Since the departure of so many mainstays last year, the current SNL cast has struggled to find its identity. There are enough talented performers in the current cast, but the show has yet to foreground a real core group to build the show around. Part of that may be the sheer number of bodies—I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a rather brutal culling of the herd before next year. Apart from overpopulation though, it increasingly appears that no one cast member has the drive to take over the show. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily—as much as SNL misses Kristen Wiig’s insatiable drive, that sort of recurring character machine reaches a point of diminishing returns after awhile. (The list of Wiig characters I never need to see again is a long, varied, and shrill one.) But, as attractive a concept as a recurring-character-free SNL might be, it’s not the case that this season has been based around original, ensemble-based sketches, either. As seen in tonight’s episode, there are plenty of cast members throwing their favorites out there again and again—it’s just that they’re not strong enough to provide the sort of cheap seats yuks SNL thrives on.
That all being said, tonight’s Charlize Theron-hosted SNL revealed one of this year’s undeniable strengths—there are a lot of funny women in this cast. Out of the ten sketches tonight, seven of them were centered on female characters. Not that keeping score has anything to do with the quality of the show, but it’s refreshing to see so many talented women get a chance to strut their stuff. Even if the writing isn’t the sharpest.
Take the cold open. There’s the standard disappointment that comes from SNL not taking on a political issue in a meaningful way. And then there’s the bewilderment and genuine annoyance when the show goes out of its way to get something wrong for the sake of a lame bit. Michele Obama and Hillary Clinton do not have any sort of personal or professional rivalry. They are not in the same profession, neither they nor their loved ones are running against each other, and their political beliefs more or less align from what I can tell. And yet, under the umbrella of a joint Mother’s Day TV appearance, they immediately start sniping. Vanessa Bayer and Sasheer Zamata both throw themselves into their respective impressions, but there’s no motor to this sketch—when Amy Poehler’s Clinton and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin went at each other, it made sense. Here, unless the premise is that any two accomplished, professional women will devolve into catty one-upmanship if left alone together long enough, the cold open had no point at all.
Theron’s monologue was—hold on to your hats—a musical number. I suppose it’s dull to harp on the overuse of this device, but the show keeps doing the damn thing. The song itself was an uneasy mix of shameless fawning over the host’s purported graces (the line “She’s a nearly perfect human” is in there), and chiding about her inability to sing. It’s cute, I guess, and the old clip brought back some nice memories of Ana Gasteyer and Maya Rudolph from Theron’s last gig 14 years ago (more on that later), but there are a near-infinite number of ways to approach a monologue, instead of the “unexpected musical piece,” and “unexpected interruption from the cast and audience” which make up three-quarters of all monologues ever these days (unless the host is a standup.) Theron herself used to be on my list of pretty people who were overpraised for one “brave” role (see: Halle Berry, new inductee Jared Leto), but she played herself off with her stint on Arrested Development. Tonight, while never particularly funny on her own, she was a gamer, donning various unflattering costumes and allowing herself to be slathered in whale blood while the women of SNL took over the show, to greater and lesser effect.
Kate McKinnon is one of those performers with the ability to take the show on her back. She can go big (and her crazy-eyed energy definitely hasn’t worn out its welcome there), but tonight she again showed her equal facility with more low-key character pieces. The game show template is as worn out as the musical monologue (what would the show look like if there were a game show sketch moratorium?), but McKinnon took the mom-hosted quiz show “Come Do A Game Show With Your Mom. It’ll Be Fun. Yes It Will” and turned it into a showcase for herself while still keeping the premise grounded. The second Mother’s Day sketch of the night was dead on in the way it played on the loving but bemused relationship grown children have with their moms. Theron, allowed to name her prize, chooses that mom McKinnon will have to delete her Facebook, only for McKinnon to exclaim, “That’s my window into your world!” McKinnon’s delivery throughout finds the sweet spot where her mom tries to maintain the façade of connection to her adult kids while at the same time hinting at the manic desperation within. The lightning round where the kids view pictures of their mom’s friends while guessing what she thinks about them concludes with the correct guess (about a smiling acquaintance) “She knows what she did,” and her final pronouncement “We’re all winners because we’re all together!” rides on McKinnon’s ability to inhabit a character so completely.
That gift for creating specific little weirdoes comes into play again in the later cat lady sketch where McKinnon, alongside a gamely creepy Theron, cuddles a series of adorable kitties while allowing gradually more unsettling details to emerge. Apart from some admirably odd touches (one cat speaks three cat languages: calico, tabby, and German, and one spotted fellow is actually a baby jaguar who only eats bald eagles), it’s all McKinnon’s show, taking a clichéd type and making it her own. Plus, the cuteness of the kittens was fraught with the sort of tension that comes from having terrified animals on TV. (Google “Michael Palin” + “cats in pants” for an example of why.)