by Anthony
NATO CAFETERIA
Justin Trudeau (JIF) & others bully Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) at NATO
— For those wondering, this open lasts 42 seconds before Fallon and Rudd walk in. Next week the cast might get a whole minute up top before some celebrity comes in to scoop up the spotlight.
— It’s somewhat ironic to have Rudd, a guy I’ve seen be funny but never really on SNL, paired with Fallon, a guy I’ve only seen be funny on SNL.
— And then we get James Corden. I know the proper internet response here would be some mouth-foaming, Doug Walker-esque all-caps rant, but honestly Corden’s a guy I always found more simply lame than infuriating. Him and Fallon represent a whole lot of what I hate about current late night, but outside their talk shows the most they tend to inspire out of me is generally indifference. I did also like Corden in Doctor Who and Gavin & Stacey, which helps.
— It should also be noted Corden actually acquits himself to the material pretty well here as well, coming off the most natural of the three. I particularly like when he tries to imitate Rudd and Fallon’s hair tussle.
— Liked Mikey’s lame compliment of “I love your economies”.
— Corden telling Mikey to “Brexit out of here” and Fallon responding by saying he’s being “so cringe” are both meant to be lame, and shit do they achieve that.
— Trump comes in with a big tray of hamberders, cus hur hur hur.
— So the joke here is that Trump is like the loser kid in high school. Not the worst premise, but certainly not the best. Let’s see if we get some decent one liners at least, like these pieces can be occasionally good for.
— I like Alex’s quirky Latvian president.
— There’s a side bit going on here with Boris just barely fitting into the cool group. Normally I’d complain this feels like a hat on a hat, but honestly the Boris bits are all funnier than the Trump ones.
— Boy if that ain’t fitting that Kate gets to sit at the “cool kids’ table” with the celebrity cameos.
— Kate’s Merkel is pretty much giving us the same shtick as always, down to the Obama crush 3 years after he left office. At least this isn’t one of her more insufferable political impressions (though your mileage may vary there).
— Big fuckin’ eye roll at the “Impeach Me” sign gag (complete with 3 exclamation points to really hammer the desperation home).
— So this whole thing turns out to be an anti-bullying PSA from Melania, which in turn turns out to be a parody of a Peloton Ad? What are you trying to say, show?!
— Yea, we got a lot of the worst Trumpwin offenders here. Hack punchlines, pointless cameos, incoherent satire and “activism” that amounted to going “hey, isn’t this guy bad? Applaud us!!” Not a great sign when the highlight of your sketch is James Corden.
— Looking at my scheduled reviews for the next 2 seasons, this is actually my final episode with an appearance from Trumpwin. I can’t say I’m too sad to see him go. Baldwin was involved in a lot of iconic material from the show over the years, and was always a host who gave 100%, so its definitely unfortunate to see his time with the show end (I have to assume he’s not coming back any time soon, do to recent tragedies that neither I nor anyone in the comments are gonna talk about) with him giving such routinely lazy performances in service of such routinely lazy material. I don’t mean to harp on it too much in these reviews, but my beef with Trumpwin is basically my beef with Trump himself, just on a much smaller scale. For four years he was the face of an institution that, although deeply flawed, is one I care deeply about, and he spent that whole time making it look bad. Good riddance to both.
STARS: *½
MONOLOGUE
50 year-old host kicks with The Rockettes & wears her green Versace dress
— Jennifer Lopez is hot. You can pretty much skip the next 4 pieces since that’s about all they’ll give you (okay, that’s unfair to one of them, though we’ll get to that).
— Obligatory mention of how the host is no longer with the person they mention to be their significant other in their monologue, which is so awkward since we’re all 16.
— There’s no real conceit to this other than J Lo bragging about how well things are going for her. The show tries to turn that into a comedic conceit, culminating in that dumbass moment where Beck’s head explodes because J Lo says she’s 50, but it just feels like the show blowing smoke up her ass (which I’m sure she’d want me to mention is a very famous ass) under the thin veil of irony.
— Also, I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but J Lo’s insistence on mentioning that she’s 50 makes her sound like some kinda Sexy Sally O’Malley.
— Now Lopez kicks off a rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, complete with Rockette backing, building to a grand finale where it’s revealed she’s been wearing her iconic green Grammy’s dress under her tuxedo. It’s decent fluff, I suppose—certainly more tolerable than the first half of her monologue.
