers (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Kellywise (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Customer Service (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Larry David Monologue (David; Stooge)
Kyle & Beck (Haddish; Carson)
The Dolphin Who Learned to Speak (Haddish; Carson)
Come Back Barack (Chance; Anthony)
Family Feud: Harvey Family Thanksgiving (Chance; Anthony)
Floribama Shore (Ronan; Matt)
Za (Franco; Vax)
Science Room (Rockwell; John)
Weekend Update (Portman; Matt)
Chris Fitzpatrick: Rock or Rap (K. Brown; Vax)
Dying Mrs. Gomez (K. Brown; Vax)
Black Jeopardy! (Boseman; Kabir)
John Mulaney Monologue (Mulaney; John)
James Madison High School Graduation (Schumer; Carson)

4 STARS:
The Fliplets (Gosling; Stooge)
Italian Restaurant (Gosling; Stooge)
Weekend Update (Gadot; Stooge)
Weekend Update (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Ad Council Dinner (David; Stooge)
New Wife (David; Stooge)
Tiffany Haddish Monologue (Haddish; Carson)
The Dems Are Back (Haddish; Carson)
Weekend Update (Haddish; Carson)
Wayne Thanksgiving (Chance; Anthony)
Sports Announcer (Chance; Anthony)
Welcome to Hell (Ronan; Matt)
Late for Class (Ronan; Matt)
Spelling Bee (Franco; Vax)
Bathroom Excuses (Hart; Carson)
Inside The NBA (Hart; Carson)
CFT: New Year’s Kiss (Hart; Carson)
Tucci Gang (Rockwell; John)
George W. Bush Returns (Ferrell; Anthony)
Weekend Update (Ferrell; Anthony)
Chucky Lee Byrd (Ferrell; Anthony)
Natalie Portman Monologue (Portman; Matt)
Construction Workers (Barkley; Carson)
Last Call (Barkley; Carson)
Girlfriends Game Night (Hader; Anthony)
Weekend Update (Hader; Anthony)
CFT: St. Patrick’s Day (Hader; Anthony)
Chadwick Boseman Monologue (Boseman; Kabir)
Aidy B & Cardi B (Boseman; Kabir)
Drag Brunch (Mulaney; John)
A Kanye Place (Glover; Kabir)
Dirty Talk (Glover; Kabir)
CFT: Cleveland Cavs Promo (Glover; Kabir)
The Day You Were Born (Schumer; Carson)
Talent Show (Fey; John)

LOWEST RATED SKETCHES

2 STARS:
Another Close Encounter (Gosling; Stooge)
Safelite Autoglass (Gadot; Stooge)
Trucker Rally (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Nursing Home (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Roy Moore Visits Mike Pence (Haddish; Carson)
The Last Black Unicorn (Haddish; Carson)
Porn Pizza Delivery (Chance; Anthony)
Spirit of Trump’s Past (Ronan; Matt)
Captain Shadow (Hart; Carson)
Nativity Play (Hart; Carson)
Gene & Crystal (Hart; Carson)
Morning Joe (Rockwell; John)
What Even Matters Anymore? (Chastain; Kabir)
Clown Penis (Ferrell; Anthony)
Reality Stars (Ferrell; Anthony)
First Ladies (Portman; Matt)
Bipartisan Meeting (Barkley; Carson)
This Is U.S. (K. Brown; Vax)
Black Panther (K. Brown; Vax)
Kiss Me I’m Irish (Hader; Anthony)
Outnumbered (Boseman; Kabir)
Nike Pro-Chiller Leggings (Boseman; Kabir)
Donald Glover Monologue (Glover; Kabir)
Handmaids In The City (Schumer; Carson)
Weekend Update (Schumer; Carson)
Royal Wedding (Fey; John)

1.5 STARS:
The Chaos President (Gosling; Stooge)
Office Halloween Party (Nanjiani; Stooge)
Paul Manafort’s Apartment (David; Stooge)
Gift Wrap (Franco; Vax)
A Special Christmas Message From the White House (Hart; Carson)
Fox & Friends (Portman; Matt)
Alien Lover (Portman; Matt)
Anderson Cooper 360 (Hader; Anthony)
The Californians (Hader; Anthony)
Sacred Rock (Hader; Anthony)
CBC Report (Hader; Anthony)
Medical Breakthrough (Boseman; Kabir)
Morning Joe (Fey; John)
What I Did For Trump (Fey; John)

1 STARS:
Captain Hook (Rockwell; John)
Jeffersons Acting Coach (Chastain; Kabir)
Commercial Shoot (Ferrell; Anthony)
The Bachelor Live (K. Brown; Vax)
Warehouse Fire (Boseman; Kabir)
Meet the Parents Cold Open (Mulaney; John)
Michael Cohen Wire Tap (Glover; Kabir)
Gospel Brunch (Schumer; Carson)
Sopranos Cold Open (Fey; John)
Tina Fey Monologue (Fey; John)

OUR PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS ENTIRE SEASON, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
(Note: this does not include any of the episodes/sketches that Stooge covered.)

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COMING SOON
It’s the notorious season 44 premiere, Adam Driver/Kanye West, reviewed by Anthony. Bring your Perrier!

May 19, 2018 – Tina Fey / Nicki Minaj (S43 E21)

by John

SOPRANOS COLD OPEN
Donald Trump’s (Alec Baldwin) fate lurks a la final scene in The Sopranos

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— Right from the “HIV/HPV” joke you know what you’re getting in for.
— The decision to have a cold open centered on Meet the Parents at least made some sense, if you were going to cash in on Ben Stiller and Robert de Niro reuniting. Deciding to use the Sopranos close when no one involved has any connection to the show is just more desperate use of pop culture to hide lack of inspiration – and this is far from the last time either. (Looking at you, Phoebe Waller-Bridge cold open…) Imagine if, instead of the classic Clinton McDonald’s sketch, they had just had Clinton reenacting scenes from the end of The Fugitive. Who would be talking about that sketch today? Hell, who would have cared about it even at the time?
— It’s very distracting to have “Don’t Stop Believing” blaring while the actors are trying to speak, although I have to assume someone was trying to do us a favor. 
— Between Baldwin phoning it in (as usual) and Stiller genuinely trying to give a performance, Kate McKinnon’s mugging as Rudy is even more on display than usual, and even more embarrassing to watch.
— Speaking of embarrassing, after huge audience reactions for the above three actors, poor Mikey Day barely gets a response when he walks in – the audience seemingly have to force themselves to applaud. It’s a cruel expose of what happens when SNL prioritizes cameos and select cast “stars” over a majority of their ensemble – not the last time tonight, either.
— There is also a huge contrast between said hooting and hollering and actual laughs at the lousy jokes – so what we end up with, rather than people enjoying a comedy segment, is people acting as if they are at their child’s school play. 
— The silly gag with Eric-as-Meadow parking his trike is the first time I’ve smiled at any of this.
— Thank goodness they were smart enough to not give de Niro any lines.
— The whole scenario with Mueller watching Trump and then doing the snake eyes is both clumsily executed and the type of wishful (and delusional) thinking which was so pervasive at this time.
— The blackout is poorly done (they should have just had them start to say LFNY then cut to black) and de Niro manages to mess even that up by arriving late, but being positive – at least this dumpster fire only raged for 5 minutes. 
STARS: *

MONOLOGUE
Jerry Seinfeld, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anne Hathaway [real] query TIF

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— I’m just going to get this out of the way – I don’t care for Tina Fey as a host. There are several reasons why, but the pertinent one here is her role as one of Lorne’s avatars (the head writers who cut their teeth on this show over the last 20 years). They each have some of his qualities, and for me, Tina’s often exhibit themselves as the stubborn, passive-aggressive streak that has long been a hallmark of Lorne’s work with the show. Someone, anyone – critics, fans, the cast – has to be put in their place. 
— We see this almost immediately here, with a monologue which becomes a cameo parade after two jokes. 
— The reason for the parade is clearly the criticism SNL had received (and would continue to receive until a global pandemic made them hit the pause button) over the excessive amount of cameos in this season and the previous few seasons. 
— Tina’s role through the monologue is to react, in what is likely meant to be a droll fashion, to other people lampooning the idea of cameos being suffocating. As a result, her presence feels both oppressive and underused, which is a real feat.
— Just in case you didn’t get the hint that they don’t genuinely care about criticism over the cast being shut out, Beck appears solely to be shut down when he tries to ask a question. Considering how often he has to be the straight man to cameos in political sketches, it feels a bit like a poke in the eye, even if he does have a prominent sketch role later in the evening. I guess I should be relieved they didn’t have Luke Null in this role (that would mean giving him actual dialogue though…)
— Speaking of cast, it’s interesting that Kenan is specifically mentioned in a joke even as no one else is, which reminds you again of how the show is comfortable having a running gag of him being above or separate from the rest of the cast. (this isn’t really a criticism, more an observation)
— There’s something very (unintentionally, as they probably just got whoever was available) revealing in the celebrities they use. You have a former cast member (and a bad/mediocre host) who complained about his own lack of airtime (Chris Rock),  you have another former cast member (and one-time host) who already got years of unfunny, selfish vanity pieces as a cast member and in his many bad cameos (Fred Armisen), and you have hosts who ranged from outright bad to competent (de Niro, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anne Hathaway), all of whom were heavily aided by the cast, even though the whole idea of this “joke” is to accept how meaningless the cast are. 
— Fred in particular is just insufferable in this to me. If I am objective I can say at least his piece is well-performed, rather than clearly just reading off cards like the others, but I don’t really want to be objective… 
— The only cameo that makes me feel a bit sad is Jerry Seinfeld – not because of Seinfeld himself (if I was going to complain about him I could find a better reason than this appearance), but because I end up thinking of his first hosting stint, which has some wonderfully written, true ensemble pieces, utilizing a group that was actually larger than the cast so blatantly dismissed here. 
— The audience segment closes out with Donald Glover, which doesn’t feel as off putting (as he had recently hosted) and is the closest to amusing anything here gets. 
— We now have a lengthy ramble from Tracy Morgan, seeming even more disconnected than his appearances usually do. How you feel about this depends on how you feel about Tracy – it’s fine (and it’s nice to see how much he and Tina can still play off each other), if not memorable.
— So that’s over. 8 minutes that felt like 80. One of my least favorite monologues ever. For Tina hosting stints, I would still rank this above her 2013 monologue, which treated new cast members as cattle and which I still think bears some responsibility for nearly all of them being fired or demoted, but that isn’t saying a hell of a lot. If such a sour, bloated screed (in a season finale no less – the final image viewers will see for months) is the last monologue Tina ever does on SNL, it would be unfortunate, yet also, somehow, very appropropriate.
STARS: * (this night is starting out great!)

ROYAL WEDDING
Prince Harry (MID) greets guests on video of the royal wedding reception

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— Thanks to my fellow reviewer Matt for informing me of the most interesting part of this sketch – Mikey is made to seem as if he is going into a separate room part of the way through the sketch, but is actually just standing there as the set rotates, lazy-Susan style. While he stands there, the people in the first part of the sketch leave and are replaced by the second group. You can see the circle in the floor here:

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— Mikey talks about the cue card use about 2 minutes and 45 seconds into this Creating SNL video. 
— Now that the interesting part is out of the way…
— Given the huge upheavals with Meghan, Harry, and the Windsors since this time, you would (similar to the cold open) be forgiven for not thinking this only aired 3 years ago.
— Right off the bat you get a reminder that Mikey can’t do a British accent, which is more endearing than irritating. 
— Right off the bat you also get a reminder that SNL will work VERY hard to avoid having Meghan in these sketches, as no cast members could play her (the days of putting, say, Cecily, in “honeyface” were thankfully gone). The closest SNL gets to a Meghan appearance is a cut-for-time Update piece with Halsey (who is, like Meghan, biracial) in the season 45 episode she was MG for.
— None of the impressions bear much of a resemblance to the people themselves, which isn’t a big deal, but also seems more noticeable with flat material such as this. 
— So far my only amusement has come from Kenan as a Markle relative making the Queen uncomfortable (telling her she needs to watch The Crown as it makes her “look like a bitch”).
— We finally get into some laughs with our reliable double act Alex and Mikey as William and Harry, recreating the cringeworthy “banter” between the brothers before William starts to lightly twerk on the dance floor. Alex is always so good at adding some subtlety to silliness, and the cutaway to a “not amused” Queen and Kenan is just as fun.
— Heidi’s appearance as a Deal or No Deal hostess doesn’t go anywhere, but she makes the material more vibrant than most players would have.
— Tina’s turn as an embarrassing royal relation (who is slowly revealed to be an absolute monster) feels like a much harder cut than the rest of the sketch, and is another reminder of how out of place she seems when she hosts. 
— The camera quickly panning from Pete-as-Russell-Brand as soon as he gets one line out is a hoot.
— Aidy’s Elton John isn’t much to write home about either. 
— I like the idea of Leslie playing herself, being invited because of her tweets, but Leslie’s delivery is off and she’s noticeably looking at the cards the whole time.
— As is often the case when modern SNL tries to tackle celebrity culture, none of this ever escapes the feeling of people who have to talk about something, rather than actually wanting to talk about it. So much time and effort spent on…this??
STARS: **

MORNING JOE
Morning Joe (ALM)- Natalia Veselnitskaya (TIF) denies Russian collusion

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— My second review with this thing popping up. I promise it was not intentional…
— Ruby, a reliable commenter on Stooge’s blog, has mentioned how many times the current era of SNL prioritizes a string of clever one-liners over sharp sketch-writing. Carson also mentions this in his review of the Charles Barkley episode. You get that here quickly with the funny line about Willie Geist being a “Norman Rockwell painting come to life,” before the immediate shift to the same old sexual banter that wasn’t even worth watching the first time.
— Aidy makes her debut as Meghan McCain. This is just a throwaway part compared to her later appearances in the thankfully short-lived revival of The View, although she is wearing a similar outfit (and likely the same wig, just parted differently) to her later Meghan costume.
— Can I just say how unique it is to have back-to-back sketches which both have or mention someone named Meghan? If we’d gotten a Meghan Trainor sketch next we’d really be cooking with gas. 
— And we’re ALREADY back to the tedious sexual banter. The audience seems to enjoy this more than I do. 
— I am an advocate of Alex getting more lead roles, so I feel like I should have positive comments to make, but, while he’s decent in these sketches, he comes off as a support to Kate’s endless vamping and Comedy Voices.
— With that said, these first few sketches show how much Alex does work to spark up weak material when given the opportunity.
— Tina is more than fine as the Russian lawyer, but feels very underused. I mostly want to ask her if she too loved watching Colonel Ninotchka. 
— The end feels abrupt (even the audience seems unsure of when to applaud), not helped by the sketch never really taking off in the first place. (or this may have originally ended with LFNY)
— This is the type of flat, filler piece you often find in a finale, but that doesn’t make the few minutes feel any less like a waste of precious time. The main reason I’m not giving a lower grade is because the previous one-star pieces deserve to be singled out for just how bad they are.
STARS: *½

MEAN GIRLS
TIF wants to be in the Mean Girls musical; Lin-Manuel Miranda cameo

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— A great big plug for Tina’s musical.
— This takes the approach of many plug pieces (if you watched movie channels in the ‘80s-’00s you know what I am talking about – or just go on Youtube) in that they decide to try to hide the commercial aspect under a comedy take of the main player being vain and everyone reacting to her vanity.
— It’s fun to see Jeff Richmond, MG composer and Tina’s husband, pop up to say things like, “She’s not really loud enough…and she has a really small head.” He also gets the first laughs of this piece – so he can officially say he got more laughs than Tina Fey or Cecily Strong. Not too shabby, eh?
— Lin-Manuel Miranda, earnest as ever, pops up for the first time since his hosting stint.
— We also get a late-stage cameo from Lorne, who still has his comic timing (“It’s going to be fetch…as in, it’s never going to happen”).
— Aidy now makes an appearance, soon teaming up with Cecily to react to Tina’s rehearsals. Much as I complained earlier about the cast not getting a chance to shine, I’d actually rather see Tina on her own here; filling these types of near-meaningless roles with cast members seems worse than not being involved at all.
— The rehearsal portion has some solid comic moments for Tina, from her failed attempts at singing and dancing to her “Gretchen goes to the mall” look.
— The part where she details the shoes she needs (“sold in the back of Parade Magazine…they have a little pouch to hold your pills”) is especially memorable.
— I’m not sure how I feel about Lin’s role – ending with him putting in his burn book is a nice dose of energy (if I was more into Mean Girls, or Hamilton, I might be more of the intended audience), but his presence comes off as a bit forced.
— The piece as a whole never escapes the fervent attempts to not just exist as product placement, but still, it’s the best thing to air up to this point.
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Chun-Li”

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— Blue: The masks that Nicki’s backup dancers are wearing seem startlingly prescient…
— Not sure how to feel about the Asian-inspired visuals, but I’ll let that slide and focus on the music.
— Nicki’s rapping is sick! I also like the track, specifically the horn sounds that come in on the “and” of 3 and 4.
— I feel like I should be complaining about the use of pre-recorded vocals, but I don’t mind it here because 1. I’ve gotten used to seeing it on SNL, and 2. I know this is commonly done in rap performances.
— Dramatic costume change from Nicki, showing some skin.
— She’s doing a great job of rapping while joining her dancers’ choreography.
— Ha, I liked seeing Nicki’s hair fly into her face while she was dancing, which she brushed aside seconds later.
— ”If you tryna get drunk, make some noise!” Nicki, this is Studio 8H, not a bar.
— Only at the very end does Nicki reveal the effort of that performance- she’s visibly breathing hard.
— And yet, right when I thought it was over, she and her dancers still have a final bit of choreography to perform.
STARS: ****

WEEKEND UPDATE
Donald Jr. (MID) & Eric (ALM) say pa Trump didn’t know of Russian meeting

Bishop Michael Curry (KET) took advantage of royal wedding opportunity

at the end of Weekend Update, displeased BBQ Becky (AIB) is on the phone

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— Jost using a Stranger Things photo to show how he and Che looked a year ago compared to now gave me a laugh.
— The Yanny/Laurel computer voice bit probably should have been funnier than it actually was. 
— Thank you to Matthew for telling me about a dress sketch (apparently mentioned on the Afterparty podcast) also using the Yanny/Laurel joke, only this time the recording makes Tina want to kill her co-workers. That sounds like a much better concept than a number of sketches we got in this finale.
— I’m so burned out on Trump/Mueller material (even though I’ve only reviewed three episodes of this season) I’m struggling to care about any of these jokes.
— The stuff about Trump and Hannity does not work, but I did get a laugh with Jost’s delivery of, “…and was that a flush?” when imagining Trump calling Sean Hannity late at night. 
— It’s the Trump sons! Probably the only recurring political impressions of this era I can truly enjoy.
— As always, Alex shows his comic gifts in a way he doesn’t get to with other roles. He’s a brilliant mimic for Mikey, yet also manages to add some honest-to-goodness sweetness when he kisses Mikey’s palm instead of high-fiving him.
— Mikey is, as always, the perfect straight man for Alex. We have had less and less of this double act as the seasons go by, which is a shame. 
— The material itself isn’t up to much, but any time I see Alex’s childlike glee at the latest gadget (this time Play-doh and a mixer) Mikey gives him, it makes me smile. 
— The piece about blacks and Hispanics being arrested for pot instead of whites is the first time in this Update Che has seemed invested in what he’s saying.
— A very timely character for Kenan.
—  It’s always good to see Che and Kenan playing off each other, and there are some diverting lines (like when Kenan says, as the only black man among a large white audience, he now knows what it’s like to be Darius Rucker).
— That came and went without much for the memory box for me, although apparently it got a great deal of publicity at the time, unsurprisingly. I would probably be more interested in seeing the process of writing, as this had to have been done in less than a day. 
— Enjoyed Che’s “show and tellTELLTELL!!!” joke about the kid who brought cocaine to school.
— We now get to a cut-for-being-offensive joke segment, a precursor to the much-loved joke swap of the last few seasons. 
— Compared to the increasingly-near-the-knuckle joke swaps to come, this is all fairly mild, aside from the “pot cigs catch [you can guess the last bit]” gag from Che. 
— Update winds down with a surprise appearance from “Barbecue Becky,” she of the infamous phone call; one of the exceedingly rare examples of modern SNL trying something so freewheeling.
— I am hoping I will get to review one strong Update with Jost and Che sometime in these upcoming three seasons. So far, we’re just not getting there. 
STARS: ***

PERVERT HUNTERS
Dateline- pervert (BEB) gladly does retakes during sting operation shoot