STARS: **
SURPRISE HOME MAKEOVER
home makeover program visits Matt Schatt & out-of-his-league wife (host)
— Here we get a return of a sketch from Mikey’s very first episode. I enjoyed that sketch, especially as an intro to Mikey, but it’s not one I needed to see returned to all these years later. It’s also never a good sign when the first real sketch of the night is a repeat of a one off from three years ago….
— Kenan’s character is named Becker Cheeks. Either commit to a joke name or don’t, guys.
— Bit of confusing chronology here as well, as Kenan is playing a different reporter than he did in the last sketch, and Mikey, while playing the same character, makes no mention of his previous marriage (other details, such as him having no penis and only testicles in the last sketch, are contradicted here as well).
— Thanks to John and Matt (not Schatt) for letting me know we did find out what happened to Margot Robbie’s character, but only in the form of a tweet from Mikey.
— Mikey: “I can not believe this is happening, I never get lucky like this”. Audience laughs. Kenan: “Oh, I’d say you get very lucky.” Audience murmurs. See Seiday, even the crowd is telling you you don’t need to explain these jokes to them!
— Matt being really into Smurfs is kinda funny, though it feels like it could have been any random beat in the last sketch but it meant to be one of the bigger jokes of this piece.
— One thing I do prefer about this to the first sketch is the lack of a character like Cecily was playing in that one. She got some good straight man reactions there, but the fun of this piece is in everyone’s outsized reactions to the couple, so it doesn’t feel necessary to include a character who’s there to try and keep everyone on track.
— I did like the small joke of Mikey calling his rollerblades his “sports stuff”.
— Continuing my point from earlier, the Smurf Life tattoo feels like it’s meant to be the centerpiece gag of the sketch, and that just feels to me like it has so much less weight than his wife being a Kennedy or him having no genitalia.
— Luckily we get Bowen here to add some excitement. Bowen can’t quite bring the energy as high as Leslie did in her fantastic intro from the first piece (“I got TWO THEORIES”) but he makes the proceedings a lot more fun, for sure.
— Bowen lunging at Mikey’s dick is certainly exciting, though as mentioned “average sized penis” just doesn’t feel like as consequential a beat as “no penis”.
— Like a lot of Seiday sketches from the past couple years this is hard to grade as it was a functional, well performed piece with some solid laugh lines that nevertheless gave off a very tired and frankly lazy feel. I’m just gonna stick the grade at the halfway point and call it a day.
STARS: **½
CHAD & JLO
host is unfathomably drawn toward pool boy Chad; Alex Rodriguez cameo
— Our first Chad of the season. I don’t hate this character (though I certainly never need to see him again) but I recall really not caring for his two Season 45 appearances. Let’s see if I’m warmer to this this time around.
— Seiday get a lot of shit in certain fan circles, and while I think some of it is unfair, episodes like this, where they get the two sketches up top to repackage old sketches of theirs in slightly different colored wrapping, remind you those complaints do come from somewhere.
— This is giving me very little to talk about. Sometimes bad sketches can be fun to bash but this is just bad in such an uninteresting way. J Lo & especially Pete seem to be sleepwalking here, and the writing isn’t anything we haven’t already seen a million times in these Chads before.
— Amazing how unnatural A Rod can make only 5 words sound.
— The weakest Chad in my opinion. This one took the exact approach you’d expect out of this character and only got more predictable the longer it went on.
STARS: *½
THE CORPORAL
knockout’s (host) sisters’ (KAM) & (AIB) schemes backfire in a 1955 movie
— Ah yes! This is easily one of my favorite sketches the team of Drezen/Gates/McKinnon/Bryant would ever do.
— Great bit right off the bat as Kate and Aidy shout down J Lo to return to the attic.
— At first glance, this is just another “isn’t J Lo hot??” sketch, but the writing is sharp enough here that I can look past that.
— Similarly, these are the type of broad, chummy Kate and Aidy performances I tend to really not care for, but for whatever reason they work for me here. I guess the sort of vaudevillian nature of this piece allows them to go broader without it annoying me.
— Love the runner with Kate and Aidy trying to kill each other with poorly disguised weapons (“Why, that’s a shotgun!” “Oh! So it is, I thought it was a Q-tip.”)
— The runner with Kate and Aidy trying and failing to make J Lo look ugly isn’t quite as strong but is still really fun.
— Nice little twist on the usual Kate shtick with Aidy being the one to get the “tee hee, this character is secretly into girls!” line.