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— There is a reporter named Dana Milbank, one the show had a bit of fun with before. I wonder if Tina’s character is named after him (only as “Milbrook”). 
— Beck’s performance reminds me of Chris Parnell (who played his share of pervert roles), especially the laugh-cry moments. 
— Mikey brings the right amount of seriousness and bravado to the director role (I suppose it helps that he and Streeter Seidell co-wrote this sketch), and has a believable rapport with Tina in moments like: “What am I going to remind you?” “Get outta my head!”
— A bit odd seeing Kyle pop in briefly as the makeup guy – a reminder of how much Kyle’s and Beck’s paths start to diverge by this point.
— I like how this gradually builds, with Beck becoming more and more involved in the performance aspect and the phony, schmoozing aspect with Tina and Mikey.
— Good enough execution of the obvious outcome.
— Luke makes his first appearance of the night, and has his last line as a cast member (“GET ON THE GROUND, CREEP”). I’m not even entirely sure that’s him saying the line, which may tell you something about his value by this point.
— This could have easily been something from ‘70s SNL, with a few changes (Buck Henry in the director role, Bill Murray as the pervert, Dan playing the cop [he probably would have shot Bill]).
— A good sketch, and one which should have aired earlier in the episode. This is also the first sketch of the night that even feels like it has a concept.
STARS: ***½

WHAT I DID FOR TRUMP
Sarah Palin (TIF) sings “What I Did For Love” variant with Trump coterie

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— This starts very abruptly, with the camera right on Tina staring us down. That immediately gives a very slapdash feeling, and leads me to wonder if this was originally meant to be much earlier in the night, only to be moved back because of having so many political pieces clumped together, or because it’s shit. Or if this may have originally been the cold open, with the Sopranos knockoff coming together at the last minute.
— Given Tina’s ambivalence about playing Palin, as well as how completely irrelevant Palin had become on the national stage by this point (even hinted at with the “I’m still alive, but ya had to think about it, didn’t ya?” line), I’m not sure why we need a reprisal.
— With that said, there’s something perfect about Tina’s Palin, who kicked the cameo craze into high gear, making her final appearance in the era of Trumpwin, the hideous, mutated final form of this type of pathetic stunt device. 
— Trumpwin and Palin do not, however, interact here…probably because the set would have exploded.
— Tina’s work as Palin is, as usual, strong, but she seems a bit shaky with some of the lines as she reads them off, which makes me wonder if this whole segment with just her talking might have been thrown in late in the process.
— “What I Did For Love” is one of my favorite showtunes, which is the only reason this half-assed musical number does not permanently ruin the song for me.
— “Isn’t it funny that our names are Sarah when we’re both classic Beckys?” Awful line given to poor Aidy.
— I don’t think Kate has gotten through one scene tonight without overacting. Um…nice wire work at least…I guess?
— Fred is a bit late (not late enough…) for his final Michael Wolff cameo.
— Given that the real Stormy Daniels had appeared on SNL only a few weeks earlier (even wearing the same dress!), having her played by Cecily is a bit confusing (the audience also seems a bit confused to me). Obviously they weren’t likely to get Stormy back again after they already got the publicity they wanted, so why bother? Cecily is fine, aside from not really getting the voice right, but this could have been cut. Then again, the whole sketch could have been cut…
— Now we have John Goodman, in his last (up to season 46 anyway) appearance on SNL. Even as someone who was never a huge fan of his episodes, I am sorry to see him go out with unfunny, endless strangling sounds that sound like Gomer Pyle got punched in the throat. 
— As if this isn’t bloated enough, let’s add Leslie as Omarosa. Leslie looks beautiful, but she looks nothing like Omarosa, and while I know she had debuted  the impression earlier in the season,  her being thrown into the role Sasheer Zamata played only a season earlier is more of the unfortunate tendency by SNL to treat black women (or in even worse days, black women and black men wearing wigs and a dress) as interchangeable. 
— To Tina’s credit, her performance keeps everything afloat a little more than you might think; the lack of Baldwin and of Kate’s Rudy also gives a slight boost. I can also see where one might find some sort of end-of-an-era pathos in this if they squint enough. With that said, the show is still better off with music rights keeping this thing buried. 
STARS: *½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & Playboi Carti [real] perform “Poke It Out”

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— Blue: “Once again, Nicki Minaj!” But this is not Nicki Minaj…
— The title of this song, “Poke It Out,” sounds a LOT like “Polka Dot” when Playboy Carti is singing it.
— Either this song has a lot of abrupt pauses, or a lot of cursing.
— Here comes Nicki. I previously let her use of pre-recorded vocals slide, but now I’m confused as to why she’s using them, given that her entrance doesn’t involve any complex choreography.
— Nicki’s verse just gave this song a shot in the arm. Unfortunately that’s the only part I found interesting.
STARS: **

TALENT SHOW
(MEV) clashes with mom (TIF) during high school talent show duet

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— Youthful as Mikey Day is compared to some 40-year old guys, whenever he has to play high schoolers he seems ancient for some reason.
— This will be the first of two consecutive years where Melissa stars in the final live sketch of the season. You wouldn’t think that, given her overall severe underuse. 
— “I’m Scissors…don’t run with me, I’ll poke your eye out!”
— Leslie’s role as an audience member disagreeing with Tina’s parenting skills seems extraneous. 
— It’s very interesting to watch the different sketch styles of Tina and Melissa.
— I know she’s supposed to be a teenager putting on an act, but Melissa’s facial expressions and acting choices aren’t entirely working for me. 
— The parts where she starts to sing with Tina then goes into a stompy segway are better.
— Principal Kenan stepping in during their argument to bluntly tell the audience he and Tina are in a sexual relationship gave me a good laugh. His reaction to Leslie also disagreeing with him made her involvement work a little more. 
— Fun, fast cameo from Kyle wearing the same teenager wig he wears through 8 seasons. Why he is still believable to me as a teen, I don’t know, but it works. 
— Kenan’s frequent intervals to remind us of the sex still make me laugh. “The booty is worth it, ya’ll. The booty is worth it.”
— Our first of two silent appearances from Luke to wrap up his stint on the show. 
— The end, with the audience loving Melissa’s System of a Down performance and Tina bonding with her daughter as she joins in, is surprisingly sweet and tender. I always want to see more heartfelt moments on SNL. 
— A good final live number for the season, and one where the back half of the sketch makes me forgive many of the flaws. 
STARS: **** 

CHICAGO IMPROV
Dick Wolf drama makes serious business of comedic art

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— I’m very fond of this pre-tape. 
— I’m not sure of Tina’s full involvement in this piece, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she contributed some of the ideas given that it can read as a bit of a love letter to her Chicago improv years.
— Some fans felt this piece was a bit of a wink (or possibly a dig) at Don’t Think Twice, which had been seen as a bit of a wink (or possibly a dig) at SNL.  Even the film poster isn’t too far off the tagline in the last shot. 
— Not only is this a fitting showcase for Tina, but also for Alex and Chris Redd, who were both in Chicago improv. 
— Melissa’s hysterical, “Guys, we’re all on the same Harold team!!!” never fails to amuse me.
— I’m guessing they just used the logo rather than actually going to Chicago, but it’s bittersweet seeing Alex and Tina standing in front of an iO Theater, knowing the theater would permanently close a few years later.
— This is one of my favorite roles Alex has ever played on the show. His argument scene with Tina is flawless, and I love the ridiculous-dramatic line, “I guess you finally got what you wanted – a stage all to yourself.” Alex co-wrote this with Streeter and Mikey, which just makes you wonder what might have been if he’d been able to get more of his own material on.
— Love the aggressive shoulder bump from Chris to Mikey after Mikey “sells out” by booking a commercial.
— Beck’s status as a very underrated voiceover guy is on display here, as he does so much with great lines like, “The fire imagery was misleading,” “I don’t know who the bad guy is here,” “I wanna see pretty people,” and, “Too much improv…says Improv Magazine.” I’m not always a fan of overusing fake reviews, but it works here.
— Luke, in a fitting, if disheartening, farewell, yet again gets a silent part, with his last shot being one of him somber and lost in thought. At least he did get to have a strong improv-themed piece with modern comedy legends like Tina Fey as his last hurrah, and hopefully has some positive memories of making it.
— The more I watch this the more I realize one of the reasons I enjoy it is because it’s one of the rare glimpses of what might have been if Tina had been a cast member, or even put in more of an ensemble role when she hosted. That, on top of getting to see her relive something of her improv experience, makes this a strong closer for her if this is her final hosting stint. 
STARS: ***** (screw it, I’m going for the full five)

IN MEMORIAM
a photo of Margot Kidder marks her passing

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GOODNIGHTS
at closing, BBQ Becky joins cast onstage

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— Nice to see an attempt at a quasi-runner with BBQ Becky, although more could have been done with the concept. 
— Not that this was in any way new for SNL, but the huge throng of cameos up front while the actual cast members struggle to be seen in the background is…really something.
— Goodbye, Luke…

CUT FOR TIME: FRIENDSHIP SONG (FT. NICKI MINAJ)
CFT- women (TIF, AIB, KAM, Nicki Minaj) come to each other’s aid

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— I was initially going to say that Tina being in this ode to not tearing down other women is a bit of a whiplash, because even though Tina did a great deal to support women while on SNL and post-SNL, her tenure was also extremely callous toward young women who were easy media targets (Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, etc.). Then I read that apparently Sudi Green wrote this pre-tape, with Tina (presumably) just appearing in it. 
— The Tina, Kate and Aidy characters are apparently meant to be a reference to HAIM, which the band even responded to.
— I suppose it may be something of a symbol of Nicki Minaj’s commercial fortunes at the time that, after her other episodes had a number of sketch appearances from her, this one has a cut-for-time piece. 
— In a period where SNL often seems to have no idea what it is trying to say, I appreciate that this has such a clear premise, one which is mostly well-fleshed out.
— Tina is slotted in as part of a natural group with Kate and Aidy, which I appreciate. 
— Nicki’s rap is a big shift from the mellow song it follows, but still works (and fortunately, they do not try to have any of the other women join in with her).
— While this isn’t entirely to my taste, I would have put it in the episode in place of several of the sketches, or Mean Girls. Kate’s work alone is far superior to anything else she did in the finale. 
STARS: ***½

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— The post-Update segments of the show had something of a rallying effect, with one exception, but what came before was not only bad, but terrible in a way which almost seemed surgically designed to emphasize the very worst of this era and of modern SNL. You often hear people dredge up one particular lousy sketch and use that to peg the entire show, but it’s proudly, aggressively bad patches like the first half of this episode which truly cast a pall for me, because they aren’t just a one-off, they are worn as some badge of dishonor. 
— A number of sketches in this episode (the cold open in particular) give the impression of daring to hope the Mueller investigation might lead to serious changes by the time of the season premiere, attempting to serve as a coda for the last two years of political material. If that was the case, then I can understand the choice, but that doesn’t make the material any less turgid. It just illustrates the perils of basing so much of your show’s identity on reacting to Trump. These were, in my opinion, the last days of the show being able to get notoriety solely out of talking about Trump, and they ended with a whimper.
— I try to keep low expectations for finales, as the cast and writers are tired, but seeing the surprisingly strong and consistent season 46 finale some weeks ago just reminds me it does not have to be that way. So, while I am willing to grade on a curve to a certain point, and I’m also aware the season 46 finale had very special circumstances in opening up after the pandemic, I’m no longer as willing to be as generous as I might have been. 

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” FROM THIS EPISODE, COMPLETE WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Chicago Improv
Talent Show
Pervert Hunters
(CFT: Friendship Song)
Weekend Update
Mean Girls
Royal Wedding
What I Did For Trump
Morning Joe
Cold Open
Monologue

COMING SOON
We talk about the past season as a group and exchange best-ofs! It’s a new thing we’re doing, because we can. Stay tuned!

May 12, 2018 – Amy Schumer / Kacey Musgraves (S43 E20)

by Carson

A SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY MESSAGE
for Mother’s Day, cast members’ moms’ [real] want SNL to be less political

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— The stuff with the real moms is always cute. Not necessarily hilarious, but cute.
— Hey, it’s Luke Null! Hey, it’s Luke Null’s mom! Good for them!
— A bit of a running theme with the moms not liking the political material. That’s more than I can say for the very similar Mother’s Day opening in 2021, where the only throughline is Miley Cyrus singing Dolly Parton’s “Light Of A Clear Blue Morning” for some inexplicable reason.
— Ha, Kyle’s mom is a total ham.
— Beck’s mom: “Why don’t you do Wayne’s World anymore?”
—Like I said: cute, not too funny though.
STARS: **½

MONOLOGUE
recently-married host does stand-up about proposals, weddings, tampons

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— I always find the “stagehand hands the comedian their mic” moment to be kind of strange.
— Some solid stand-up here. A little less explicitly edgy than what we’re used to from. Schumer, but the bit about trying to make your arm look smaller in a bridal shower photo is really good.
— OK, the Anthropologie/anthropologist joke tickled me.
— The non-verbal tampon request bit is great.
— The “Illusion of equality” is a wee bit heavy-handed, but that’s been a bit of a feature of monologues of late.
— Schumer plugs her film I Feel Pretty, which not only did I completely forget about, but I didn’t know it existed in the first place.
— Schumer is a reliable laugh, but she seemed comfortable to stay in second gear.
STARS: ***½

MOTHER KNOWS BEST
too-close (MID) & his mom (KAM) dominate game show

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— “I’m a YouTube sketch comedian and a serious, genuine singer.” Great delivery on a throwaway joke from Schumer.
— Looks like the premise of this sketch is about Schumer’s interaction with Pete.
— Whoops, spoke too soon; it’s about the weirdo mother-son dynamic between game show contestants Kate and Mikey. Wonder what the piece with Pete was all about.
— Leslie is already straight up corpsing when everyone else is sincerely reacting to Mikey and Kate’s antics. She seems like she doesn’t know she’s on camera.
— More extraneous interactions between Pete and Amy. Talk about putting a hat on a hat. It’s technically “more comedy” but it doesn’t add a thing to the sketch.
— “My producers are asking that you limit your songs to no songs.”
— Schumer’s dark aside about her parents works, but it’s another strange detour away from the central premise.
— Decent enough work, but some of the Sketch Comedy 101 blunders kind of got in the way.
STARS: ***

HANDMAIDS IN THE CITY
(host), (CES), (AIB), (KAM) gossip in Gilead

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— In the spirit of SCTV, The Ben Stiller Show and SNL classics like The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders and The Office: Middle Earth, we’re getting another mashup of two pop culture entities in The Handmaid’s Tale and Sex In The City. This kind of setup usually makes for very fine sketch comedy.
— Maybe it’s because I am not an active fan of either show, but this is feeling a little blasé.
— It also doesn’t help that the sketch is live, which means there aren’t any aesthetic signifiers.
— The catty laughs and occasional Schumer narration are nice Sex In The City references, but it might help if they were doing direct impressions of that show’s characters. Like, what if they literally transplanted the women of Sex In The City into the world of the Handmaid’s Tale? Wouldn’t that be a stronger hook?
— A worthy concept and generally agreeable performances hide the fact that this was a miss.
STARS: **

“THE DAY YOU WERE BORN”
on Mother’s Day, (host) sugarcoats parturition

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— This is the first edition of these “sugarcoated memories” pre-tapes.
— Nice, realistic performances from Amy and Mikey early on. Feels pretty true to life, actually, which is not always the case when SNL has to play sincere or corny. The kid actor, on the other hand, is so aggressively adorable it’s giving me a toothache.
— Wonderful, if predictable turn with the real memory. Amy is perfect here.
— Great look from Aidy when Amy asks if she’s pooping.
— The pee gag when Amy’s changing the baby is at least Three Men And a Baby years old.
— Mikey’s dickish, careless disregard for his wife as he heads out to play hockey is too on-point. Ouch.
— HATED the Hallmark ending. SNL, we already did the cheeseball sketch at the top of the show. No need to further defang these pieces.
STARS: ****

GOSPEL BRUNCH
faith & unhealthiness mark cooking show of (KET) & (LEJ)

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— OK, a Christian cooking show – that’s certainly a concept. Let’s see where this goes.
— Everyone’s a little stumbly out the gate here.
— OK, it seems like this sketch is maybe more about how unhealthy southern cooking is.
— Oops, spoke too soon. Cecily revealing she’s an atheist means we’re back to the gospel cooking show premise.
— Sorry, correction, this sketch IS about unhealthy southern cooking. We’ve got hats upon hats upon hats here, people.
— Amy loading up her smoothie reminds me of the underrated Two Fat Ladies sketch from the 1999 Brendan Fraser episode. That sketch, to its benefit, was only operating with the one premise.
— Amy can’t get the blender to work, which causes the actors to break. Leslie is especially wobbly here. It seems like she’s always three rehearsals behind everyone else.
— What the hell was this thing? This was a high concept tightrope walk to begin with, but then the sketch completely abandoned its original premise. Like, why call it “Gospel Brunch” if you’re going to half-ass the “gospel” portion of the premise. I could see how this sketch would have been a plausible first draft, but it’s desperate for an edit or eight. What we have is an uncommitted concept and a bunch of performers sloppily vamping in place of written jokes.
— The writers of this piece must have thought they were on to something since they re-visited this sketch during next season’s John Mulaney episode. It didn’t make the cut, thus proving the existence of God.
STARS: *

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “High Horse”

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— Blue: Right off the bat, Kacey’s voice is very clear and she’s hitting each note perfectly. She almost sounds too good to be singing live.
— Knowing Kacey as a country artist, I wasn’t expecting this song’s dance rhythm.
— Very fun synth riff at the very end of the song.
— I wish I had more to say, but there really wasn’t much to comment on with that song. As much as I hate to say it, given that I think Kacey Musgraves is a talented songwriter and I’ve been meaning to dig into her work lately, this really bored me. Her standard wit in regards to lyrics felt forced, and the track itself felt like watered-down generic country-pop.
STARS: **

WEEKEND UPDATE
while prevewing summer movies, Bailey Gismert reveals a Thanos crush

MIC’s proud step-mom (Melissa McCarthy) sidetracks Weekend Update

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— Our top story this week? Trump had a pretty good week. Wait, what? You’re leading with that? Jost and Che are now just making jokes about hypotheticals. The first few minutes of this are really scraping the bottom of the barrel of Trump material.
— Che calls Melania Trump “Sexy-ass Michael Jackson.” Ok, that made me smile.
— Heidi brings out Bailey Gismert for a second go-round. It’s easy to dismiss this as one of Heidi’s “Vocal Fry: The Character” pieces, but this is a pretty lived in performance.
— Gismert’s sideways brags and thin-skinned responses to non-criticisms are really well-observed character traits. I think the only other person who can mimic this type of human quirk is Fred Armisen.
— Great bit about Gismert crushing on Thanos and talking about how she mostly likes boy things (“I’m sorry I don’t like salads”).
— “I’m not trying to say that you guys don’t work hard, because I know on Saturdays you do.”
— Heidi signs off by yelling “Superheroes can’t be women, it doesn’t make sense.” OK.
— The Vin Diesel joke is a huge groaner.
— Melissa McCarthy cameo out of nowhere.
— Is she trying out a new character? This “Michael Che’s step-mom” bit seems pretty specific.
— The audience loves Melissa and she does have an infectious energy, but this piece is long on energy and short on jokes. Emphasis on “long.”
— Loooooooooong.
— Tepid jokes this week and the McCarthy cameo felt interminable.
STARS: **

LIL’ RENT
(KYM) & (host) will act in Lil’ Rent musical about diabetes epidemic

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— Beck: “Ooh, ‘thespians’ rhymes with ‘lesbians.’ Hubba hubba!” Hilarious.
— A kids version of rent is a fun premise. Great concept to replace references to AIDS with references to diabetes. SNL would return to this basic “replace the dirty word for children” premise with 2021’s “Vagina/elbow” sketch with Regina King. That one was hampered by a bad case of “Mikey explains.” Here, Mikey gets a more comedic role.
— I love that Mikey simply used the “Find and Replace” feature in Microsoft Word to make his edits.
— Ha, Kyle explaining the history of diabetes as being a new sexually transmitted disease in the 1980s is really funny.
— Kyle: “They say diabetes is a gay disease, but Roger got diabetes from having sex with his girlfriend.”
— Amy Merryweather Sherman is a character from Inside Amy Schumer. Schumer also pulled this character out of the mothballs during the “City Council” sketch from her first hosting gig.
— Oh boy, we’ve hit the “Hat On A Hat” trifecta, ladies and gentlemen. Amy’s staunch conservative six-year-old character has been imported from a completely different sketch. We’ve completely abandoned the fun AIDS/diabetes. This is a total non-sequitur. Was Schumer really eager to get this character on the show, causing the writers to graft her onto this sketch?
— I was really enjoying the first half of this sketch (despite a somewhat uncommitted performance from Cecily), but this was another case of a Sketch Comedy 101 pitfall. Let your premise do the work, kids.
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Slow Burn”