— The lobster part is a nice bit of absurdity. Especially love Kate’s line to J Lo explaining this is how men look: “Yes, they’re small and they’re lobsters.”
— Another great bit of absurdity with Kate’s gunshots only succeeding in making J Lo’s dress strapless.
— Beck comes in at the end here, getting what has to be one of the all-time great one-word roles on the show.
— A very fun sketch that has always stood as one my favorite Kate/Aidy pairings. This isn’t high art by any means but it does exactly what it wants to do and does it with infectious energy.
STARS: *****
THEM TRUMPS: RALLY
at a rally, white audience turns on black First Family
— Continuing tonight’s trend of “shit we didn’t need to come back”, we get our third and final Them Trumps.
— This one especially feels pointless to bring back—not only because it’s such a one-note sketch but also because Leslie, one of the sketch’s major players, isn’t even on the show anymore.
— The background music for the intro is pretty well produced; I especially like the Travis Scott style autotuned “ooooh, them Trumps”.
— Kenan’s Trump is acting all cocky in the face of danger, but ol’ Tony suspects there’s a big sneaky stinky subversion coming our way. Something in my gut.
— These sketches always feel halfway caught between being an Empire parody and a genuine attempt at satire, and never end up feeling like they hit their marks with either. The first one still managed to work since it had the element of surprise on its side, but by this third sketch, as alluded to above, I know the tricks. Rotely repeating them in a slightly different setting ain’t gonna cut it.
— I will say Kenan is always really fun in this role, at least. Also enjoy Chris as the Don Jr stand-in.
— “Make America Swag Again”—yeef.
— I thought we’d maybe get some kind of subversion of the subversion, but no—it was just the same sketch we saw the last 2 times.
STARS: **
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “BOP”
— Anthony: Oh DaBaby, you truly ended up being as dumb as your name. I actually didn’t mind this guy for a while, as at least he’s one of the modern pop rappers who doesn’t sound like he’s falling asleep on the mic. Throw him on in the gym or the car and close your eyes (always advisable when driving) and you’ve got a decent B-tier Ludacris. Luckily, that type of raving endorsement makes it easy to dispose of the guy when he turns out to be a total shithead.
— Blue: A couple bars in, and I can say…I don’t think I’m going to like this.
— I feel so thrown off listening to the hype man while the camera is on DaBaby. Wish they’d pan out to show who’s talking.
— Not a fan of DaBaby’s deep, raspy voice.
— “My girl got good kitty.” …No comment.
— DaBaby pretending to grab a phone from one of his backup dancers and then throwing it while saying “what the—” made me laugh.
— Speaking of the backup dancers, they’re doing a great job!
— Unexpected backflip and handsprings from one of the dancers! I think I can hear an audience member shouting “whoa!” at that (or it could be part of the recorded track).
— Now here comes a backup dancer walking on her hands… and twerking up a storm. Gotta admit… I genuinely find this impressive (not that I particularly enjoy seeing it).
— “What’s that? DaBaby brought the Jabbawockeez?” Yes, I guess he did bring the Jabbawockeez. Not that I’m familiar with them.
— The Jabbawockeez are not adding much to the choreography besides an interesting visual aesthetic, but I appreciate the hype man’s enthusiasm for them.
— Abrupt ending.
— Lol @ the big smiles on DaBaby and his hype man’s faces.
STARS: *½ (the song did nothing for me but the choreography was enjoyable)
WEEKEND UPDATE
Nancy Pelosi (KAM) offers passive-aggressive prayers for Donald Trump
when it comes to the holidays, Jules (BEB) sees things a little differently
— Nice, biting Catholic Church line from Jost. Pedophile priest jokes are so tacky at this point, but a good hearty “fuck you” to the church is always appreciated.
— Che’s food stamps rant was strong, and is one of those nice moments from him where you feel like he’s bringing something you’d wouldn’t have seen with any previous anchor.
— Kate does a bit as her Pelosi. She calls Jost “Breitbart Ryan Seacrest”, talks about how bad Trump is, makes a pee tape joke, and hopes Linday Graham has a black, gay baby. It was truly a revolutionary moment in comedy.
— Jules is a fun enough character, though it feels like a shade of Beck I’ve seen enough of that I’m not exactly going to praise him.
— Okay, Jules’ Black Friday/Friday line made me laugh more than it should have.
— The usual from Jules, but this character can at least provide enough solid lines that that’s not the worst thing.