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— Blue: This sounds more like the Kacey Musgraves I know. I don’t know what she was doing with that last song.
— Lovely reverb on Kacey’s vocals.
— The vocals layered over the violin and synth pads on the break following the bridge is really pleasant.
— Again, not much to say about that song, but it was pretty.
STARS: ***

LAST CALL
Sheila Sauvage expands last-chance hookup pool to include lesbian (host)

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— A Sheila Sauvage sketch, but this time it’s two women.
— The last episode I reviewed included a Sheila Sauvage sketch. One was fine, two might be overkill at this point in this character’s life cycle.
— Some fun one-liners here, but not quite as strong as usual.
— Schumer’s Seal one-liner got absolutely nothing. Kate’s played far better.
— Kenan: “Alexa, what do I do?” Alexa: “Kill yourself.”
— Vintage Poehler/Kattan tongue jamming going on here. It can’t touch the dental apparatus bit from the Charles Barkley episode.
— Kate: “I just pitched a cave.”
— OK, I kind of dug the Arc of the Covenant ending.
— A little of Sheila Sauvage goes a long way. The jokes rolled out decently enough, but this was a minor edition.
STARS: ***

JAMES MADISON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
James Madison High School Graduation will be miserable & disappointing

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— Kickspit Underground Rock Festival vibes to this commercial.
— Kate not knowing how to work the mic is a perfect observation.
— Love the “Pick A Lane” snipe at Aidy.
— Great bit with Chris bailing on his planned backflip.
— “Everybody’s dabbing! Dab! Dab-dab! Dab!”
— Mikey is really good at playing guys in doomed adolescent dating relationships. Too real.
— Really fun piece, nice way to end the show.
STARS: **** ½

GOODNIGHTS

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CUT FOR TIME: SPIRITUALITY RAP
Stav D (BEB) downplays angel’s pleas about his masturbation addiction

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— A sequel to the bizarre but hilarious World Peace rap from the previous season’s Chris Pine episode.
— Kyle and Beck’s portrayals of the most stank-ass eastern European creepshows always tickles me.
— Why am I so struck by the visual of Beck sleeping in the tiny single bed?
— Even better is Beck’s weird dance/walk up the church aisle. Nothing funny has been said yet, but the visuals have been on point.
— “Stop your bad behavior: your drugs, your gangs, your masturbation.”
— Whoa, Kacey Musgraves shows up to sing the hook. That’s a bit unexpected. She’s not exactly the type of musical guest I would normally expect to take part in a sketch, particularly one like this.
— While the interaction with Amy is fun enough, I kind of wish this piece could have hinted at the central joke more than making it overt.
— “Respect to Gandhi, Mandela. Rest in peace to Michael Jackson. Shamon!”
— OK, a special shoutout to Beck’s extremely distressed jeans. I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds overly distressed jeans inherently funny. I once wrote a sketch where my sketch group all came onstage wearing extremely distressed jeans and “Keep Calm, Chive On” shirts, only realizing we were wearing the same thing once we were onstage. We then all agreed that it was an extremely good and cool look and would proceed to perform the rest of our show in those outfits. Needless to say, the rest of my group were not really into the sketch.
— A decent enough follow-up to the original, but really just a retread. Still, Beck’s subtle portrayal of absolute grossness (and his self-serious dancing) still makes me chuckle.
STARS: ***½

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Some egregious and highly preventable sketch comedy errors going on in this one. This could have been a far more solid episode, but it was pretty shaky overall. Even Update was off this week. Schumer herself was fine, delivering a solid monologue and a terrific performance in the Mother’s Day pre-tape. The rest of the time she was doing her best to grind through some very muddled pieces

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
James Madison High School Graduation
“The Day You Were Born”
(CFT: Spirituality Rap)
Monologue
Last Call
Mother Knows Best
Lil’ Rent
A Special Mother’s Day Message
Handmaids In The City
Weekend Update
Gospel Brunch

TOMORROW
Review-god John caps off Season 43 with Tina Fey and Nicki Minaj.

May 5, 2018 – Donald Glover / Childish Gambino (S43 E19)

by Kabir

MICHAEL COHEN WIRETAP
Michael Cohen (BES) phones Harold Bornstein (MAS) & Stormy Daniels [real]

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— Interesting Law & Order type font and establishing shot (although it’s missing the day-and-time titles, and “ka-chunk” sound effect)
— Oh, it’s Ben Stiller making his second appearance as Michael Cohen. Still not sure why a cast member couldn’t play this fairly generic role, but it’s nice to see Stiller back in 8H.
— The whole exchange in Pig Latin was like something out of a bad ’80s sitcom.
— As an audio nerd, indulge me for a moment. When they cut to the FBI agents listening in, I can tell you that 1) the tape deck isn’t in record mode, 2) there’s nothing connected to the headphone jack (and they show both agents wearing headphones), 3) the track selector knob is missing, 4) they’re running the tape at high speed (7 1/2 inches-per-second), 5) the tape seems to be about halfway used, which means they’ve recorded for at least 16 minutes (but the phone call they’re recording has been going for less than a minute). Also, the tape deck they’re using is an Akai 4000DS; you can see one prominently in the background of every episode of “Blossom.” So far, that tape recorder has been the most interesting part of this cold open.
— Martin Short as Trump’s doctor, Harold Bornstein. He’s going full Jerry Lewis but with a very gravelly voice.
— Outside of the Dr. Bornstein section, this is a complete mess of split screens, quad screens, and mumbly accents, such as Kate playing Giuliani for the first time. This also turns out to be her only appearance all night.
— Now, even more cameos: Jimmy Fallon and Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. This much star power and all they can come up with is basically a list of Trump’s various scandals up to that point? Seems like a very wasted opportunity. They could have used all these cameos and written a long, epic sketch like “Pepsi Syndrome” instead of cramming it all into a cold open.
— And now a cameo from the actual Stormy Daniels. One of her lines is about how adult film actors aren’t known for their acting, but she’s doing a decent job.
— Trump: “What do you need for this to all go away?” Daniels: “A resignation.” That doesn’t make sense in retrospect since Daniels actually changed her political affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 2019.
STARS: *

MONOLOGUE
stung by his failed SNL auditions, host aims to prove he can do anything

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— I notice a guitar placed prominently in front of Lenny Pickett, which I have to assume is for a musical number during the monologue.
— As Glover lists his accomplishments, I noticed he doesn’t do the pause-for-applause that almost every single host seems to have done to this point. It only took 43 years for someone to avoid doing that!
— I like being able to see views of 8H which only the camera operators usually get to see. Very cool. His short exchanges with the cast members are just okay, though.
— And now he’s vomiting through the clarinet in a callback to two earlier jokes. Glover seems to be enjoying this as much as the audience—which isn’t a lot.
— Kind of a low-key monologue, which is surprising given the host’s skills.
STARS: **

JURASSIC WORLD
Jurassic World attorney (host) minimizes carnage experienced by (MID)

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— I don’t know who’s been writing the numerous courtroom sketches over the past few seasons (Eli Manning’s texts, Teacher Trial), but they’ve all been delightfully absurd.
— I’ve never seen “Jurassic World,” but this is still keeping me interested.
— Mikey: “I can’t read [the indemnification because] it’s covered in my friend Scott’s blood.”
— Glover’s gruff attorney voice is a good change-of-pace from the usual attorney in these sketches.
— This kind of feels like a scene from a sitcom. That’s not a bad thing; just something about the pacing.
— Glover’s over-filling the water glass seems like it was a genuine mistake, which made Kenan smile (though he didn’t actually break).
— Fellow reviewer Anthony points out that this was co-written by Glover with Streeter Seidell.
STARS: ***

FRIENDOS
“Friendos”- rappers (KET), (host), (CRR) attend therapy; A$AP Rocky cameo

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— I feel like you have to know the group being parodied (Migos) to enjoy this.
— Oh, that’s a turn; now they’re in therapy.
— Cecily is doing a nice job as the therapist.
— OK, back to the music. Apparently, the actual group Migos members HATED this sketch. I don’t feel like they’re coming off too poorly, though.
—The audience seems to love Kenan’s character repeating everything, and then the quick jumps back to music.
— The A$AP Rocky cameo at the end was interesting, since about a year later Quavo would come out in support of Rocky during the latter’s incarceration in Sweden.
— This was enjoyable enough, but maybe I would have given it a higher rating if I knew the source material better.
STARS: ***½

RAZ P. BERRY
mistaken identity leads Raz P. Berry (host) to overreact in music video

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— Another rap video parody, but this time of Oran “Juice” Jones’ 1986 hit, “The Rain.” (Thanks to Matt for the reminder!)
— Unsurprisingly, Glover’s doing an excellent job.
— Now we’re into the long spoken-word section, a hallmark of 80s R&B. Some good lines here.
— Raz P. Berry: “I took your jewelry, and put it right up my ass.”
— Cecily is doing a good job with the entire mistaken identity explanation.
— A weird vibe to this, which I liked.
STARS: ***½

“A KANYE PLACE”
social media addicts can’t help verbalizing exasperation

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— Well this is certainly a time capsule.
— “We should only talk about what’s important… like the midterms. What’s happening with that?” Sad but true. I think if I were reviewing this era every day, I’d be saying “sad but true” about a LOT of the material.
— Beck is doing a good job as John Krasinski’s character because he’s the only one trying to keep people quiet. I’m glad the writers didn’t make all the characters obsessed with the tweets.
— The unnecessary preoccupation with Kanye seems almost quaint today.
— A well-done short, and I liked the twists at the end with Beck’s and Glover’s characters.
STARS: ****

DIRTY TALK
in bed, (host) regrets requesting pre-sex dirty talk & role-playing

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— The second and, to date, final installment of this, after the one with Aziz Ansari last season.
— Melissa: “Sex night! I’m jazzed to do it, let’s start.” She can be funny and nerdy and attractive all at once.
— Wow, Melissa’s responses are slaying me. “Stay out of my room, dork.”
— The structure of this could easily get repetitive, but Melissa’s increasingly outlandish responses are keeping it moving.
— Good ending.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL GUEST INTRO
Zoe Kravitz (real) introduces musical guest

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MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Saturday”

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— Kabir: The bumper card of Glover is a clear homage to the cover of Stevie Wonder’s classic 1972 LP, “Music of My Mind,” right down to the color scheme. Reviewer Anthony points out that Glover must have a strong connection to that album, since it’s prominently featured in the “Teddy Perkins” episode of Atlanta (which had aired a month before):

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— After the introduction, Kravitz walks directly onto the stage and stays seated with the group at the front. Very reminiscent of something you’d see (though we never actually did, if memory serves) during the show’s first two seasons.
— This song has never seen an official release, making it an SNL exclusive.
— Blue: I love how the stage is loaded with extras, simulating a Saturday night house party. Anyone know the significance of their red and yellow T-shirts?
— Catchy opening riff that transitions into a very danceable disco rhythm.
— Childish Gambino is in fine voice. Sounds very smooth and loose. And what a fresh, well-constructed melody!
— The conga player in the back sure is having fun.
— Childish Gambino is so expressive when performing. His signature dance moves are also great.
— Now some of the extras are dancing along. This really feels like a genuine party onstage.
— Amazing breakdown on the outro, giving everyone one last chance to dance.
— One of my favorite SNL musical performances.
STARS: *****

WEEKEND UPDATE
PED claims he’s not jealous that COJ & MIC are hosting the Emmy Awards

LEJ recounts the flaws of her ex-boyfriends while singing “Angel”

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— First joke from Colin: “The clock might be finally running out on the Trump presidency.” Another time capsule statement, especially since the Stormy Daniels scandal seems to have been quickly forgotten.
— Great FBI mini-rant from Michael: “Let me ask the FBI: why is this taking so long?”
— Hilarious with Pete calling Michael and Colin “a less entertaining version of Riggs and Murtaugh.” Interesting reference because they already mentioned Danny Glover (who played Murtaugh in the “Lethal Weapon” films) in the monologue. And his only SNL appearance was a season 14 cameo, actually playing Murtaugh (when Mel Gibson hosted).
— “Pete, Warren Littlefield hasn’t worked here in 20 years.” Pete: “Well Southwest Airlines needs to get some newer magazines.”
— Pete is still in the charmingly stoned phase of his tenure on the show.
— Leslie has a wonderful singing voice.
— Somehow, the structure of her commentary reminds me of Zach Galifianakis’ epic “Annie” monologue.
— The audience’s genuine concern at Leslie’s story about crying was kind of touching.
— Leslie and Colin’s interplay is good, as always.
STARS: ***½

GALACTIC SUMMIT FOR ALL BLACK HUMANS
Lando Calrissian (host) & few black humans inhabit a galaxy far, far away

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— Interesting way to plug Solo.
— Glover’s doing a good job with Billy Dee Williams’ speech pattern.
— Nice reveal that there’s only three people in the audience.
— I kept waiting for this to escalate from merely being a little sad, but it never quite took off.
— Max Rebo at the end of the sketch is played by Tim Kalpakis from The Birthday Boys. He was brought on as a guest writer that week, according to the credits.
STARS: **½

BARBIE’S INSTAGRAM
interns (PED), (host), (HEG) suggest Barbie Instagram account captions

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— Kenan’s characterization is like a suave Reese De’What.
— Now Kenan’s getting increasingly exasperated, which is providing some good escalation.
— Glover’s elaborate suggestions are really good.
— This was just the right length.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL GUEST INTRO
Daniel Kaluuya (real) introduces musical guest

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— Daniel Kaluuya would go on to host in season 46.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “This is America”

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— Blue: A very different presentation for this song. While “Saturday” featured a packed stage and warm lighting, the stage is now bathed in dark blue/purple lights, and the dancers are off to the side, placing more attention on Childish Gambino.
— Sounds like the audio engineer didn’t turn Childish Gambino’s mic on until after the song’s first two lines, since the only audible vocals were pre-recorded, despite Childish Gambino clearly moving his mouth.
— The laser lights fanning across the stage as the song shifts into its dark electronic chorus are a treat for the eyes.
— The contrast between the innocent pleasure of the dancers (dressed in school uniforms) and Childish Gambino’s delivery- standing stock still, stating each line matter-of-factly- is making a powerful statement.
— Now the statement gets even deeper as the dancers toss around dollar bills while Childish Gambino sings “Get your money, black man!” I have a lot of thoughts on this obvious commentary, but others have dissected this song more eloquently than I could. I’m just here to review the performance.
— The few times where Childish Gambino falls into sync with the dancers’ choreography impress me. Clearly well-rehearsed.
— Now the visuals are even more engaging, with Childish Gambino centered in a pillar of lights as the song reaches its climax.
— And here’s my favorite part, the dance break while lasers flash around the performers. This is so well-done. Major kudos to whoever’s on lighting and whoever conceived this performance.
— Childish Gambino makes his exit, leaving a single schoolgirl dancing alone. I’ve seen this performance several times before, but this is the first time that that visual has made me tear up.
STARS: **** (I don’t think the song itself is anything special—nor, I believe, was it intended to be—but the presentation more than makes up for it)

INMATES CALL CENTER
inmates (CRR), (host), (KET) man call center & discuss prison turmoil

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— All three are doing a great job going back-and-forth from the phone calls to their chit-chat. Reviewer Anthony points out that this has a similar central joke to Sorry to Bother You, starring Lakeith Stanfield—Glover’s co-star on Atlanta.
— Glover: “I pulled down my pants and… crapped in my hands.”
— When Beck entered as a Hannibal Lecter-type, I thought the sketch was going to really take off, but they ended it fairly quickly—probably for time. I would have liked to see this go longer.
STARS: ***

GOODNIGHTS

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CUT FOR TIME: CLEVELAND CAVS PROMO
the Cleveland Cavaliers not named LeBron share what they bring to the team

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— This has the exact look and feel of NBA/ESPN promos.
— Some background: the Cavaliers were in the midst of their fourth consecutive playoff run when this aired (they would eventually be swept by the Golden State Warriors in the Finals). Despite talented players such as Kevin Love, media attention was focused almost entirely on James.
— Is this Luke Null’s only appearance of the night?
— Matthew Dellavedova was a popular player on the 2016 Cavs (who won the NBA Finals). But he was traded not long after. Is Mikey Day made up to look like Dellavedova?
— I’m loving how proud the players are of their mundane tasks (picking up laundry) and support roles (giving LeBron his first high five).
— Kenan’s role is funny in and of itself, and then they escalate it by saying he has two young kids who are also on the team.
— This could be seen as mean-spirited—especially by Cleveland fans who know the roster a little better—but it was still funny.
— One minor nitpick: I’ve never heard anyone say “Cleveland Cavs.” It’s either “Cleveland Cavaliers” or “The Cavs.”
STARS: ****

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— An uneven episode. I feel like the show didn’t always play to Donald Glover’s strengths. The best material was the most absurd (A Kanye Place, Melissa’s responses in Dirty Talk, Jurassic World), though Glover did get good showcases in Raz P. Berry and Friendos. Aside from the cold open, though, nothing was outright bad.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Dirty Talk
A Kanye Place
(CFT: Cleveland Cavs Promo)
Weekend Update
Raz P. Berry
Friendos
Jurassic World
Barbie’s Instagram
Inmates Call Center
Galactic Summit For All Black Humans
Monologue
Cohen Phones Trump

TOMORROW
Amy Schumer hosts for the second time as covered by Carson

April 14, 2018 – John Mulaney / Jack White (S43 E18)

by John

I’m very grateful I have the opportunity to review this episode, as it’s a seminal moment in my long, bumpy history with SNL. After mostly leaving the current episodes behind somewhere around 2003, this was the one that truly made me give the show a second look, rather than just watching an odd Update bit that puts me in a bad mood or reading reviews and assuming the worst. I will explain a little more when I get to the specific sketches.

MUELLER & COHEN
Robert Mueller (Robert De Niro) detects Michael Cohen’s (BES) lies

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— Fucking hell. Back to the dark ages…
— Not that Kate’s impression of Jeff Sessions was ever of much worth, but we are now in truly dire territory. One of my main complaints with Kate’s political impressions is, for the most part, she does not seem willing to be overly negative in her portrayals, and I’m not sure that’s ever on display more than it is with Sessions. This isn’t the place to talk about Jeff Sessions, but I will just say you could do far more with him in even the mildest forms of parody than jokes about his ears and about becoming “a real boy.” For all the absolute garbage of political material in this era, nothing is worse for me than this impression. 
— SNL got a great deal of criticism for homophobic jibes in the Mike Pence material. This sketch giving lines like “You know how uncomfortable I am around pickles” would just be another example. 
— As I watch Beck have to slog through this trash, I’m reminded of just how little comedy Beck was actually given to play in the role, beyond recapping and having to deliver all his lines like a crooner from 1950.
— <typing over audience shrieks> It’s Ben Stiller!!! Making his first of two cameos in John Mulaney cold opens!!! </typing over audience shrieks>
— The “Thanks, Obamacare!” joke is so bad, if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was written by one of those Twitter accounts that professes to hate SNL but constantly gives it free publicity…
— I’m far from the first person to say this, but having a cold open which exists just to check off boxes for current scandals is a terrible idea. Making matters worse, they treat the Mueller saga as a surefire Big Deal, rather than piping in some of the nihilism that would start to more fully seep into the political writing over the next several seasons. This means you have instantly dated material which feels completely out of touch in every way possible, on top of not being funny. Wrong…wrong…wrong. 
— Oh look, it’s Robert de Niro, with ANOTHER extended applause break which likely helped rob us of a very good Luke Null sketch that I’ll talk about at the end of the review, a sketch good enough to have possibly given him another season in the cast. 
— I’ve never seen the Meet the Parents/Fockers film series. I’ll leave it up to fans in the comments section to tell me if they enjoyed the de Niro and Stiller reunion.
— Between such witticisms as “Putin’s bitch,” “Stormy’s bitch,” and Ivanka and Jared being “girlfriend” and “other girlfriend,” the writing level is incredibly embarrassing and beneath even the low standards of these cold opens. De Niro’s punchy delivery gives them the treatment they deserve.
— Until de Niro’s op-ed about Mueller I had assumed he’d only played Mueller because of his longtime friendship with Lorne, as he delivered some real howlers in this role. With that said, I do think his performance here is stronger than usual…for whatever that’s worth.
— The tradition of de Niro having no idea how to say LFNY continues. 
— This actually isn’t as long as many of the hellscape cold opens can be (it’s about 7-8 minutes), which is the kindest thing I have to say.
— If you’re more interested in a quick look at the making of the cold open, here you go.
STARS: * (do I have to give this even one star??)

OPENING MONTAGE
— Most of the time Darrell Hammond’s voiceovers avoid the flubs or memorable moments of Don Pardo’s run, but this week is certainly an exception. He accidentally calls John Mulaney “John Mulvaney” not once, but twice. Darrell would apologize, with the error being fixed in repeats.

MONOLOGUE
host does stand-up about politeness, gazebos, ship-wavers, Turing tests

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— At this point in time, if I was going to watch SNL, it would be the occasional clip on Youtube, so I ended up watching this after some of his sketches. Not sure if that affected my enjoyment.
— This is the first time I’d ever seen John Mulaney’s standup, which seems odd to say now, because once you have seen John you sort of feel like you’ve been watching him all your life. Isn’t that strange? There’s just something very comforting for me about his presence on the show, at least in those first two episodes.
— John manages to inform viewers of his SNL background, both as a writer and a fan, without being bogged down in details. The shout-out to Sir Patrick Stewart’s musical guest intro is a delight, and even more delightfully, Patrick responded in kind!
— Most of the material is from his forthcoming standup special, Kid Gorgeous. His other three monologues, while also based on some standup material, feel much more freewheeling (and in several cases, much more controversial), but John’s usual expert timing and very specific cadence still makes his first go-round feel fresh.
— Funnily enough, someone I know DID get offended by John making fun of building gazebos during the Civil War, so I guess the man is just a controversy magnet. 
— Needless to say, the drug-related and wife-related material is an awkward watch now, but that doesn’t take away from the overall humor. 
— I LOVE the whole “robot test” part, and have watched it multiple times.
— In spite of the obvious choppiness of having to condense his set, this is a fine monologue, brimming with confidence (just imagine how nervous he must have been going from a writer to standing on that stage not even a decade later). I prefer his second monologue, which in parts is an absolute masterclass, but this is a very worthwhile introduction.
STARS: ****½

DRAG BRUNCH
(host) works drag brunch to throw callous shade at his former boss (ALM)

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— Written by James Anderson and Julio Torres. John talks about the sketch here, mostly to lavish praise on Anderson. (Needless to say, John won’t be a guest blogger for this project…kidding, kidding)
— In retrospect, this is an incredibly risky sketch to lead off the night with, especially after that heinous cold open. Most viewers had no idea who the host was, and he’s immediately thrown into very arch, gay-themed humor, which I would not say has a high success rate on SNL. 
— Fortunately, John gives a very confident performance right off the bat, with a few minor stumbles at worst. This is also, if I flip back over his 4 episodes, one of the most challenging roles he has played, which makes this being his first sketch (not counting bits when he was a writer or the short Update cameo a few episodes before) even more impressive. 
— Always disappointing to see Alex wasted as the straight man, but he does fine with what he’s given, as do Cecily, Pete and Aidy.
— There’s something fitting, in the above-mentioned eerie SNL way, about Pete being in John’s first real sketch, given the friendship they would go on to forge (and the increasingly large role Pete would take in John’s later episodes).
— The turn of John being genuinely mean to Alex after being “sassy” with the others is well-executed, in acting and in choice of music cue.
— This maintains a good energy, unlike some variations of this type of humor which sort of die halfway through. One of John’s more underrated aspects as a sketch performer is his ability to not let tension deflate. 
— The twist of John’s bad workplace experience with Alex is a bit thin, but more than made up for by the reveal that he actually has to work that shift. 
— The end, with John unwittingly falling back into old patterns of being talked down to by ex-boss Alex, is actually quite clever, even if it doesn’t entirely play onscreen.
— Much as a number of fans (myself included) have a limited patience for James Anderson sketches, this is a good example of one of his stronger moments, helped by the absence of frequent co-writer Kent Sublette. 
STARS: ****

NATIONAL SCHOOL WALKOUT DAY
teen’s (host) priapism prevents him from joining National School Walkout

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— SNL sure gets (got?) a lot of use out of this school set. I know I’ve got at least one more episode review on the way with this set…
— I have no idea who wrote this sketch, but the subject matter reminds me of Big Mouth, the coming-of-age animated show John does voice work for on Netflix, and some of the lines in this show up in John’s season 46 monologue (“You don’t get to order for the table when you’re about to leave the restaurant.”).
— Good to see a large ensemble piece.
— One key difference between this and many other school sketches is that many times those have the cast just playing students, playing out stories of harassing the teacher, or reacting to a crazy parent, etc. Here, many of the cast have specific comic characters, some playing tropes they had already had their fair share of (like Kate’s “funny accent” character) or would repeat (like Heidi’s attention-seeking actress character).
— Melissa and Luke are the only two players to have no comedic material, which may tell you the show’s view of them. That said, Melissa’s sweetness is put to perfect use.
— Usually Aidy’s teenage roles tend to be overly neurotic or cutesy; it’s a nice change of pace seeing her as an average character who gets some hilarious double-meaning lines like, “Fellas, I know this thing is hard, and upsetting, and it’s pretty darn crooked, but if we roll up our sleeves, we can beat it together.”
— Another good comic turn goes to Alex as the traumatized, gun-happy boy.
— Kyle’s dark turn from defending the elderly to extensively describing their decay isn’t bad, but goes on too long.
— Leslie seems to be late for her arrival as the principal.
— After the years Leslie mostly showed up to play angry wives, seeing her as a confident object of sexual desire is a refreshing change. Unfortunately, while she is decent enough, if a little hesitant, I don’t think she quite hits the marks of playing a quasi-dominatrix comic turn enough to really send this into a good place, the way that, say, Jane Curtin might have.
— The ending is adequate, but the momentum doesn’t ever quite return after Kyle’s speech.
— This sketch, relatively forgettable as it may be in the grand history of the show, had a big impact on me because of one particular moment. It’s when, after John’s…enthusiasm begins to flag, Luke touching his arm causes him to return to form. For many years, SNL would have treated this as something to jeer at (picture Chris Kattan shriek-shouting “OH MY GOD!!!” as the audience bellows), but here, the comic turn is beyond matter-of-fact. “And it’s back…and I learned something about myself.” That’s it. As one of those young queer people who gravitated to SNL in spite of knowing I was not exactly the target audience, this type of scene is all I ever really wanted to see in terms of “representation” (before that word was thrown around so casually)—something I could relate to, treated in an understated way. I know SNL still has its issues with gay imagery (as the whole brouhaha over the Pride pre-tape or that stupid Pete/John Krasinski kiss recently reminded us), but they do try much more these days. If they’d had more of the above, and less of… this, then I might have not taken a long hiatus from the show in the first place. Again, I don’t know who wrote this sketch, but I hope they know how much some of us needed to see a moment like that, small as it was, from a show we had invested so much in.
STARS: ***½

WILD WILD COUNTRY

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— This is a parody of the Netflix documentary of the same title, which I haven’t seen. If you have, tell me how it compares. 
— <Don Pardo voice> NASIM PEDRAD!!!! </Don Pardo voice> 
— On the heels of Vanessa Bayer’s recent cameo, you have to wonder if someone at the time was belatedly trying to make up to the SNL ladies of the early ‘10s who never got enough credit.
— She even gets some recognition cheers, which makes me happy.
— Considering John’s high praise of Nasim, and that she left SNL for John’s ill-fated sitcom, it’s fitting she makes an appearance in his debut hosting episode. Surprisingly, even though he is the host, and the overall feel of this piece is vaguely Documentary Now-ish (which he contributed to), he is nowhere to be found here.
— Aidy is one of the more underrated cast members at playing characters who are older than her. She rarely overdoes the hair, wardrobe, or vocal inflections. 
— Kenan is fine as the cult member who, to be crude, was only really there to get some ass. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the only purposes of this entire piece, which means we cut back, over and over, with diminishing returns.
— The only other narrative is Nasim as the power-mad deputy. This aspect is more interesting for me, although you could say this is another version of her Heshy character.  
— There are some pre-tapes which would lose purpose or atmosphere if they were live, and then there are pre-tapes like this, which feel very thin on the ground and I wonder if the pre-tape format is an attempt to hide the mediocre writing.
— The inclusion of archive footage with Melissa and Pete is at least something which uses a film format more appropriately, but showing them in the past and Alex as a local resident in present day feels like a wasted opportunity. Why not also include Alex without makeup in the news footage and then Alex in old man makeup in the current interviews?
— Beck, Aidy and Kate all feel like they are playing the same character. One would have sufficed. 
— The first line I really enjoyed: “I’m from Compton. I left because of the crime situation. I committed a bunch of crimes, and it became a situation.”
— The ending basically just repeats what we already saw ten other times. 
—This is actually the first time I’ve ever seen this, and sadly, it wasn’t worth the wait. I have not seen a great deal of Documentary Now, but I can’t help wondering if this was an attempt at tapping into that show’s formula which doesn’t really work.
— Another Kenan-heavy documentary piece airs several years later, in a pure sketch format with pre-tape inserts. I’m not a huge fan of that one either, but I think it works a little better. (Wild Wild Country was written by Michael Che; Royal Romance by his occasional writing partner Bryan Tucker)
STARS: **½ (the latter for Nasim)

DINER LOBSTER
ordering lobster in a diner yields musical production inspired by Les Miz

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— A famous sketch, so well-regarded that it started a tradition of big Broadway production numbers in all of John’s episodes (up to season 46, anyway).
— This was originally written by John and Colin Jost for the Zach Galifianakis episode in 2010, as they can tell you themselves in a video uploaded to SNL’s channel before John’s second hosting gig (which tells you again how popular this sketch was).
— In the original, Kristen plays Clawsette, Jason plays the waiter, Zach plays Kenan’s part, while Kenan plays Pete’s part and Andy plays Chris’ part. Fred, Bobby and Will were also involved—I’d guess that Cecily took over Will’s part, as they both have strong singing voices.
— As you may know (and I tend to forget) the Youtube upload of Diner Lobster is a mix of live and dress. I will try to compare both in my review.
— Pete and Chris debut in the roles of the apathetically aggressive protagonist and his friend; they will go on to be the main constant of these sketches.
— On a shallow note, this is the best Pete’s hair has ever looked.
— As the first production number begins, Pete loses his shit immediately.
— Great as Zach is, I really can’t think of anyone who would have brought as much authority to silliness as Kenan does with this part. Pete is also absolutely perfect for his role.
— Cecily probably has my favorite moment in this sketch—I absolutely love the part where she dramatically intones, “Monster!” at the end of her song-plea.
— A plug for Mean Girls (“on Broadway now!”) which only Pete could salvage. (And a reminder I still have that Tina Fey episode to review…yippee…) The dress version (the version on YouTube cuts to the dress version for the second half) has him wink out of his left eye. The live version has him wink out of his right eye, twice, the second time likely because the “ding” music cue that was supposed to accompany him wasn’t there the first time. The dress version is much less clunky.
— The part with Kenan and Kate (as “Clawsette”) is a bit redundant, but does add more emotional weight to the concept. It’s also our first (but not our last) appearance of Kate’s lovely singing voice tonight.
— The final number, with various cast members joining in to add to the atmosphere, has a triumphant feel, helped by the committed performances (Heidi in particular is really going for it, which is a good thing as this is the only Mulaney musical number she has appeared in). The lyrics flashing onscreen, with a lobster in place of the bouncing ball, are a clever touch which only adds to the mood. Pete’s goofy dancing in the background fortunately does not detract from the moment.
— This segment is another big difference between live and dress. In dress, Luke is wearing a wig. Cecily is sloppier leading up to the final number (struggling with her timing and visibly breaking), and the lyrics start before the number begins, leading to confusion if you are trying to follow both at the same time.
— John and Colin won a PETA award for Diner Lobster, which (as I think John later mentioned) is odd, as the last line has John encouraging everyone to go kill a baby cow. However, that is only the last line in the dress version. In the live version, Pete says, “I’ll have the tuna melt instead,” and everyone celebrates.
— In the interview above, John talked about how this performance, rather than being another sketch, felt like they really were in a theater. While this is not my favorite of the Mulaney Musicals (that would be Bodega Bathroom, even if it’s more than a little cheesy), it’s definitely the one that has the most theatrical energy.
— The other difference in the four numbers, which I did not realize until now, is Lobster Diner clocks in at under 5 minutes, whereas the next three slowly creep up to nearly 9 minutes. Much as I at times prefer the sloppier, shopworn feel of the later versions, the tighter runtime allows us to see everyone at their best.
— There’s something very fitting about this sketch coming at a time which felt like the natural end of the theater kid era, with musical performers like Kate and Cecily in their sixth and seventh seasons. That helps to add a freshness to the numbers, whereas the revivals, with many of the same performers, are more likely to lead a viewer to experience what Elizabeth’s brother on Keeping Up Appearances would experience every time Hyacinth began another number—“She’ll sing at me!”
— I went back and forth on my final grade, especially after learning of a few of the live issues, but between the sheer talent and creativity on display, and how much they managed to pull off live in an era of such clunky direction…I have to go all the way.
STARS: *****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Over & Over & Over”

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— John: John continues his homage to Patrick Stewart, introducing Jack White in a similar type of voice.
— Blue: A very fuzzy guitar tone from Jack White.
— The backing vocalists are absolutely on point.
— Why the need for three vocal mics for Jack White?
— Not only is the drummer slaying it, but she looks incredibly familiar. I think because in profile, she bears a sliiiiight resemblance to Carrie Brownstein.
— Speaking of percussionists slaying it, the second backing vocalist is hitting the crap out of her tambourine. Love it!
— Oof. All the backing vocalists dropped out on the last “over and over” part before the break, which I assume is intentional… except one singer, apparently on stage left (his voice is mixed in the right channel), doesn’t appear to have gotten the memo. Though low in the mix, his voice immediately stuck out.
— I like how the melody on the (brief) bridge doubles the melody of the guitar solo.
— Oh, THAT’S why Jack needs multiple mics—the other two have effects on them. Smart move.
— I wasn’t too impressed by the final guitar solo, but it was still enjoyable.
STARS: ***

WEEKEND UPDATE
boycott has left Laura Ingraham (KAM) with only unprestigious sponsors

LaVar Ball (KET) touts his new basketball league & branded sandals

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— Weekend Update is very important to SNL in the moment, because it covers topics of the day which other parts of the show either can’t or won’t. Weekend Update is something of a burden to SNL in the long term (which, obviously, is much less important than in the moment—no one is complaining about not understanding Brad Hall jokes from 1982), because material that is both dated and difficult to laugh at can weigh down a (re)viewing experience.
— Unfortunately, that’s most of what we get in the first batch of jokes, with Che in particular seeming uninterested in the Michael Cohen-Trump-Stormy Daniels saga that was supposed to be so much more important than it was. Even his attempt at getting a reaction out of viewers by asking if Trump being into water sports humanizes him feels half-hearted. The only real response I had to any of this was sighing when he said Trump was supposed to be arrested by now, because you could make that same joke today.
— Jost fares little better, but his riff on “historic” meaning bad with Trump and comparing it to a “historic” dump taken in the bathroom amused me.
— I was going to say Kate’s harsh nasal voice is too cartoonish, but after listening to the real Ingraham…never mind.
— I have my doubts that even in April 2018 anyone thought Ingraham would actually be affected by losing her sponsors, which means this just comes across as little more than finding a way to get Kate onto Update in tedious, thin political commentary #48394. (This would also be mentioned in Ingraham’s future cold open appearances)
— Alongside the overextended patter, we have some fake product names which aren’t really worth repeating, other than “YourPillow,” which has a resonance today I don’t think anyone could have predicted.
— “Watch my show while you can.” Yeah…just putting a bow on my dislike of this type of segment.
— Che insisting his “she had to pay for her own supplies” condoms joke about a teacher having sex with a student was funny after Jost and the audience expressed disapproval is the best part of this Update so far.
— Jost encouraging people to just see it as a fair deal that Facebook sells their data is a real harbinger to some of his pro-Amazon pieces coming up next season. There’s a whole lot I could say about this, but I am going to try to restrain myself. (Insert thinkpiece about Mark Zuckerberg previously appearing on SNL, Jost going to Harvard with Zuckerberg—I imagine you can already find plenty of those online though)
— Much better Jost moment now with his reaction to realizing he was on-camera, and then his joke about people who stay up late having psychological problems and an increased risk of dying. (“If you’re watching this now, I’ll see your crazy ass in hell”—a very Brad Hall moment [it’s a big day for Brad Hall in my recap!])
— Both of my reviews so far have had LaVar Ball, which I promise was a coincidence.
— As always, Kenan’s performances as LaVar are a mastery of delivery and phrasing—few have ever gotten so many laughs out of the word, “Never.”
— Even lines that wouldn’t get much reaction otherwise (like his new son “LaBiblioteca”) work due to Kenan’s ability to make blind delusion so funny.
— “The hotel so super it’s called 8” and “Never frosted” are my favorite parts, but really the whole thing is a very fun way to end an Update which had not really taken off until near this point.
— As someone who would say the Jost/Che Update era is one of its best ever, I’m disappointed that I have so far picked episodes with Updates I don’t enjoy. Oh well.
STARS: **½ (the ½ for Kenan)

SWITCHEROO
Hollywood Update – (host) is rebooting his icky 1980s body-swap sitcom

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— Given how timely the concept of sitcom reboot fever was in April 2018, you may be (well probably not if you are aware enough to be reading SNL reviews, but go with me) surprised to learn this was originally from 2009, by John and his writing partners Marika Sawyer and Simon Rich. 
— Of course, they also wrote the cult classic Rocket Dog, from Tracy Morgan’s episode around that period. I imagine in the original version of Switcheroo, Kristen reprised the role Cecily plays here. 
— Right from the get-go, John immerses himself into this character – you can tell from little glimpses at his demeanor, and the weirdness of his having three first names as his full name, that something is off, but we aren’t clobbered with the obvious.
— Kate and Mikey provide the syrupy vocals for the theme song. Great job from them both. I wish they were used in this capacity more often.
— As soon as we get to “son has sex with the mom” and the zoom in on a TRAUMATIZED Beck, I immediately let out a guilty, big laugh. 
— Love how underplayed Cecily’s initial disgust is, as she still thinks she can keep the interview from going off the rails. 
— Another brilliant moment as we return to Heidi and Beck, and the vapid sitcom scene, only to take a very ugly turn with Heidi’s “It’s our night…to try,” followed by Beck barely managing a haunted, “Oh my God.”
— This is dark, dark stuff. The current era of SNL tends to treat this element as something to point your finger and snicker at, rather than fearlessly underscore the vileness the way this does. While sketches like, What’s Wrong With This Picture? Work well enough as guilty pleasures for me, they just are not anywhere near the quality of a piece like this that refuses to hide the perversion behind cutesiness.
— This is the first sketch I ever saw Beck, Heidi or Cecily in, and I still don’t know how often their work has been bettered. Heidi in particular is just fabulous in the sincerity she brings to her part. I often feel Heidi is a strong dramatic actress whose best is not shown unless that serious nature is wrapped in the sketch comedy format. So many performers would have tried to be too bubble-headed, but she’s just right. 
— I also can’t help thinking about how fitting Beck’s casting is, as it’s a bookend for the wonderful sitcom homages he and Kyle wrote and starred in (there’s only one left [with Claire Foy] and that was only uploaded to Youtube). Those regularly featured extremely dark elements, including abuse, but part of the joke was that they just happened, with no real follow-up. Here, the joke is that you absolutely can’t get away from the horrors – it’s a sitcom replaced by pure, unfiltered bile.
— I love the very brief bit where “Jaypaul Todd” says they felt they had to talk about Trump, so have a headline in the first scene saying “Trump won.” Such a short, blunt little dagger into all the puffed-up “resistance” comedy of this time.
— The “little Andy Cunanan” joke goes right over the audience. 
— As a kid who grew up reading and reading MAD, boy did I laugh when John slipped that reference in right after casually mentioning his horrific childhood suffering. 
— I was more amused by John’s attempt at quoting the general than I probably should have been.
— The jokes about Jonestown and a Dateline crossover are a tad cheesy, but Cecily’s reactions (especially her almost childlike expression of terror after the Jonestown reveal) are sublime. 
— “I make a lot of people happy.” Such a numbing, all too real way to end a sketch that works so well because of its constant refusal to dress up the disconnected depravity of the main character.
— This is the main sketch that made me decide to give SNL another chance, even if it was about another year before I fully jumped back in. I honestly didn’t think SNL would ever have such an openly dark piece again, rather than something dressed up in vamping, mugging, and posturing. I won’t compare this to the heights of Michael O’Donoghue, Anne Beatts, Rosie Shuster, etc. and probably not even a Norm Macdonald or Adam McKay or (on his better days) Fred Wolf, but for SNL of the last 20 years, this was a huge surprise, and a very pleasant one. It made me feel like I could at least trust the show to give me something of what I wanted. It’s hard for me to adequately describe how happy that realization made me feel, as someone who grew up on SNL and had bitterly assumed and accepted that feeling could never return. The closest comparison I can make is when Doctor Who returned and, against all odds, produced some amazing episodes that managed to acknowledge the show’s past while still feeling very connected to the tastes of present day. I complain a lot about SNL, as I do about Doctor Who, but when they hit that moment, they make me feel something I rarely do with other works. That’s what keeps me going with these shows – it’s what, for a moment, makes me feel like a kid sitting in my room again, feeling like I’m seeing something made just for me. So, in the slim chance John Mulaney is ever reading this…thank you. 
STARS: *****