— A good enough update overall, though I wasn’t exactly blown away by the correspondents—Pelosi particularly.
STARS: ***
HIP HOP CAROLERS
(host) & other hip-hop carolers distract while musical guest robs family
— Hmm, the premise of a bunch of adults who do hip-hop carols doesn’t sound like it’ll do much for me, but let’s see.
— Ha, that has to be the first City High reference on network TV in about 20 years.
— Haha, wait, they’re taking the City High reference further with a full on Christmas themed parody of “What Would You Do?”?? I’ve always liked that song, so I appreciate this on some level, but no one remembers it.
— Ok, so the premise is they’re carolers who sing rap songs, and also the rap songs have had their lyrics changed to be about Christmas themed movies? This doesn’t even sound like the basis for a good Tweet, let alone a sketch.
— Our next song parody is Pras’ “Ghetto Superstar”, which does feel more remembered than the City High song, at least. Too bad these lyrics are still doing nothing for me.
— Oh wait, the raps are just about Christmas now, not Christmas movies. Although we still get a throwaway mention of Home Alone, which the last song was a parody of. Not entirely sure what’s happening right now, to be honest.
— Ending with “Tha Crossroads”, a song I’d genuinely call one people remember. What a journey to get there. Once again though, the lyrics/performance do nothing for me. The joke with this one is how sloppy the performance itself gets, but at that point it just feels like what are we even doing here?
— Also, I know it’s not my job to pitch on these things, but I feel like replacing the “bone bone bone” intro with “ho ho ho” would work better than “pole pole pole”. I mean maybe the joke is meant to be how little the whole thing works, but then again I ask: what are we even doing here?
— The “I miss my Uncle Charles” part is so specific it makes me think that was just a backstage bit Kenan and Chris would do that’s been made into a sketch.
— DaBaby shows up to reveal he’s been robbing the family the whole time, a reveal that did a whole lotta nothing for me! And woof at that Robin Hood line.
— Speaking of “whole lotta nothing”, that would be a fitting subtitle for that sketch. Next.
STARS: *
HOOPS
(host) & (MEV) hawk large, round, golden, versatile earrings
— Yay, a rare Melissa showcase!
— Ha, these women’s names being “Gino’s Girlfriend” and “Her Cousin” are good ways of identifying their values.
— As is typical for Drezgate affairs, lot of great one-liners here. Even in the initial spiel you get “made from 100% metal” and “will turn your ears the color of money”.
— Would cut out the part where they show all the words you can get inside your hoops. We just got a long list and that one had funnier details.
— Enjoy Alex’s sleazy mob character.
— This role isn’t exactly a stretch for Lopez, which is perhaps why this feels the most committed we’ve seen her all night.
— Like Lopez describing babies as “very grabby people”.
— Melissa co-wrote this with the Drezgate team, now responsible for my second above-average rating of the night. This feels typical of a lot of the two-hander, direct-to-camera sketches Kate & Aidy would do with that team around this time period. However, working with different performers here not only allows for fresher feeling central performances, it also allows Drezgate’s typically strong one-liners to pop even more since they’re not being held down by the weight of McKinnant’s indulgence.
STARS: ****½
POTTY PM
device lets (KYM) pee from bed, but female urination is a mystery
— My proud tradition of reviewing Kyle sketches with “potty” in their title continues.
— Kyle’s voice is already naturally funny in a TV spokesman setting.
— Pretty fun visuals showing how the PottyPM will work.
— Great turn with Kyle awkwardly unsure how his product would work with women, and gradually revealing he’s not very sure how women work in general.
— J Lo is really selling her increasing levels of discomfort well. I’d say this pre-tape and the live sketch before this stand as some of her best work on SNL.
— The visual of the PottyPM trying and failing to find an entry way into a woman’s body is really funny. I would have cut the visual off there though, before getting into the “Filipino tube” stuff.
— J Lo’s smiley but stilted delivery of “yea, it’s fine” is especially strong.
— This feels a bit typical for Kyle, but it was well written enough, and really elevated by the work from Kyle and especially J Lo.
STARS: ****
WISCONSIN WOMEN
wild child (CLF) battles a bear outside a Wisconsin hardware store
— I remember absolutely hating this when it aired, but I feel like my SNL tastes have changed significantly since then and the stuff I end up hating the most now is the excessively bland stuff rather than the excessively weird, so we’ll see how I feel this time around.