HORNS
(HEG) dislikes boyfriend’s (LUN) choice to have his horn implants removed

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— Luke co-wrote this sketch with Heidi, so on the one hand I am glad he at least got one of his pieces on the air, but compared to the wedding sketch cut from this episode, he mostly just has a generic role here.
—This sketch does have an interesting vibe, especially with Heidi’s character. Heidi tends to be the only cast member of this era who tries to play disaffected people in a way which doesn’t feel like slumming or a parody – it’s mostly just who she is.
— John does good work here – there’s a bluntness I like, which isn’t overplayed, as he alternates between being supportive and morbidly curious. It’s quasi-Ferrell, but done in his own voice.
— The visual descriptions of the different ways Luke has mutilated himself really pop off the screen.
— Much as I have kind words for the sketch, I should also point out that it doesn’t really progress, as the same beat is hit over and over from the time Heidi comes into the doctor’s office. The performances from Heidi and John are left to make up for what is missing in the material itself. That’s why I am not grading this higher than I am.
— You can usually count on something different with Heidi-led sketches – not always good (season 45 was a particularly rough patch for her on this front), but different. This is one of the most unique, and I’m sorry that Luke’s firing has overshadowed the material. I’m also sorry that Luke and Heidi never got to work together again on the show.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Connected By Love”

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— Blue: I remember liking this performance better than the first one when I first saw it. Let’s see if I still feel the same.
— A decidedly different sound for Jack, leaning towards electronica rather than hard rock.
— Turns out the electronica sound was just for the verse. The chorus sounds more like a gritty rock ballad.
— The guitar arpeggios are pretty basic, but they work well for the song’s classic feel.
— I like the seamless integration of genres in this song.
— Oh, hell YEAH to the organ solo! Really gives it a bit of a gospel feel.
— LOVE Jack’s glam metal-style tapping solo, and the organist’s synth solo which he is playing simultaneously. They complement each other well.
— Not sure if Jack is singing more quietly or if the sparse instrumentation on the bridge has suddenly highlighted how low Jack’s vocals are in the mix.
— Those high notes that the one backing vocalist is hitting are OTHERWORLDLY.
—I definitely did enjoy this more than the first performance.
STARS: ****

REAL INTROS OF REALITY HILLS
The Real Intros Of Reality Hills devotes majority of runtime to cast bios

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— This is not the first reality TV parody of season 43, but those (like the Jenner/Hadid spoof and Floribama Shore) tapered off months earlier, so it’s a bit jarring to return to this take.
— Not sure who wrote this, but aside from the writers and cast who are/were into reality TV of this ilk, John himself has talked about watching various Real Housewives shows.
— Most of these intros are completely fake people, of course, but a few have an inkling of ‘real’ Real Housewives, like Melissa (“I’m too old and my hair is too long,” AKA Kyle Richards).
— Aidy’s “The South WILL rise again…but when I stand up too fast, I pass out,” always cracks me up.
— Leslie’s “Aviva” (also a real Real Housewife name) is a hoot, combining the stereotypical Housewife personality with the most absurd of premises for a show like this (a woman who keeps telling everyone how Jewish she is).
— Other than John, none of the male intros do much for me. The closest is Pete, thanks to the way he makes the, “And THAT’S what’s up” line work.
— I know that John did not originate that “Jealous?” tagline, but it’s this piece I always associate the phrase with now.
— We really didn’t need a few of the women returning for multiple intro lines – too padded.
— There are so many classic lines from John in this: “His booty is real, “…but my personality is fake.” “Our niece played Topanga on Boy Meets World.” “We have a skincare line that’s huge in Iraq.” “We’re so close we finish each other…” “off.” And every time the perfectly synched “Jealous?” leaves you wanting more.
— I love the way Leslie delivers all of her lines, especially, “Jesus was just a man….okurrrrrr?”
— Perfect ending.
STARS: ***½

GOODNIGHTS

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— John’s goodnights are cut off just as he starts thanking the technical people…there’s a metaphor in here somewhere.
— The rollercoaster hasn’t quite stopped yet, as this episode also had two cut for time sketches (one of which is possibly the most frustrating cut for time piece in SNL history). I know the ratings may not count as these are pieces that never aired – just giving them anyway.

CUT FOR TIME: FISH DREAMS
aquatic (KYM) vies for career as artist despite (host)’s naysaying; Adam Driver cameo

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— One of many reasons Kyle’s nickname is Kyle “Cut for Time” Mooney.
— In those fish getups, both Kyle and John (especially John) remind me of Ben Stiller.
— The ridiculous intensity of Kyle screaming at John to get out of his gallery is one of those moments only Kyle can pull off.
— Love the meta moment (not the cringey type of meta either) with John’s character hosting SNL…in the episode where John is hosting SNL.
— Adam Driver! Given how big he is, and that this was his first appearance on the show in over two years, I’m surprised this piece was cut.
— Impressive how much John and Kyle can emote under those masks.
— I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the rapid tonal shifts in the climax (with John finding and saving Kyle, Kyle selling out, only to, instead of finding success, getting jeered).
— Overall this is a compelling, beautifully filmed piece that needed more work, but was still fascinating to watch.
STARS: ***

CUT FOR TIME: WEDDING TOAST
best man (LUN) serenades (host)’s wife at his wedding with help from (musical guest)

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— Here we go. Luke Null’s last chance…
— If you want a hint of how much Luke had seemingly been written off by this point, he isn’t even used with the other newcomers for John’s promo. I have sometimes wondered if John is the reason he did get more chances this week, but I am probably just overthinking things in that annoying fan way.
— Melissa in another thankless straight woman role. Some things never change.
— Luke’s sharp, “No,” after John asks if this is one of his “joke songs” is the perfect tone switch.
— “Dark End of the Street” is one of my favorite songs, so I was already primed to like this.
— Luke kills it vocally. Other than a few short bits in pre-tapes, this is our first (and only) chance to hear Luke singing, which he had been trying to do all season.
—This is a much more creative and entertaining use of music than the endless variations on musical theater we’d get from seasons 43-45, and would have been a very effective counterpart to the brilliant Lobster Diner if it had actually aired.
— On paper, the turn of Cecily and Luke as lovers, singing about their love while John comments on the action in the background could have been clunky, but it works just fine, with John the perfect conduit for constant incredulous observations.
— Considering their nonexistent airtime together up to this point, Cecily and Luke have good chemistry.
— Love, “The lighting guy’s in on this?!?”
— I also love how Luke just bops along dorkily, mixed with some hip rolls, while Cecily goes full video vixen (in a wedding dress no less), sexy as hell and fully in the zone.
— The inclusion of Jack White makes a good piece even better, especially when he goes along with the near three-way kiss.
— John’s closing line of, “After this, I want a divorce,” does…not have the same easy comic appeal now.
— Yeah, I’ve watched this almost a dozen times over the last few years and every time I’m still mad this was cut and Luke never got the recognition he deserved. This is a wonderful showcase for him – he’s funny, terrific vocally, and yes, a little bit sexy too. If SNL was fair, this would have been his Bill-Murray-singing-”Something”-in-the-shower moment. Sadly, SNL has never been, nor will it ever be fair.
— One of my favorite cut-for-time pieces ever.
STARS: *****

OTHER DRESS REHEARSAL SKETCHES
— A blogger who attended the dress gave details on other sketches missing from the live show and Cut For Time uploads, including 1920s Circle of Wit (Mulaney crashing a gathering of famous ‘20s writers but having no witty retorts to offer), Mar-a-lago (an inside look at the infamous resort, one set with Heidi and Luke singing cheesy songs, the other a ballroom with Mulaney as butler and Chris as waiter, etc.), and Parents/I’m up (Beck and his college friends return home and their parents try to spend time with them but are unable to stay awake).

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— While I don’t think this episode is as smooth and creative as Mulaney’s second episode was (overall), the highs are VERY high and are among some of the best moments of SNL in many years. It also “feels” like an SNL episode, hard as that is to explain. This episode serves as the best possible introduction to John Mulaney as a host, enough to immediately vault him into that category of hosts who feel like honorary cast members. Much as John’s episodes start to go off the rails in season 45, these first two contain so much of what I love about SNL, from challenging writing to diverse comedy topics to ensemble cast use.
— I have my complaints, which I more than made clear above, but I can’t be completely impartial about this episode because without it I would not be writing this review today. I would probably be in a comments section, complaining about how much I hated the writing in 2002 or how the current cast (most of whom I would have never seen) can never compare to the old days. I am, again, so grateful I got to review one of John’s episodes, and I thank you for going through all this review rollercoaster with me.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED IN SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS FROM BEST TO WORST
Switcheroo
(CFT: Wedding Toast)
Diner Lobster
Monologue
Drag Brunch
National School Walkout Day
Real Intros of Reality Hills
Horns
(CFT: Fish Dreams)
Weekend Update
Wild Wild Country
Cold Open

TOMORROW
Donald Glover is host and Childish Gambino is musical guest, in an episode reviewed by Kabir. I’ve heard they are the same person, but you’ll have to check the review out just to make sure… 

April 7, 2018 – Chadwick Boseman / Cardi B (S43 E17)

by Kabir

OUTNUMBERED
Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) & Baltic leaders field reporters’ questions

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— Good energy and demeanor from Leslie right from the top. She actually has to start over because of the applause.
— Funny line about “Outnumbered” being the name of her show, and also how she feels at Fox News.
— Now she’s referring to the talking heads at the network as “professional morons.” A good line whether you agree with Fox News or not.
— I will say, the tone of these alerts, which was funny in 2018, now just seems like standard fare from alt-right media.
— Here comes Alec Baldwin as Trump. His characterization seems looser than I remember. I doubt he’s ad-libbing lines like the mumbled “I hate this,” but he’s making them come off more natural. However, his facial expression is still far too exaggerated.
— The audience is not into this, aside from the line about expelling “Chinese billionaire P.F. Chang.”
— This is really turning into the Alec Baldwin show every week. Just a chance for his character to hurl insults—which are only occasionally well-written—at cast members. Now, we’re hearing his inner monologue while Kate plays it straight as a foreign leader.
— His calling the other leaders Balki or Borat is giving me flashbacks to the classic “Sinatra Group,” when he called Sinead O’Connor “Uncle Fester.” It worked then, but not as much now.
— This whole sketch is also kind of written like a middling ’80s sitcom, with Trump as the slacker-teen main character who is trying to pull a fast one. That’s not a compliment.
— Man, these jokes are TIRED. Maybe viewing this in hindsight, knowing it was just an average press conference for the time, is making it less funny to me. At least this was not another cameo-and-wild applause-festival.
STARS: **

MONOLOGUE
with SNL out of good Black Panther sketch ideas, host meets Panthro (KET)

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— Good energy from Chadwick.
— His jokes about hosting so long after “Black Panther” came out, and the bad sketch ideas, were kept to just the right length
— The audience loved the line about not wanting to be President, which he likens to a reality show. As with the cold open, though, this just feels like a history lesson.
— Rachel Dolezal joke! That was a 3-year-old scandal at this point, but it still worked because she had recently been in the news for welfare fraud.
— Now the monologue—which was moving along nicely—is interrupted by Kenan as Panthro.
— Chadwick is clearly getting a kick out of Kenan’s entire speech. I’m enjoying it, even though I know nothing about the MCU.
— Ha, Kenan exits after going meta and saying “15 seasons, baby!”
— Chadwick now treating the audience to some James Brown (a nod to his 2014 role in “Get On Up”). Again, great energy from him. Since we know he never gets to host again, I’m glad he was able to vamp at least once on SNL.
STARS: ****

NIKE PRO-CHILLER LEGGINGS
female couch potatoes (AIB) & (KAM) like Pro-Chiller Leggings from Nike

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— Good concept of showing “active” wear for couch potatoes.
— Now I’m getting grossed out by the line about leggings being “pants, pajamas, and a napkin.” This whole thing is one joke.
— This plateaued until the line about “my Fitbit thinks I’m dead.”
STARS: **

BLACK JEOPARDY!
Black Jeopardy!- T’Challa (host) adapts to African-American perspective

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— Just before the title graphic comes up, in the wide shot, for a split second I thought Chris was actually Kyle, doing a goofy dance. But now it turns out that Chris, Leslie, and Chadwick (as T’Challa) are the contestants. By the way, this is the second time (after Drake’s episode) without a white contestant.
— Good back-and-forth for everyone. This sketch is moving along well. T’Challa’s answer about honoring a grandmother was funny even if you don’t know much about his character (as I didn’t, until this review).
— Great line: “I died, you’re talking to a ghost.”
— Chadwick’s out-of-left-field responses are being used just enough that it’s not bogging down the sketch. Good reactions from Kenan.
— As T’Challa figures out the answer about potato salad, his interplay with Kenan is excellent. The two of them have a great rapport so far in this episode.
STARS: ****½

MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH
pregnant man (MID) dreads repercussions of urethral delivery of triplets

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— Interesting premise, but I have a feeling this will not have aged well in just three years.
— This is kind of feeling like a low-energy version of something you’d see on a ’70s primetime variety show.
— I had low hopes for this sketch, and of course it’s totally predictable.
— Okay, some good lines about “tulip-ing” and Elmer Fudd.
— Chadwick’s glee at announcing the triplets was good, as was his quick ending.
STARS: *½

AIDY B & CARDI B
mild-mannered AIB takes attitudinal inspiration from musical guest

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— “I need to be more like Cardi B.” Gee, I wonder if this is going to be yet another sketch where Aidy is rapping the entire time sketch (eye roll).
— Ha, Beck and Kyle as clueless bros. Always good. I believe this is Kyle’s only appearance tonight outside of the cold open.
— This scene with Aidy smacking down Chadwick and Chris is better than I expected.
— Writer Sudi Green makes a cameo, asking Aidy to record an Instagram message.
— This is the first time I’m hearing Cardi B’s conversational voice. Not sure if this is how she really speaks, or if it’s just for the sketch, but she’s entertaining.
— Matt points out that you can see the sketch/cast breakdown for this episode during the scene with Cardi B, including sketches which were cut.
— The structure for this totally made the piece, or it would have been just another rehash. Impressive and just the right length.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Bodak Yellow” & “Bartier Cardi”

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— Kabir: Interesting she starts off with the same song that was used throughout the previous short film.
— Blue: It feels like a lifetime ago when Cardi B first became popular. Hard to believe it’s only been three years.
— Believe it or not, since I’m a left-of-the-dial type of music listener, I’ve only heard one Cardi B song before. Which leads me to wonder if this is a medley or just a super dramatic transition in the song.
— Cardi B is rapping very well, but the backup dancers are the ones holding my attention. Love their outfits, and there’s something so powerful about their choreography.
— I am very impressed by Cardi B’s ability to spit out these verses without gasping for air.
— I feel a little bad that the two hip hop artists I’ve reviewed so far (the other one being Migos) also received the lowest scores for this season so far, but this performance really just washed over me.
STARS: **

WEEKEND UPDATE
inhuman Mark Zuckerberg (ALM) is unsympathetic to Facebook privacy fears

archetypal movie boxer’s girlfriend Angel is fed up with her situation

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— I’ve said this before of shows from this season, but this sadly just this feels like a history lesson. And I could be reading too much into it, but Che’s delivery again seems muted—possibly from the toll all of this has taken on him. Seems to be affecting Colin, too.
— The better jokes tonight are ones that take a bizarre turn (Monster energy drink, dry nuts, etc.). The Fucci joke was good but the audience seemed to miss it.
— Alex’s immature, robotic characterization of Mark Zuckerberg is as disturbing as it is funny. The audience seems a little unsettled.
— The first joke after the commentary, about students with guns, got no response. Maybe it was too real for the audience, since the following non-political jokes did better?
— Angel—every boxer’s girlfriend—is back for her second appearance (the first being the Larry David episode earlier this season). Heidi’s acting is intense, and she’s doing an excellent job, but I’m not sure where else they can take this character.
— Good turn with the global warming and “Frasier” bits. This bumped up WU by a half-star. To date, Angel has appeared once more, in the season 44 Christmas show hosted by Matt Damon. I do not recall enjoying that installment as much, but we’ll see.
STARS: ***

MAGIC MIRROR
at Disneyland, R. Kelly (host) appears to (LEJ) in the Magic Mirror

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— I should warn everyone: I am a sucker for sketches that poke fun at DisneyWorld/Disneyland… from the “Small World” piece in season 9 to the cut-for-time “John Smith” piece with Blake Shelton in season 40, and everything in between (like Debbie Downer).
— Aidy and Melissa already seem like they are starting to break, and the sketch just started. I hope that’s a good sign.
— Chadwick is doing a good, creepy job as R. Kelly, and I assume this is referencing the “closet” series of videos. Whether this is referencing specific things in those videos, I can’t recall.
— Decent callback with Beck assuming that Chadwick is playing a Mulan character. This felt a little short, especially considering how elaborate the set is.
STARS: ***

WAREHOUSE FIRE
fireman (host) wants to leave blaze to work on mannequin-for-dogs idea

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— Another elaborate set with good fire effects. I don’t think people comment on this very often, but the crew should be commended for building something so complex (and striking it so quickly after the last sketch). I’m sure that’s just routine in 8H over the past 46 years, though.
— This feels very 10-to-1, but they’re taking a while to get to the joke.
— Good commitment from Chadwick, but the material is letting him down.
— Beck getting in a couple decent lines about sex dolls.
— This was weak. It felt like a season 6 or 7 sketch which suddenly had a big chunk cut out, 30 seconds before going to air. I’m giving one-third-star each for Chadwick’s commitment, for the set, and for the cute dog.
STARS: *

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Be Careful”

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— Blue: At first I almost thought the backing vocals were being sung by Cardi B, and my jaw was about to drop over her vocal versatility, but then the camera panned over to the actual singer.
— Cardi B’s singing would be better here if she had better breath support.
— I’m digging the percussion section.
— Nice baby bump reveal, Cardi! That was some clever camerawork keeping it from being visible. The audience went wild at that. I now feel I should cut her some slack re: breath support, as it’s not easy to sing when pregnant (so I’ve heard).
— Cardi B hit the last note a little flat.
— Another song that did very little for me.
STARS: **

RESTAURANT COMPLAINT
diners (KAM), (CES), (host), (KET) jazzily lodge a complaint via song

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— Wow, pretty elaborate hair and makeup on the diners in this. I just realized that I’m probably noticing stuff like that, and the sets, because the energy has really dropped off since Black Jeopardy.
— I know musical sketches aren’t a favorite around here, but this song is at least catchy.  The melody is actually reminiscent of the controversial season 23 “Schoolhouse Rock!” parody.
— Chadwick’s Louis Armstrong-like “Oh yeah” got a nice response, but his gravelly voice is occasionally obscuring what he says.
— A lot of theater kid energy in this. I can totally picture Molly Shannon in this.
— The audience is baffled, but I’m enjoying how bizarre this is.
— “Why did I need to be here for this?” “For the acoustics.”
— Chadwick seems like he’s not thrilled doing this, but it grew on me. I’m sure my fellow reviewers will flame me for this rating.
— The visual at the end with Chadwick and Melissa was very sweet.
STARS: ***½

THE GAME OF LIFE: DACA EDITION
The Game Of Life, DACA Edition has unfair rules for Dreamers like (MEV)

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— This commercial is very well-produced, but it’s veering from parody to “heartbreaking yet true.”
— The “expansion pack” joke was nicely revealed, as was the deportation catapult.
— Nice tag at the end from Chris. Compared to the “Welcome Video” from season 42’s Kristen Stewart episode, this feels like a less manic (and more sobering) take on immigration.
— Written by Julio Torres. Reviewer Matt says this must have been a very personal, cathartic piece for Torres. I agree.
STARS: ***½

WAKANDA FOREVER
white appropriation of Wakanda salute discomfits (LEJ), (CRR), (host)

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— Ha, Pete’s version of the salute is so goofy when combined with the pelvic thrust.
— Funny pronunciation from Beck of “Wakanda.”
— Leslie: “We know your history; you don’t give stuff back.”
— This ended better than I expected. It also felt short and probably got truncated for time.
STARS: ***½

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— Good commitment from Chadwick in many of the sketches, but most of the show had a low energy vibe (outside of the monologue), possibly reflecting everyone’s real-life general malaise due to world affairs. At least this episode was largely free of politics aside from Weekend Update and the cold open.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Black Jeopardy!
Restaurant Complaint
The Game of Life: DACA Edition
Aidy B & Cardi B
Wakanda Forever
Monologue
Magic Mirror
Weekend Update
Nike Pro-Chiller Leggings
Outnumbered
Medical Breakthrough
Warehouse Fire

TOMORROW
Former SNL writer John Mulaney makes his hosting debut, covered by current OneSNLaDay writer John (not-Mulaney) 

March 17, 2018 – Bill Hader / Arcade Fire (S43 E16)

by Anthony

ANDERSON COOPER 360
fired Rex Tillerson (John Goodman) is relieved

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— Kate reprises her Jeff Sessions impression again, because why not continue to beat a horse that was dead months ago?
— I did chuckle at Sessions’ “I’m just a simple man who wanted to make things bad for immigrants”, but other than that his section of this open is basically like a slightly more irritating version of a white noise machine to me.
— Kate’s Sessions makes a reference to a Tyler Perry movie he definitely would have never seen or even heard of, because, hey – reference! To a mild hit that predates this episode by 9 years!
— I love John Goodman, but I’m not exactly keeling over in anticipation at the return of his Rex Tillerson. At least this is the last we see of it, besides a quick cameo in this season’s Fey finale (because that episode didn’t have enough cameos already), though sadly it’s FAR from the last pointless celebrity cameo we’ll get in one of these opens over the next few years.
— Funny description of Trump as “a man who used to sell steaks in the mail” by Tillerson.
— Fred cameo number who knows anymore. I’ll get into a bit more in my review of the Californians sketch, but I don’t have the seething rage others have for these as much as general indifference. Bill on the other hand, I’m always happy to see, though Scaramucci is hardly my favorite impression of his.
— The bits with Fred’s Wolff aren’t really doing anything for me, as they’re just a repeat of what he did in the Joe & Mika sketch from Sam Rockwell’s episode.
— Got another mild laugh now from Tillerson giddily interrupting Cooper mid sentence to scream “Trump is a moron!”
— The bits with Scaramucci forgetting he’s being recorded and saying revealing things also aren’t really doing anything for me.
— Overall, another tepid, cameo filled Cold Open from the Trump era. Like a lot of these, it managed to sneak in a couple of lines I chuckled at (three in this one’s case) that kept it from being a complete dud, but I still really have no use for these. This one especially felt old hat, as we’ve seen literally all these impressions before, and other than Tillerson being a bit looser here, the writers gave them nothing new to work with.
STARS: *½

MONOLOGUE
BIH is only now realizing some basic truths about the show

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— Fun, energetic entrance from Bill.
— Apparently John Mulaney had a hand in writing this monologue. This makes sense, as he would have already been in the building for reasons we’ll get to later…
— Bill’s announcement that was in the show for “210 episodes. I was nervous for every one of them, and I’m nervous now!” was charming.
— Some mild laughs during the bits where Bill acts like he’s only just now realizing a bunch of obvious things about the show.
— The bit with the actor being told by a newsboy outside of 30 Rock that he was being impersonated felt particularly Mulaney-esque to me.
— The way Bill says “I didn’t know that” when talking about the fake commercials felt very Norm Macdonald.
— A very cool transition to the next sketch where Bill does his quick change on stage, leading to a very rare modern post monologue sketch before a commercial break. The specialness of the moment is a bit ruined by it being a Californians costume Bill’s changing into, however.
STARS: ***

THE CALIFORNIANS
Devin’s (BIH) love child (PED) attends Stuart’s party

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— Now would probably be a good time for me to give some context into my relationship with Bill as a cast member, these Californians sketches, and his era in general (bare with me). I started watching in season 34, and watched through the doldrums of season 35 and 36 as a tween virtually unaware of any flaws in what I was watching. And trust me, there were plenty. While I’m now able to view their era with more of a critical eye, that’s still probably the cast I feel the most personal connection to. Bill especially is a comedic hero of mine, and one of a few cast members from around that time who can basically do no wrong in my eyes along with Jason, Forte and Bobby. Fred on the other hand is one of the only performers from that era I can kind of take or leave. I agree with most that he spent far too long on the show and was responsible for a lot of unwatchable material in his last few seasons, but I never got quite as tired with him as some. I certainly don’t foam at the mouth with rage any time he cameos, though they certainly don’t make me jump for joy either.
— As for The Californians, I never really hated these like some do, though I agree it’s some pretty weak sauce shit that in no way deserves to be remembered as a cornerstone of the era (it didn’t even debut until Kristen’s final season!). While I never really hated these sketches, I certainly understood the hate. The massive love these sketches get on the other hand has always confounded me a bit. Thanks for indulging me if you read all that, now on with the review!
— No Vanessa Bayer sadly, though her absence is acknowledged. I guess we are past the (shockingly recent) cut off date of when a character like Rosa would be acceptable.
— Speaking of which, with the mentions of Trump and Rosa being deported, this is certainly the most political a Californians has ever been. Not sure I need these characters to weigh in on current events, but I guess it is something, which is usually missing in these Californians sketches.
— During the usual bit where the camera does a close up on everyone while they make silly surprised faces, I laughed at the camera doing a close up on the picture of Rosa.
— Some audience members are applauding during the first transitional scene as if the sketch were over already. If only.
— Decent meta bit with Pete’s character pointing out the Californians don’t sound like real life Californians.
— Wait, that Pete bit I just mentioned is how they END the sketch? Talk about underwritten.
— Also, why does Pete get meta with the rest of the sketch but then just join in on the weird mirror ending they always do? That could have at least been a way to spice up that tired gag a bit.
STARS: *½

KISS ME I’M IRISH
contestants (KAM) & (CES) are bachelor’s (BIH) cousins

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— Bit interested to watch this as I have absolutely zero memory of it (nor another sketch coming up tonight, “CBC Report”).
— Fitting sketch for a St. Patrick’s Day episode.
— Bill’s intro is pretty funny.
— Some sloppy direction (another unfortunate staple of this era) when the camera cuts to Aidy while Kate’s character is still introducing herself, causing Kate to speedily finish her line.
— Some lazy, stereotypical humor here. This almost feels like a Season 20 sketch (though thankfully this one will probably clock in under 8 minutes).
— Aidy is at least playing her reaction to the cousin still being in play well. She’s always good at selling that kind of indignation.
— I laughed at Bill’s delivery of “picky, picky”.
— Yea, despite a few choice lines and some decent performances, can’t say I cared much for this. Tonight’s episode is not off to a great start.
STARS: **

GIRLFRIENDS’ GAME NIGHT
(CES) has wheelchair sex with elderly husband (BIH) in front of friends

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— For once, Anderlette come in to save an episode (though Anderson is still partly to blame, since he co-writes The Californians). This has always been one of my favorite sketches of theirs—though, as we’ll see, it’s not entirely because of the writing.
— Bill is funny from his entrance here, clearly having a ton of fun dicking around with the motorized wheelchair.
— Very juvenile concept to this sketch, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t amuse me.
— I laughed at Aidy’s dry delivery of “you can’t do that old man here”.
— Another laugh when Aidy asks if the couple can at least move to the bedroom and Heidi quickly interjects with “don’t offer them my bedroom”.
— Cecily’s really having a hard time not breaking at Bill’s aroused moans.
— Classic gaffe now when Bill reverses the wheelchair and accidentally drags Melissa and the table along with it. As you can see in the screenshots above, this causes pretty much everyone to break.
— Heidi not breaking at all during the table mishap and immediately protectively covering the table as if she really owns it are a couple of the small actor-y kind of touches she brings that always really impress me.
— A fun sketch that brought a dose of much needed energy back into the proceedings tonight.
STARS: ****

JURASSIC PARK SCREEN TESTS
Jurassic Park 25th anniversary DVD contains unsuccessful screen tests

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— These are always fun, if toothless. I remember Mulaney telling a story during an interview once that happened to involve him writing one of these screen test sketches, and when describing them he kind of laughed them off and basically said they weren’t exactly the work anyone at the show was most proud of (he then made some crack like “hey, 90 minutes is a lot of time to fill”).
— Always a treat to see Bill’s Alan Alda.
— Oh Kate does an Ellen? Who knew?
— Solid Drew Barrymore from Heidi, though we’ve seen better before (Kristen) and will again later (Chloe).
— Always interesting seeing Kenan play Sinbad, as he was one of Kenan’s co-stars in Good Burger.
— Oh Bill does a Pacino? Who knew? (I’m actually always happy to see Bill’s Pacino, but thought I’d include this in the interest of being fair).
— Speaking of being fair to Kate, she busts out a fantastic Lisa Kudrow here. Her Jodie Foster scene is also fairly funny.
— Eh, Bill’s Clint Eastwood is an impression of his I actually have seen enough times for a lifetime.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Creature Comfort”

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Anthony: I feel like I have a similar relationship to Arcade Fire as a lot of people. I thought their first three albums were fantastic, thought Reflektor was messy but had some great songs, and thought Everything Now, the album they’re promoting with this performance, was a bit of a disaster. They’re always great, theatrical live performers, however, so this should still be good.
— Although it’s not the title track, the only song I love off Everything Now, this has always been one of the ones off the album I don’t mind as much. Got a bit of an LCD Soundsystem energy to it.
— Blue:
— It’s been mentioned many times before, but it bears repeating: god damn there are a lot of people in Arcade Fire.
— Immediately the performance comes off as a bit of a spectacle, with all the band members decked out in gold and silver suits, while the fog machine rolls and the flashing LED screens light up the darkened stage. Win Butler even appears to be standing on a speaker.
— The jerky movements of some of the backing musicians are cracking me up a bit (though it’s not intended to be funny).
— Not sure if I’m just in a cynical mood, but my reaction to the first lyrics of this song is currently “feeling real edgy, aren’t we.”
— Not loving Regine Chassagne’s voice. She sure is singing fiercely, though.
— The song has a nice, driving electronic rhythm, and I love the repeated synth riff that sounds like bells.
— One of the band members (who I can’t identify) just pulled out a violin, but I can’t hear it in the mix at all.
— The rare wide shots of the stage present a striking visual, especially now that the screens are flashing at a quicker rate, resembling strobe lights.
— Despite its epic presentation, I did not care for that song.
STARS : *** (mostly for the presentation)

WEEKEND UPDATE
Betsy DeVos’ (KAM) thoughts on education are uninformed gobbledygook

PED has little sympathy for Kevin Love’s panic attack

Stefon’s lawyer (John Mulaney) helps with St. Patrick’s Day attractions

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— Che’s knack for analogy comes through again with a solid comparison between the Trump White House and Dominos.
— Great bit with Che worrying Trump’s sex tape could actually be good.
— Jost criticizing the media for hyping up the potential effect of the Mueller Report too much is ironic, since I remember a lot of pandering “we’ve totally got this guy” moments in the De Niro Mueller sketches.
— Kate’s Betsy DeVos returns again. I’m so burned out on Kate’s political impressions, but I’ll admit this is one of the better ones (I hate all these people by the way, it shouldn’t be so hard to get me excited that someone is mocking them).
— This impression is pretty much as one note at this point as Sessions, but certainly less annoying at least. Her segment tonight was decent enough, if completely unremarkable.
— After a groan from the audience over a joke about Donald Jr.’s wife leaving him, Che says an amused “you know what we do here, right?”
— After Jost gets a laugh with his dry description of Taco Bell’s new Strawberry Skittle Slushie drink as “you know, Mexican food”, he gets an even bigger laugh by adding “just like me abuela used to make”, a joke made even funnier by it being delivered by Jost of all people (in a very Jost manner, at that).
— Here’s a Pete segment I remember being minorly controversial, though certainly not on the level of his Dan Crenshaw comments next season. (Man, remember how fucking stupid all that was? Glad I’m not writing about either of those episodes to be honest.)
— I can certainly see how Pete’s comments would rub some people the wrong way and seem as if he’s dismissing Love’s experience. While I don’t think that was his intent myself, I can see how some would see it as him gatekeeping mental health issues.
— Always love an acknowledgement of Mike Love as the worst Beach Boy.
— Some very dark portions of Pete’s segment. During one especially dark bit that starts with a story of him being hit as a child and ends with him mentioning his father’s passing, you can hear several audience members audibly gasp and wince.
— Pete’s “I gotta pretend I care about this guy” when doing the requisite bit at the end when he reaches out to Love is an example of Pete’s seeming indifference towards the show actually coming off as charming. Pete very much wants to do his own thing, which can be annoying when he tanks someone else’s sketch with a poorly rehearsed supporting performance or gets several minutes of airtime to parody rap songs from 20 years ago, but in cases like this where that manifests as a blatant disregard for the bullshit formalities of show business that cast members are forced to participate in, I can respect it. That’s also what made it especially disappointing this year to see him defending a certain controversial billionaire host (you know, the one that’s actually a billionaire).
— A solid piece for Pete that walked a difficult tightrope well for the most part, though it was a step down from his last piece I covered in the Chance the Rapper episode, which I think is one of his all time best Update pieces.
— As always, huge applause before Stefon even comes out. While I don’t have quite the undying devotion for this character many do, I’m never upset to see him.
— As always, Bill is barely able to keep it together as Stefon.
— Stefon’s description of “the stranger” was funny enough, but the Bruce Springsteen tag was hilarious.
— “If you’re Irish, or just white and violent…”
— I got a huge laugh at the random mention of a Garry Marshall Memorial Drive.
— The repeated mentions of the Denzel Washington film Roman J Israel, Esq. definitely seem like they were added last minute by Mulaney to throw Bill off (as is tradition with Stefon), as Bill loses it every time that gag comes back.
— And now we get the famous John Mulaney cameo. The audience’s reaction to Mulaney is so wild I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the entire reason Lorne decided to let him host 2 episodes later. As a massive fan of Mulaney’s work on the show and his stand up, this moment and his subsequent run as perennial guest host (he’s hosted more than any cast member from the Wiig era!) were very vindicating. By the way Lorne, if you’re reading—and I know you aren’t—it’s a damn crime Sudeikis and Forte haven’t hosted yet.
— Mulaney immediately cracks everyone up by delivering his lines in his typical, straightlaced manner while dressed as “conceptual piss artist” Shy. Bill later said he didn’t know Mulaney would speak in his normal voice (if anything, he’s a bit more professional as Shy), which makes me wonder if Mulaney’s addition here was a last minute thing they didn’t have time to rehearse, or if Mulaney just did a voice more similar to Stefon’s in rehearsals.
— Mulaney cracks up Bill again by whispering a silly phrase in his ear during their “conference”. Bill later revealed the phrase was “my girlfriend works at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl”.
— We get the set up for a fun deviation with Stefon doing a parody of Seth’s “A Closer Look” segment from his Late Night show, but they don’t really do anything with it.
— As always, Stefon was a lot of fun and packed in a lot of great, absurd details.
RATING: ****

SACRED ROCK
(BIH) warns Sedona tourists (ALM) & (HEG) about his close encounter

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— A random rehash of a sketch from Bruno Mars’ S38 episode. I didn’t care for that sketch much the first time around, which doesn’t bode well for this belated sequel.
— A description of a vagina as a “wookie cookie”? Hmm, is it possible James Anderson had a hand in writing a THIRD sketch tonight?
— Laughed at the way Bill said “Phoebe Snow”. His nonchalant exits are also funny.
— Alien rape jokes have a history of making for all time awful SNL sketches (think Deion Sanders and Johnny Knoxville—or better yet don’t), so I’m not too thrilled about this premise.
— Bill just pronounced fools as “ferls”, further adding to my theory Anderson was at least partially behind this.
— Always appreciate a good “crazy thing is happening in the background while the people in the foreground remain oblivious” joke. I don’t know if I’d call this a good one of those, but it is one of them, that’s for sure.
— Yea, there was no reason to bring this back.
STARS: *½

CBC REPORT
Canada’s Harvey Weinstein equivalent (BIH) is inoffensive & penitent

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— Another #MeToo related sketch this season.
— Really? A sketch about how Canadians are super nice? Wow, never seen THAT comedic premise before.
— Dave Foley references are always appreciated.
— The picture of Bill in the fifth screencap above made me laugh.
— The scene with Heidi’s character did nothing for me.
— Interesting to see SNL alum Mike Myers included in one of the photoshopped paparazzi pics of Bill’s character with famous celebrities.
— And now the sketch is about how Canadians say “sorry” funny? Again, never seen THAT joke before.
— I did like Will Butler’s “not Canadian, but still sorry”. Still this Arcade Fire sketch appearance is no “New Cast Member or Arcade Fire?” (and it’s not like that sketch is a classic).
— Between this, The Californians and Kiss Me I’m Irish, a lot of sketches relying on lazy stereotypes tonight.
STARS: *½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Put Your Money On Me”

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— Anthony: It’s hard to tell, but apparently Spike Jonze is one of the slot machine operators (guessing he’s the one directly to the left of Win in the fourth screenshot.
— Very cool visual element to this, as there usually is with Arcade Fire. Helps lift up the performance, as I don’t particularly care for this song (though I still prefer it to a lot of the music we see on that stage these days…)
— Blue: We open with a close up shot of a row of slot machines at the foot of the stage. Looks like this’ll be another theatrical presentation.
— Once again, the violin is hardly audible in the mix. I’ll have to look closely to see if there are any other instruments being played that I can’t hear.
— Win’s black suit with his hat and his unplayed acoustic guitar is making him come off as a country/western singer, which is pretty far from Arcade Fire’s actual sound. Regine’s stylish red outfit is more fitting.
— I was starting to wonder when Win or Regine would play their instruments. Maybe Regine was playing the whole time and her odd movements distracted me. Speaking of inaudible instruments, that guitar might as well not be played.
— I like the fake ads they’re showing on the screen behind the band.
— For a moment I thought Win was going to go into the audience. Slightly relieved that he didn’t.
— Despite the repetitiveness of the chorus, I like it.
— The outro of the song, with the piano flourishes and Win singing in falsetto, is my favorite part of this performance.
— There sure was a lot to look at during that performance, so that it almost detracted from the listening experience. I’d like to look into the album Arcade Fire were promoting at the time and what sort of themes/concepts it explored, so I might get a better sense of the meaning behind the visuals. Complex lighting/staging can greatly enhance a song’s performance (as we’ll see three episodes later with one of my favorite SNL performances), but at the same time, with something so clearly visualized as this, I feel the need to understand the underlying concept, because otherwise it takes away from the music being performed.
STARS: *** (again, the visuals keep it from being **)

UNDERCOVER OFFICE POTTY
Undercover Office Potty allows (BEB) to crap in his office while at work

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— A very stupid Beck/Kyle short I’ve always loved.
— Solid voicework from Cecily as usual. Beck similarly is playing “unassuming doofus” as well as always.
— While I’m generally not crazy about toilet humor (the IBS medication commercial parody from Carey Mulligan’s recent episode for example really didn’t work for me), skits like this one and “Fake Cocaine” that let the potty humor just be a backdrop to more absurd ideas tend to really work for me. This sketch especially feels like a spiritual successor to another potty humor sketch I’ve always liked, “Bathroom Businessman” from Melissa McCarthy’s season 38 episode—though I prefer this one by quite a bit as I think it goes even more extreme in its absurdity.
— Beck’s bad lying about anything being off with his office is really funny.
— Is it just me or does Bill look kind of like Stephen King here?
— Hilarious escalation with the huge office supplies.
— I can see how the screaming match between Bill and Beck could be too over the top for some, but it’s very funny to me. I especially love the reveal that Beck’s character hasn’t even been working and has only been going to the bathroom.
— Hilarious gross ending. Love seeing some unblurred, nasty looking diarrhea on my network TV.
STARS: *****

GOODNIGHTS

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— Jon Hamm! Now there’s a face I’ll welcome on my SNL screen anytime.