— Bit of a direction mishap, as the camera awkwardly zooms in on Cecily, Kate & J Lo when Heidi is first talking at the top of the scene.
— Someone from Wisconsin or the general Midwest can attest to the strength of the ladies’ Wisconsin accents, but they don’t sound great to me.
— Hmm, about a minute in and this is doing very little for me. The audience seems to agree. There isn’t really a premise so far, other than Kate and Cecily (and J Lo) getting to be “weird”.
— Really not sure what to make of Chloe’s character.
— Chloe’s character is now getting tossed around the stage like a doll (and in fact, is literally now a doll), which feels less like a culmination of anything that happened in the sketch and more like something crazy happening because The Big Book of How To Make Air said that’s what you need at the end of a sketch.
— Another total dud tonight. That just felt like watching these 3 ladies fuck around for 3 minutes before a Chloe doll got slammed into a wall in a desperate attempt to make it seem like any of this had a point.
STARS: *
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Suge”
— Blue: This track sounds more exciting than the one from the first performance.
— Already I’m thinking “why not sing the pre-recorded vocals?” but the vocals that DaBaby isn’t covering sound live… hm…
— Ahh, and now DaBaby’s hype man has appeared to show that he’s the one doing the vocals.
— Watching two of the Jabbawockeez mess around with the dude behind DaBaby while he’s rapping, is proving to be 1. Very distracting and 2. More entertaining than DaBaby’s rapping.
— Really, they had to bring the twerking hand-stander back only for DaBaby to do the EXACT SAME clapping gestures around her?
— It looks like DaBaby might be having trouble getting his headset mic to stay on.
— I like the dance-off that’s now occurring to the side of the stage. Looks like a bunch of friends hanging out..
— As for the song: forgettable. At least the dancing was slightly entertaining, although not as much as in the first performance.
STARS: *
BARRY’S BOOTCAMP
hyper (BOY), (host), (CES), (BEB), (HEG) try out to be boot camp trainers
— Interesting to see this brought back so soon after the Harbour episode. Considering, however, that these are co-written by Bowen, it makes sense he’d want to capitalize on something from his first set of episodes that did so well.
— There’s also another connection here to the Harbour sketch, as his SoulCycle instructor there mentions he was cut out of Hustlers.
— These are one of those line-arama sketches that I could never describe in glowing terms but are always a chance for some memorable quotes and performances.
— Bowen makes an OJ joke, surely making Norm proud.
— I like J Lo’s “obstacles” she had to overcome just being that she was once a baby.
— Ego is playing them well, but not sure if I need these asides with her being disgusted with Mikey’s character. It seems like yet another case of modern SNL trying to cram jokes into every corner of a sketch, which always just makes them seem less confident in their core idea.
— Apparently Mikey had the role opposite Ego in the first installment of this, but it went to Alex when he lost his voice. Considering Alex and Ego’s chemistry I’d have kept him in this installment over Mikey.
— Cecily’s performance here is another case of “this is fine, but I’ve seen you do it so many times”. Same for Beck.
— Lame dyslexia joke.
— I do kinda like Heidi as a woman fully ok with her lack of agency.
— Bowen’s fun here, but nowhere is he stealing the scene for me like he did with “gay racism” rant last time.
— Just like last time I didn’t really care for the ending.
STARS: ***
GOODNIGHTS
— DaBaby being such a goober here would be appreciated if he wasn’t such a genuine goober.
IMMEDIATE POST SHOW THOUGHTS
— While not without its highlights, this was a week that found the show mostly spinning its wheels and delivering a series of sketches that looked a whole lot like a bunch of other sketches we’ve gotten over the years. While that isn’t inherently a bad thing (the beats of The Corporal and PottyPM both felt familiar to their leads and managed to make things work), so much of the material tonight just ended up feeling warmed over and tired (think of how often I used a variation on the phrase “we’ve seen this before”). Don’t be fooled by the rocks that it got, this is the same SNL from the block (that block being Rockefeller Plaza).
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
The Corporal
Hoops
PottyPM
Weekend Update
Barry’s Bootcamp
Surprise Home Makeover
Them Trumps
Monologue
NATO Cafeteria
Chad & JLO
Wisconsin Women
Hip Hop Carolers
TOMORROW
From J Lo to ScarJo, as Vax Novier covers what I’d consider Scarlett Johansson’s best episode (not that it had much competition).
The “One SNL A Day” Project 2.0 