CUT FOR TIME: ST. PATRICK’S DAY
eccentric (BIH) showcases his favorite St. Patrick’s Day goodies alongside (BEB) and a sheep

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— The third in the show’s “creepy holiday decorations” recurring sketches, following the Christmas one with Steve Buscemi and the Easter one with Michael Keaton. I don’t love those as much as some, but I do enjoy them.
— Laughed at the shift in tone from the lame corned beef joke to Bill’s character imploring viewers to kill themselves.
— “Steven, what did I say about eating butter?” “Do it?” “That’s right.”
— While certainly enjoyable, this is a bit hard to review as it’s really just a series of one liners. I’m happy to report at least that most of the one liners work for me.
— Bill is doing really strong work as the host here. This is the type of role he’s been given dozens of times before, but he always finds fun little touches in his performances. I like how he plays this guy so you’re not sure how aware he is of how creepy he’s being.
— Not crazy about Beck’s characterization in the role Kristen/Kate had in the previous sketches as the host’s strange sidekick. I like the childish nature he’s bringing, but something about it just isn’t fully clicking. Maybe I’m just not a huge fan of the material he’s given.
— Love Bill’s character mistaking Buffalo Bill for the Lucky Charms mascot.
— Confused why the audience laughed at Bill’s friggin’ sweet Colin Farrell collage.
— Probably due to issues with the lamb, Beck has to come in early on some of his lines. Wonder if that had anything to do with the sketch being cut.
— Funny casual reveal at the end that Bill’s character was supposed to be Liam Neeson this whole time.
— Overall, a strong piece, about as good as the other two. Certainly better than a lot of tonight’s material that made it on air.
STARS: ****

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A disappointment for an episode hosted by one of the show’s former greats. Only a handful of sketches worked for me tonight, with a lot of the material relying on lazy and frankly kind of hacky ideas. Outside of Stefon, The Californians, and a couple impressions, we didn’t get too many callbacks to Bill’s time on the show, and yet the whole thing had a very “been there, done that” feel.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Undercover Office Potty
Girlfriends’ Game Night
Weekend Update
(CFT: St. Patrick’s Day)
Jurassic Park Screen Tests
Monologue
Kiss Me I’m Irish
Sacred Rock
The Californians (did not expect two sketches below a Californians)
Anderson Cooper 360
CBC Report

TOMORROW
Kabir gives his thoughts on the late Chadwick Boseman’s first and, sadly, only episode as host.

March 10, 2018 – Sterling K. Brown / James Bay (S43 E15)

by Vax Novier

THE BACHELOR LIVE
Robert Mueller (KAM) has bad news for Becca K. (CES)

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— Ugh! Kate brings back her self-indulgent, prosthetic-heavy Robert Mueller! At least it’s the last time we see this version of the impression, though the replacement isn’t any better.
— This really takes you back to when everyone thought the Mueller report would be the thing that exposed Trump and end his presidency. Needless to say, any material surrounding the topic doesn’t age well at all.
— The joke of the unnecessary split screens isn’t as funny as the show thinks it is. Having them overlap at certain points isn’t helping the bit either.
— Man, this feels like it’s dragging on forever!
— Overall, that was rough to sit through. This one didn’t even need Trumpwin to bomb hard. What was the point of pairing the Mueller stuff with The Bachelor!? I know the finale aired earlier that week, but the setting didn’t add anything to the topical discussion. If they were trying to change up the openings by presenting it in a new angle, it failed miserably.
STARS: *

OPENING MONTAGE
— Darrell is a little late in his announcements early on, but he catches up midway through.
— Watching the intro is reminding me of the homemade version that was created for one of the promos earlier in the week.

MONOLOGUE
being on SNL has brought emotional host to the verge of tears

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— The reveal that the K in his name stood for Kathleen was okay, but I laughed moments later when he said “Get it together Sterling Kathleen!”
— Sterling’s impression of Kenan is funny.
— Leslie receives huge applause just for walking on.
— A decent premise of Sterling being overly emotional about everything which he carried well.
STARS: ***

FAMILY FEUD
Oscar winners battle Common (host) & other Oscar losers

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— Kate brings back her Francis McDormand impression.
— The debut of Heidi’s Allison Janey.
— Classic meta bit with Chris as Jordan Peele explaining how sketch comedy is a stepping stone and that you eventually have to move on after a couple years, followed by Kenan as Steve Harvey’s uneasy reaction to the statement asking “How many years?” 
— The initial visual of Alex’s Wilem Dafoe is funny, can’t say the same for the impression itself though.
— Interesting to see Pete portraying Timothée Chalamet here, considering the chemistry they would have when paired together during Timothée’s hosting stint three seasons later.
— I can’t confirm the accuracy of Sterling’s Common, but he seems to be enjoying himself.
STARS: ***½

THIS IS U.S.
federal dysfunction drama is making Americans sad

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— The obligatory This Is Us parody.
— Pete plays Jared Kushner for this pre-tape only as Fallon returns to the role in a future cold open.
— Sterling is doing a good Ben Carson, providing most of the highlights here.
— This commercial was very short.
STARS: **

FAMILY DINNER
at dinner with his future in-laws, (host) insists that Shrek is nonpareil

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— Oh here’s a classic sketch!
— Written by Steven Castillo and Will Stephen.
— Good turn with Sterling getting defensive when arguing that Shrek is the best movie of all time.
— Tons of standout lines from Sterling such as “You’re wrong and stupid person!” “Fight me, bully!” after throwing a glass of water on Beck (fifth screencap from the bottom), and “I can’t believe I have to defend a movie with three hit sequels and a 4-D Universal Studios Ride!”.
— Sterling’s serious sounding delivery is adding an extra layer and putting this over. Even though he’s a bit stumbly at points (including one of the quotes listed above), it’s not detracting from the sketch at all.
— Beck always excels in the enraged straight man role.
— The live airing ends with Smash Mouth’s “I’m a Believer” cover playing over the establishing shot. This is replaced with generic music in the online version for music rights.
STARS: *****

SASQUATCH
no matter what survival tactics he tries, (MID) gets abused by Sasquatch

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— We get a rare onscreen appearance from Streeter Seidell as the sasquatch.
— After initially hitting Mikey, this has dragged on going into a weak direction with some of the cheap homoerotic stuff.
— Once again, Sterling’s serious sounding delivery is an unintentional highlight.
— Could’ve been better overall, but parts of it were alright.
STARS: **½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Pink Lemonade”

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— Blue: Wait, this indie rock song is brought to you by the same guy who does “so come on let it go, just let it be, why don’t you be you and I be me?”
— I like James’ pink sparkly vest.
— Fun, upbeat chorus with a strong performance from the backing vocalists
— I love James’ guitar’s tone.
— This whole thing is very 80’s throwback.
— The spirited “I’m protecting you” outro is the only time that I’ve enjoyed James’ voice during this performance. Otherwise he’s a perfectly serviceable singer and… that’s it.
STARS: *** (I’d probably rate it higher if it was sung by somebody else)

WEEKEND UPDATE
Donald Jr. (MID) & Eric (ALM) say pa Trump is the victim of fake news

anxious Dawn Lazarus doesn’t provide much information about winter storms

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— And now we get a reminder of the constant North Korea threats that were going on. It shows how dated a lot of the political material can be in just three years.
— Good porn analogy from Colin about being desensitized by the news, then saying how people can only get excited by Asian lesbians (Kim Jong-un).
— By this point, the Don Jr. and Eric Trump pieces have become formulaic, but there’s still some funny moments like Alex as Eric’s reaction to the pop-up book.
— Some tepid audience reactions to the back-to-back International Women’s Day jokes.
— Vanessa Bayer makes a return appearance within the season after her departure from the show. It’s always nice to see Vanessa, and great to see her getting some well-deserved recognition cheers.
— I always thought it was strange how Dawn Lazarus became one of Vanessa’s flagship characters (appearing on her last show, being the character she makes a cameo with) since she didn’t debut until the end of her tenure and all of the characater’s appearances were in the span of less than a year. In spite of that, I still enjoy the piece and Vanessa nails the characterization as usual.
STARS: ***½

BLACK PANTHER
in the Djalia, T’Challa (CRR) meets (KET), who married into the family

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— Fitting to do a Black Panther sketch considering Sterling’s role in the film.
— And now we get the reveal of Kenan as the distant inlaw. Meh, not the most original premise. It feels like the “family member is wild and acts differently from the rest” trope has been overused by this point.
— Kenan’s Lion King bit causes Leslie to break while Sterling clearly tries to hold it in.
— Besides the above, nothing really stood out about this. I will give praise for the costume and set design though.
STARS: **

DR. LOVE
Dr. Love (host) urges (BEB) to commit to the woman he’s having sex with

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—Good premise with Sterling being invested in Beck’s love life when finding out he’s sexually active with his partner all the time.
—Funny part where Sterling holds off a checkup with a cancer patient to continue talking with Beck.
—Sterling: “I knew syphilis rotted the mind, I didn’t know it rotted the soul” Beck: I have syphilis!?!” Sterling “I don’t know, man!”
—I like the turn with Beck deciding to race to the airport and Sterling having a suit with flowers ready for him.
—And now it’s subtly revealed in the diploma behind Sterling that he’s actually Cupid, a detail that went over my head when this first aired.
—Overall, I wanted to like this more than I did, but it had a nice oddball charm and the actors played it well. I don’t know why, but it felt like something that you normally don’t see during the modern years. Funny how this was the second sketch in the past three episodes starring just Beck and the host.
STARS: ***½

LINE READER
script supervisor’s (CES) bowdlerization throws actor (host) off his game

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— Kyle makes his first appearance of the night. This is a good opportunity to point out how little Kyle appears throughout this season. Sure he’s never been a leading player and has several films that made it to air (mainly in the first half), but Kyle’s pretty invisible in terms of individual appearances, averaging one or two per show, just during this season. For comparison, the only non-Update cast member to appear in fewer sketches than him in this season was Luke Null (who has yet to appear tonight) and he was making more total appearances in Season 45 before the shutdown occurred.
— Anyway, onto the sketch; Kyle’s line relating to #MeToo got a big reaction.
— Interesting characterization from Cecily, based on this old viral music video. Reportedly, she had been trying to get this character on for years.
— When watching this live, I felt that this was one of many things throughout the season that represented Cecily’s decline on the show and a reminder of how much I didn’t enjoy her during this period.
— Funny part with Cecily putting a bag on her head thinking it would help.
— The camera cuts to Sterling from the wrong angle several times facing his side.
— Melissa’s occasional interjections are providing laughs.
— This ended up being better than I remembered.
STARS: ***

ROCK OR RAP
Chris Fitzpatrick gets pedestrians to weigh in on rock music vs. rap

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— The return of Chris Fitzpatrick, in a different setting that combines the character with Kyle’s street interview pieces.
— Some good bits from the cheap Powerpoint presentation intro.
— “I spoke to a very diverse group of people.” followed by a visual of white men.
— I feel bad for chuckling at the part where the person of color’s deep answer to “rock or rap” is abruptly cut off during the montage of white people saying rap is better.
— One of the responses to the main difference between rock and rap being “Usually skin color” received groans from the audience.
— Funny part of one guy droning endlessly with his answer, complete with several transitions showing the passage of time, leading to the voice over eventually stating that they talked for four more hours.
— The text visuals that pop up throughout the short are providing some highlights.
— Overall, there was a lot to like about this, and the different angle prevented the character from getting stale.
STARS: ****½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Wild Love”

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— Blue: This stripped-back arrangement of this song is exposing James’ voice, which unfortunately does nothing but remind me of how I don’t care for it.
— At least the backing vocalists sound great, and I like the soft synths in the background.
— Cool, unexpected guitar solo from James.
— Okay, I do like James’ voice when he’s using his upper range. Low to mid-range vocals are not doing it for me.
— Nice arrangement on that song.
STARS: ***

DYING MRS. GOMEZ
on her death bed, (MEV) recites “This Is How You Remind Me” lyrics

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— Great to see Melissa appearing all over this episode after being practically invisible for most of the year.
— Melissa is making what could be a thin premise work as she sings Nickleback, complete with hand motions and a backing track.
— Luke finally appears…in a nothing bit part at the very end of the show. Is there a better representation of how underused he was!?
— Fun part with Melissa being revived to continue singing as everyone rocks along.
— Alex: “I don’t know why you guys are clapping! This woman is dead.” Perfect line to end the sketch on before the closing graphic.
— A fantastic showcase for Melissa, one that she really needed by this point to avoid being dropped at the end of the season. If Kate was playing the role she probably would’ve played it too broad while mugging for attention, but Melissa was able to carry the piece when necessary and let the humor come more naturally. (On the flip side, having Kate in the role would give this sketch instant press the next day which might be why the dynamic hasn’t changed to this day)
STARS: ****½

GOODNIGHTS

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— Considering the trajectory of Vanessa’s SNL tenure, being one of the show’s ultimate supporting players then reaching a low point where she bottoms out around Season 40 before a having a stellar final two years, it’s a bit heartwarming to see her at the front of these goodnights being embraced by everyone as it feels like well-deserved validation for her years on the show.

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A unique episode with a lot of stuff that felt rare to see by this point in the show’s history, especially in the back half where there were a couple more experimental pieces. It would be nice if Sterling got the chance to host again (he seems to think so too since he ended the goodnights speech by exclaiming “I’ll be back y’all!”) as he was able to really stand out and elevate the material he was given. 

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Family Dinner
Rock or Rap
Dying Mrs. Gomez
Dr. Love
Family Feud
Weekend Update
Line Reader
Monologue
This Is U.S.
Sasquatch
Black Panther
The Bachelor Live

TOMORROW:
Anthony Peter Coleman reviews the Bill Hader episode where a certain former writer/recurring host makes his post-SNL debut.

March 3, 2018 – Charles Barkley / Migos (S43 E14)

by Carson

BIPARTISAN MEETING
at bipartisan meeting, Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) addresses gun violence

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— I want to break a little bit from the traditional sketch rundown to address what I think is the two-fold problem with SNL during the Trump era.
— First, we have the problem of Donald Trump. In the late 80s and early 90s, Phil Hartman was handed the reins of SNL’s original Donald Trump impersonation. He portrayed him as a loutish and aloof low-level New York City conman/mogul. Pretty bang on, but subtly vicious in the way that only Hartman could nail. It wasn’t a signature impression, but it was another in a string of pointedly silly late-80s/early-90s culture critiques that SNL was able to frequently achieve at the time. Over a decade later, Darrell Hammond brought his own spin to Trump, who was now an even more inflated pop culture, um, entity. Hammond’s take was more densely caricatured and cartoonish. It was one of Hammond’s more fun impressions, as he portrayed Trump in more of a self-satisfied moron role. Again, fairly bang on, if a bit more benign. It was, admittedly, one of Hammond’s more iconic moments. Now we’re a decade past Hammond’s peak Trump years and…let’s put it this way: imagine if someone in 2017 tried making a brand new Bill Clinton impression happen. Who’s here for it? No one, right? We’ve seen it, we’ve done it. We laughed at Hartman’s Clinton, endured Mckean’s, and enjoyed Hammond’s. But at some point, we don’t need any more takes on Bill Clinton. The book’s been written. That’s where we are with Alec Baldwin’s Trump. Sure, the impression popped pre-election day, but by the time the election was over, the audience had endured two decades of Trump material. The guy is an unrepentant, delusional asshole. What else is left to say? Unfortunately, SNL made the decision to keep saying it. I get that you can’t simply sidestep the elephant in the room, but we’ve already spent a full generation or two yakking about him. Either you come up with a fresh take (which is impossible, especially to a show confined to normie sensibilities) or you simply ignore it.
— Second, sketch writing. In this cold open, you have a handful of things happening at once. First, you have the premise of Trump addressing gun violence from the perspective of a guy with no discernible ethos, thereby forcing both sides (Mike Pence and Diane Feinstein) to gauge the president’s political pliability. It’s not a brilliant concept, but it’s something to work with. Then the writers are caught in a monkey’s paw situation where there is SO MUCH potential material to work with just with the persona of Trump that they are gifted with a handful of juicy one-liners that, unfortunately, don’t really fit within the structure of the scene. That’s the big caveat of the Trump-era sketches: there are solid jokes to be found throughout and SNL’s writer’s are really solid joke writers (which is why Update still rolls along relatively unscathed); they’re just bad at sketch formation. As a contrast, you have the Obama era, where the writers couldn’t come up with a solid laugh line to save their lives, but thrived when given a strong premise to work with (Obama as the Incredible Hulk, Obama as a standup, the Obamas in The Cosby Show). Then you have the appearance of Kate’s deeply wacky Jeff Sessions impression, which is always a spice too strong and distracting for any of these pieces. In the end, you have superfluous jokes and characters all working against the concept. The sketches are too busy, too noisy and too messy to deliver any kind of significant satirical and comedic impact. So what’s my advice? Ride or die with the concept you brought to the table. You might not make a classic, but you’ll at least have a proper, functioning, sound piece of sketch comedy on your hands.
— Anyways, this was whatever.
STARS: **

MONOLOGUE
outspoken athlete host rejects the suggestion to “shut up & dribble”

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— I’m not sure what to make of SNL’s hard pivot to bare bones “Resistance” monologues. I don’t miss the singing nothing monologues, but these, while truer in spirit to the concept of “monologue,” seem to take even less effort.
— Barkley, in his clunky way, is an absolute charmer when just talking.
— “I’m hosting for the fourth time…for no reason!”
— I love how Barkley keeps saying “ath-a-lete.”
— Michael Che enters to add…something. I missed his last comment though.
— This is nothing particularly earth-shattering, but Barkley is such a likable presence, he makes it entirely endearing.
— “Buckle up, it’s going to be a real hip-hop barbecue here tonight.” Great callback.
STARS: ***½

THE GRABBIES
award show recognizes problematic male-female interactions

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— Fun concept. Beck is already a lot of fun.
— Beck: “Who are you wearing tonight?” Pete: “Thin sweatpants with no underwear.”
— The “Cecil B. Molestin” gag is stupid, but I snickered.
— Pretty decent gag with them constantly replacing the male co-host.
— Aidy’s piece about being the first female Grabbie nominee is decent, with a little unintended callback to the Tiffany Haddish episode (the first episode I reviewed) about being tasked with making fish horny.
— Luke Null!
— Honestly, everything in this sketch worked well enough, but as with a lot of pieces in the last five years, there was something lacking in the, I don’t know, energy? Maybe it’s just the audience. Either way, it was a solid sketch that never really rose above that imaginary line of excellence.
STARS: ***½

NED’S ROACH AWAY
Ned’s (host) Roach Away pivots infestation to insect-on-insect gunplay

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— Hmm, a little soft satire following a mass shooting.
— Luke Null gets another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as an exterminator. He got all dressed up and did a little comic business for all of three seconds of screen time.
— “And none of my roaches are gay.” OK. Not sure what they were going for there.
— The brief part about creating a cycle is smart.
— Kind of a middling and muddled piece of social satire. Easy enough to smile through, but none of the barbs really stung.
STARS: **½

HOMEWORK HOTLINE
prank callers target tutor (host) on public access TV

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— We are mere seconds into this sketch and they’ve already given away the comedic conceit.
— I like Barkley’s use of the word “turkey.”
— Barkley’s character seems to oscillate between being aware of the prank calls and being unaware.
— Barkley’s mild inability to keep a straight face is fun at least, but beyond that this is a classic case of “Mikey Day’s Sketch Comedy 101.” Although even this one betrays some basic rules of sketch comedy by side-stepping any element of surprise.
STARS: **½

THE CHAMPIONS
the NFL took a toll on (KET)’s brain; Alex Rodriguez cameo

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— Very helpful for Kenan to wear that Steelers T-shirt to help the audience know he’s a football player.
— A-Rod seems to be having fun here, but he doesn’t have the dopey charm of a Barkley.
— Ah, a return of Kenan’s DC Timmons character from the Woody Harrelson episode.
— Kenan is making a meal out of this sketch. I feel like he loves playing addled old-timers who love to talk but don’t really say anything.
— Barkley dutifully holds the audience’s hand by letting us know that Kenan keeps referring to all the other characters as “Greg.” Very helpful, writers. Can you also maybe flash a little light every time a line of dialogue should be recognized as a joke?
— Love Barkley dismissing his time playing for Houston.
— Great reveal that Kenan’s character only played nine games.
— Ha. A-Rod said “endorshments.”
— Pretty boilerplate, but Kenan’s effectively did his thing.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Stir Fry”

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— Blue: Okay, I can tell already I’m not going to care for this. Hip hop can be hit or miss with me.
— The stage looks fantastic, I will say that. The red and gold color scheme is very pleasing to my eye and it suits the musicians’ outfits.
— So far I have not understood a single lyric in this song.
— The descending synth lines are nice.
— Chorus is pretty repetitive and is not holding my attention.
— I actually like the instrumental backing… shame the rapping did nothing for me.
STARS: **

WEEKEND UPDATE
Hope Hicks (CES) reads a farewell note to former White House co-workers

Unlike MIC, KYM wasn’t invigted to COJ’s Oscar party, and he’s upset

LEJ snubs COJ in favor of Hillary Knight [real] regarding hockey know-how

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— Colin gets in a priest sex joke, which elicits the expected shocked groans. At what point do we collectively stop acting so shocked when a priest joke turns out to be about molestation? That’s, like, standard issue now, isn’t it?
— Michael does some “hunting’s not a sport” material, which also, is pretty standard, no?
— Fun little bit with Cecily’s Hope Hicks comparing the Trump White House to summer camp and then reading personalized goodbye letters. Like all SNL Trump material, some of the material is pretty sharp and pointed, and some of it kind of lame and insta-dated.
— I love when Kyle plays a social outcast desperately trying to fit in. It’s especially funny that he’s playing himself here.
— I love how well all three guys are playing the awkwardness of cool people trying to avoid having to hang out with someone they don’t like. Colin is doing a good job here.
— Colin stage mutters “Please don’t tell him.” Ah yes, making the subtext text as we gently guide the audience through a joke that is already abundantly apparent.
— I love how uncomfortable handsy Kyle is with Michael. Great little performance detail.
— Love Kyle revealing his off-brand “Beeboks.”
— Ha, that dumb “March” joke.
— Leslie’s here. Lots of energy. More energy than jokes.
— LOTS of energy. Almost no jokes.
— Hillary Knight cameo. She, like A-Rod before her, amiably laughs her way through a non-performance.
STARS: ***

HUMP OR DUMP
(host) woos bachelorette (AIB) by threatening suicide

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— Aidy: “I just ended a six-year relationship, so I’m looking to get slammed by some trash.”
— The inevitable turn with Barkley being the “weird” contestant is not quite clear, but his opening line is a hoot.
— Alex seems to be loosely approximating his Guy Who Owns A Boat character.
— Charles: “Let me put this plainly, Amanda: If you don’t pick me, Imma kill myself.”
— I love that Barkley is threatening suicide purely as a strategic method.
— Barkley’s deadpan is just about perfect. Yes, he’s about as loose a host as you’re ever going to find, but his dead-eyed line readings always tickle me.
— The ending just kind of happens. Wish we could have gotten a beat or two more out of a fun little piece, even if it was pretty boilerplate.
STARS: ***1/2

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS
construction workers speculate on what they would wear if they were women

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— One thing I like about this era is how some of the recurring pieces are more conceptual than character-driven. These pieces where a certain subset of people talk in a way that subverts their stereotype are always pretty fun. They almost remind me of the Kids In The Hall “Womyn” sketch, where the guys play poker and talk about the benefits of having a period. These SNL pieces are a little more broadly acted (and Charles Barkley is no Dave Foley), but they scratch a similar itch.
— I love how when Kenan is describing how he would dress on the red carpet, he poses each of his statements with a questioning tone, as if he’s too insecure to fully say what he means.
— Great speech by Beck.
— “A shawl? Is my daughter getting married?”
— Great slice-of-life piece.
STARS: ****

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Narcos”

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— Blue: The beat at the beginning sounded pretty basic, but I like the little disco/funk guitar flourishes that quickly showed up.
— Now I’m hearing what sounds like a zither (?). Cool.
— Okay, Takeoff’s rap is pretty great. The first time I’ve sat up and paid attention during this performance. I think I like it the best because there are no effects on his voice, unlike his bandmates’ vocals.
— Another song with an interesting backing track and a comparatively uninteresting rap. Safe to say Migos is not my thing.
STARS: **

LAST CALL
alone again at last call, Sheila Sauvage settles for necking with (host)

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— Right off the bat, Kate gets some great lines, which results in a Top 10 “Kenan Reacts” moment with him spitting out his spaghetti. Barkley immediately seems on the verge of giggling. Barkley is the king of almost breaking, but not fully breaking.
— “Let’s go back to my place and do missionary, huh. That’s where you try to teach me English until you get frustrated and leave the country.”
— “I’m ungorged.”
— The dentist contraption bit is pretty incredible. Barkley looks hysterical and the audience is loving it.
— The sketch just kind of ends, but really, what the hell else do you even do?
— I know the Sauvage pieces have run their course, but this one holds up to the very best. As always, there’s something extra charming about watching Barkley try to hold it together.
STARS: ****

GOODNIGHTS

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— God, I love Charles Barkley. This episode was one big shrug, but I can’t help but love the big lug. Tonight’s best pieces were basically pre-batched recurring pieces with stronger-than-usual shelf lives. The rest were heavily templated, Sketch Comedy 101 pieces that couldn’t help telegraphing the joke. Still, re-watching this just makes me want to see Barkley come on the show again.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Construction Workers
Last Call
Hump Or Dump
The Champions
Monologue
The Grabbies
Weekend Update
Homework Hotline
Ned’s Roach Away
Bipartisan Meeting

TOMORROW
The brilliant Vax Novier takes on the Sterling K. Brown/James Bay episode.

February 3, 2018 – Natalie Portman / Dua Lipa (S43 E13)

by Matt

FOX & FRIENDS
Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) disparages FBI from his bed

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— It feels so weird to see a Fox & Friends sketch not helmed by Bobby, Taran, and Vanessa. (Beck even takes over Bobby’s very memorable Brian Kilmeade impression.) I know it’s unfair to this cold open to think of it poorly in comparison before it’s really gotten going, but that definitely casts an immediate pall over whatever’s gonna come of this.
— Cecily debuts her short-lived Hope Hicks impression, which she goes on to flesh out more in a WU piece (as with several political figures this season) next episode. Nothing too distinctive, though it is amusing to think that SNL only got to use the character in two consecutive episodes before she became irrelevant.
— An incredibly distracting gaffe during the Hope Hicks segment, where the camera swings away from the green screen and lands on a boom operator’s forearm before being awkwardly pushed back. Far more interesting than anything else here. (This would be fixed in the reruns and YouTube upload with a cut to Heidi/Alex/Beck.)

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— An okay Louis Farrakhan impression from Chris. I like the tone of his voice, though the written material, as with the rest of this cold open, is coming through like white noise.
— Oh god, Trumpwin sneaking into this cold open for no goddamn reason aside from Baldwin refusing to leave the studio (despite aggressively claiming to hate his role). Blah. Blah, blah, blah. This cold open has absolutely bottomed out.
— When Baldwin says, “They say there’s only seven billion people on Earth, so where are the other three billion people [coming] from?”, there’s a very strange moment during a pause in his speech, where you can hear a voice (Steve Higgins?) cueing him into his next line (“Illegals.”).
— God, the lame dialogue and Baldwin’s weird mugginess is murdering whatever goodwill this cold open may have had. The fact that this is only a fraction of the pain that Stooge must have felt reviewing all of these cold opens every day is terrifying to think about.
STARS: *½

MONOLOGUE
KET, KAM, LEJ analyze host’s monologue a la Olympic commentators

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— Strangely enough, this is also the second time Natalie’s hosted an episode coinciding so closely with the Olympics, though in the case of her S31 episode, it was the first episode after.
— Oh, I love the twist of framing Natalie Portman’s monologue with commentary a la the Olympics. It’s being executed very well, especially with its meta-discussion of how the show writes monologues in general.
— The reveal of the joke Natalie said was told by her child about “P” being the funniest letter actually having been written by “a 32 year-old writer who went to Yale” is very amusing, and has stuck with me all these years later.
— A rare Lenny Pickett moment in this monologue!
— Great involvement from Leslie Jones delivering a correspondent report from the center stage, who was hired to carry out commentary in the actual Winter Olympics. Her going back and forth between reassuring Natalie about her monologue and then talking about how horribly it’s going to the camera is hilarious.
— Kate, after Natalie wins some clapter for mentioning New York City: “She mentioned New York and people were like, ‘Hey, that’s where we are!’”
— Such a fun and forgotten monologue. Considering that the monologue tends to be, in my opinion, a general weak spot for these latest seasons of the show (I like how they’ve started doing more proper, single-person monologues, though they frequently end up melding with the cold open as a big chunk of the show to push through), I really enjoyed how conceptual and well-written this one was.
STARS: ****

REVOLUTIONARY WAR
in 1775, Super Bowl LII preview pits (RAD) & Boston vs. (TIF) & Philly

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— RACHEL DRATCH!! It’s difficult to express in current times how much of a delight it was to see her back on the show pre-Klobuchar.
— Luke, despite only having a small bit role as the delegate from Connecticut, wrings some great laughs out of his few lines. A solid display of his natural charms, which always makes me sad knowing his fate at the end of the season.
— A timely conceit to the sketch, making a parallel between New England colonists celebrating a victory in the Civil War to New England Patriots fans celebrating their qualification for the then-upcoming Super Bowl championship. I’m not finding the timely nature of it to detract from the humor at all, though.
— Oof, Chris whiffs his walk-on HARD as Duncan/Dunkin’, stumbling over his one line and getting a very dead audience response, though his bit wouldn’t have been too great if he delivered it perfectly either.
— Pete seems very amused with his characterization in this sketch, for whatever that’s worth.
— Things get even more fun with another cameo from Tina Fey, breaking out her Philly accent. It’s worth noting, too, that aside from Tina and Rachel getting to use their own regional dialects, everyone else is doing a pretty shaky job (Kenan’s “Philly” accent especially sounds… very British), but there’s enough fun powering the sketch that it’s not too great a distraction.
— Pete breaking.
STARS: ***½

STRANGER THINGS 3
Stranger Things 3- Eleven (host) meets others with powers & handicaps

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— Hmm, not sure of these repeated jokes about Mikey’s character being horny for Natalie’s.
— An alright premise to this sketch, running through several kids with special, ethereal abilities that kinda suck. Not a particularly clever piece, but one of those ideas that allows the show to throw a ton of bits at the wall and see what sticks. Additionally, while the sketch is a parody of Stranger Things—which I’ve only seen one episode of—I think the premise is basic enough that the lack of familiarity isn’t causing any real issues.
— Meh at Cecily’s character being able to read minds but farting every time she does.
— Alright, fine, the cutaway joke with Cecily (“Someone’s lying.” [fart]) got me. I hope Stooge doesn’t read this…
— Luke has such a stupid bit about making good chili, but which causes his brain to bleed excessively. As with the last sketch, though, he sells it wonderfully.
— I love the bit of Aidy being able to do a “pretty good” Borat impression that causes her to go into a coma for two days.
— Leslie’s bit as a character who is just 50 is okay, but certainly prime Leslie use. (She was also notably 50 in real life at the time.)
— Kenan’s ending bit about his power being “thinking of ways to end sketches” fell flat for me, and ends things with a bit of a shrug.
— Overall, a mixed but fine enough sketch.
STARS: ***

NATALIE’S RAP
interviewer (BEB) elicits rap update from (host) about her hardcore life

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— An obligatory but welcome sequel to the beloved “Natalie Raps” digital short from Natalie’s first hosting gig. Though not prefaced with the classic “An SNL Digital Short” titlecard, this was written by Samberg, Taccone, and Shaffer so I think it falls under the banner well enough.
— Interesting to see Beck inheriting Chris Parnell’s role in the original (in light of Parnell not being able to reprise his role tonight), considering he’s the closest to a Parnell-type performer these seasons have.
— There’s not a ton of laughs to the rap portions themselves, though as with last time, it’s intrinsically fun to see Natalie doing something so out-of-character and yet so proficiently.
—A dated Tide Pod reference. I never really get when SNL makes throwaway jokes about current trends within unrelated sketches because I feel like it ages things almost immediately.
— Beck: “Do you find it difficult juggling kids and a career?” Natalie: “You can juggle these nuts.”
— Good twist with Natalie, dressed as Queen Amidala, forcing Alex to say complimentary things about the Star Wars prequels at gunpoint.
— Nice to see Andy Samberg getting in on this, even if his part in the song is more for continuity and light on jokes.
— I think It’s interesting to consider the production that this pre-tape has. To me, a large part of the original sketch’s charm was that it was from an era for the show’s digital shorts where there was such a DIY feel to things, just going out into the city and shooting something weird on the streets. The glossy production value of this one, in addition to the more lavishly-produced instrumentation (reminiscent of some of those sub-par, late-stage digital shorts), takes quite a bit of that charm away. I do get that some degree of creative license got lost from having to be done remotely, though, considering that the Lonely Island boys wrote and recorded their bits in Los Angeles while leaving the rest to SNL’s main film unit. With all of that being said, I do have a sweet spot for the sketch, even if I acknowledge it could never live up to the original at all.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “New Rules”

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— Matt: I’m not one to usually comment on musical performances, but I found Dua Lipa’s stiffness in this performance charming in hindsight, given how commanding she would be in her second stint as a musical guest in S46.
— Blue: This song has always been a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.
— Not sure I care for Dua Lipa’s vocal tone/timbre.
— I know that the sound mixing on the SNL stage doesn’t tend to be very good, but I actually like the way this sounds a lot better than the recording. Even though I just said I don’t care for her voice, I think Dua Lipa sounds more natural here.
— Fun dancing from Dua Lipa.
— Sounds like she’s struggling a bit with the high notes on the bridge. Not something that’s overly noticeable, just something that a nitpicky ex-vocal student (me) would critique.
— I always thought the drum part here was played with two sticks on one snare, so it’s interesting to see it being played on what looks like the snare and the tom.
— The last notes were sung well, but I still feel like Dua Lipa has the tendency to lean towards flat on those pitches.
STARS: ***

WEEKEND UPDATE
Brigitte Bardot (KAM) & Catherine Deneuve (CES) aren’t down with #MeToo

PED had trouble getting people to remove pants for a Dockers commercial

Willie puts a happy spin on terrible events linked to February holidays

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— Michael, regarding Trump stammering through the Nunes Memo: “He sounds like Colin when I asked him if his family ever owned slaves.”
— Colin: “In a new interview, Trump stated that he is not a feminist… Was he getting accused of that a lot?”
— Kate has… quite the neck prosthetic as Brigitte Bardot. I think this is around the peak of SNL’s amped-up prosthesis game.
— This Kate/Cecily Update piece is too self-indulgent for my liking, and it feels like another instance of the show giving Kate a lot of leeway to do whatever she wants, but it has its moments.
— A classic joke from Colin about, whether you’re an Eagles or Patriots fan, “Child support was due on the 1st.”
— ANOTHER fantastic Colin joke, saying that the rumored Passion of the Christ sequel should feature the line, “You crossed the wrong guy!”, followed by him shouting “Nailed it!” off-screen to a befuddled Michael a few beats later.
— Pete Davidson’s typically self-deprecating style is working very well for his recounting of a Docker’s commercial shoot he worked on.
— A hilariously astute observation from Pete about the poor timing of his ads telling people to take their pants off and exchange them for Docker’s breaking up news articles about sexual assault. Additionally, his extended account of an interaction he had with someone who was visiting his daughter in the hospital was such a tricky but fantastic bit, and I think it’s one of my favorite things that Pete’s done in an Update piece.
— Willie!
— Willie breaks out one of his darkest jokes yet in this Update appearance: “It’s like my ancestors used to always say back in the village: you had us at ‘free boat trip!’”
— Oh god, an even more demented reveal about the realistic sex doll Willie bought being the body of a dead woman. This Willie commentary is going HARD.
STARS: ****½

ALIEN LOVER
(host)’s paramour space alien (BEB) has face & butt locations reversed

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— An early Andrew Dismukes-penned sketch.
— Meh, I can see how some people would get a “so stupid, it’s funny” charm out of this but it’s coming across as way too juvenile for me. Beck is fine, but I don’t think he’s a performer with enough commitment to get this particular idea over; ironically enough, I feel like Andrew Dismukes could’ve gotten the idea over better, since I find him to be more charismatic in these sort of guileless roles.
— The second sketch tonight to feature a fart joke.
— The most interesting thing about this sketch is that it most certainly features a performer’s ass the most out of any sketch in the show’s history. Take that accolade as you may; while I don’t think this is unwatchable, it’s certainly feeling bland and lame.
STARS: *½

KIDS’ CHOICE AWARDS ORANGE CARPET
(host) loses her voice during Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards pre-show

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— While the premise isn’t all that similar, this brings to mind the Kids’ Choice Awards sketch from the Ariana Grande episode (also penned by Day/Seidell). Another KCA-themed sketch was cut from the S45 Adam Driver episode, and I’m amused that the idea seems to pop up every few seasons.
— I’m finding Natalie’s delivery in this sketch to be surprisingly funny, and she’s getting good mileage out of it, but the premise only has so many places it can go.
— Decent appearance from Kate’s always-solid Ellen DeGeneres.
STARS: **½

FIRST LADIES
Jackie Kennedy (host) & other First Ladies counsel Melania Trump (CES)

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— Sigh, Melissa making her only appearance of the night in an excessively minor role. It’s sad to know that the show still struggles to know what to do with her three seasons later.
— Natalie deploys the Jackie Kennedy impression she used in Jackie.
— Kate’s appearance as Hillary makes it pretty easy to see how the idea behind this sketch came into fruition; it feels very unstructured and more of an opportunity to cram all of these characters into the same space, but without any great material.
— Aidy’s Martha Washington non-impression is amusing me, though it’s also highlighting how confused the sketch is about its satirical aim.
— Leslie as Michelle Obama? This is giving me flashbacks of when Kenan was the only Black cast member and had to play every Black celebrity role whether or not he was totally out of his depth. Ego can’t come soon enough. I also find it very odd that they had Leslie make an entrance through a moving picture frame that is barely on-camera at any point.
— The ending fell flat.
STARS: **

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Homesick”

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— Blue: The performance opens with Dua Lipa sitting on a piano, singing over solo accompaniment.
— This is definitely different from her previous performance, and reminds me a bit of Kate Bush’s performance from Season 4 (which I’d seen recently at the time of this writing).
— Wow, I take back what I said before about Dua Lipa’s vocal tone. She’s having no trouble singing in a higher register here, and her voice is more pleasing to my ear. Probably has to do with the fact that she’s not moving around and can concentrate better on her singing. Her approach also might be different now that she’s singing a ballad.
— The high, breathy notes do still sound flat at times. Not gonna criticize her for that, though. She’s doing a good job.
— The pianist in me craves to watch the pianist’s hands on the break. He is also doing a good job.
— I like the versatility that Dua Lipa displayed with her performances.
STARS: ****

BUNNY
in a bar, catfishing Bunny (AIB) gives women advice on how to catch a man

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— I recall this sketch being penned at least in part by Michael Che, which feels surprising given I don’t know if he’s collaborated much with Aidy in the past.
— Something feels surreal about hearing Key & Peele mentioned on SNL. The joke about it is very similar to one of the show’s only other references to them in an earlier, cut-for-time piece from the S42 Chris Pine episode.
— Aidy’s characterization, while the sort of thing we’ve seen from her before, is pretty solid. It feels refreshing to see a one-off, character-driven piece.
— Good ending with Kyle appearing after Aidy talked about cat-fishing him earlier in the sketch. This was a very low-key piece but I liked that energy and think it’s a nice way to round out the night.
STARS: ***

GOODNIGHTS

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CUT FOR TIME: MY LITTLE STEPCHILDREN
host’s kid has taste for the dramatic, treats doll as a stepchild

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— A cut Julio Torres piece, and a spiritual sequel to his legendary “Wells for Boys” piece. Strangely enough, this particular sketch was also cut from the Jessica Chastain episode earlier this season, and all of her parts were re-shot with Natalie.
— All of the details in this sketch are AMAZING. I especially love the doll coming with a birth certificate to lock away in a tiny chest of drawers.
— Natalie: “The first time I bought Lisa a doll, she said she felt no real connection to it, like there was a sheet of glass between her and the doll. With My Little Stepchildren, she no longer feels forced to change that.”
— Another fantastic scene of the child throwing letters from her dolls’ birth mother into the fireplace.
— I like the color filter subtly changing when cutting back and forth between the commercial from the kids’ visions and the real world.
— It’s a shame that this piece didn’t make it into the live show. Julio’s work is, as always, one of the greatest parts of these seasons, and this sketch of his has always been one of my favorites. Given how light on pre-tapes Natalie’s episode was, too, it wouldn’t have hurt to include this at all.
STARS: *****

IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A better episode than I remembered, even if very little was stand-out. When this episode originally aired, I wasn’t super high on it, and on rewatch I do think it has pacing issues that make the second half feel a bit listless, but it manages to get over. As with her last stint, Natalie was a solid host who committed to the material; there was just less to chew on this time around.

MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS

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RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
(CFT: My Little Stepchildren)
Weekend Update
Monologue
Natalie’s Rap
Revolutionary War
Bunny
Stranger Things 3
Kids’ Choice Awards Orange Carpet
First Ladies
Alien Lover
Fox & Friends

TOMORROW
Carson covers Charles Barkley’s fourth hosting stint