Saturday Night Live plays a pair of Jacks
Finally, a Black and White SNL episode!
Photo: NBC
This week’s Saturday Night Live, the second Jack Black-hosted episode in as many seasons and his fifth official episode overall, featured a sketch that more or less encapsulates Black’s whole SNL deal, especially in these 2020s appearances. In his younger/hungrier days, Black rampaged through the studio with something to prove, evidently gleeful about getting to host the show and bring his brand of music-comedy bravado to a mainstream audience. (Obviously he wasn’t an obscurity during his 2002 and 2003 episodes, but the second one was literally the day after School of Rock opened, meaning all of his biggest hits were still ahead of him.) These last two years, his vibe on the show is more of a veteran cutting loose for grown-ups during several weeks of kid-movie promo. After all, it’s been nearly a decade since the man has made a movie you couldn’t comfortably show to a 10-year-old.
I wouldn’t say that career shift has dulled his comic edge, because he still seems up for whatever, up to and including slathering young people with Jergens in an attempt to seducing them into some fumbling form of partying. (Meta-commentary on his cheerful attempts to stay relevant with the youngs? Probably not, but you could read it that way!) Moreover, his trademark zeal has also long had a childlike side to it. This makes him the perfect host to appear in a sketch cutting back and forth between a group of female friends in a kitchen and the husbands who are somewhat improbably hanging out together for the first time the adjoining living room. It seems like a little awkward-masculinity riff that doesn’t necessarily require Black’s personal sensibility, until the boys absentmindedly break into a rendition of the Kansas song “Carry On My Wayward Son.” Soon enough they’ve made the transition from abnegating their own small-talk to a full-on air-guitar, ribbon-wand, costume-change performance.
There’s only the slightest glimmer of satire or commentary in this sketch, and barely any individual character work. It doesn’t have much of an ending or even much of a button, either. (“Someone from the other, confused party abruptly joins in the unusual behavior” is about as basic as it gets.) For that matter, the sketch doesn’t feel all that left-field in its silliness: Thematically and comedically, it’s not far off from from the concept of “Boy Dance Party” and “Carry On My Wayward Son” is exactly the kind of song that was proudly dragged back into the spotlight during Black’s 2000s-era Frat Pack heyday. (It’s in both the trailer and the final moments of Anchorman.) But through the purity of commitment Black and the especially similar-minded James Austin Johnson and Andrew Dismukes, the sketch became a tribute to the full-throated silliness that the Super Mario Galaxy star brings to the room. Like Johnson’s character in the self-defense-class sketch, it’s all skill and very little technique. It’s something that Black in particular is good at getting away with, and SNL has the resources to build a series of venues for him.
There was a messier version of this energy in Black’s obligatory five-timer monologue, which went back to the Five-Timers’ Club, with unofficial SNL spokeswoman emeritus (and part-time SNL UK shill) Tina Fey given the task of acknowledging more directly than ever that this bit is kind of tired but expected. That this was sandwiched between very “whoever’s around” cameos from Jonah Hill, Candice Bergen, and Melissa McCarthy somewhat diminished the self-satire, but it was admittedly fun to bring out Jack White for a recreation/spoof of the sporting-event version of “Seven Nation Army,” further highlighting the sense (whether accurate or not) that the Black & White thing wasn’t just a happy booking accident. White may not be as naturally gregarious as Black, but he’s got an inimitable personality steeped in rock-and-roll tradition while creatively tweaking that familiarity. Bringing him a little further into the episode with the monologue and a music video only felt right.
What this episode in particular was missing (as was last year’s to some degree, though not quite so obviously) were sketches that felt like significantly more than spirited run-throughs of familiar ideas. Black racked up some real classics in some of his 2000s episodes; this time, I’m not sure if he got anything as good as last year’s Indiana Jones guy on the game show or “Bass Lake.” But if you put him in that room, he’ll raise the energy levels to the point where just about anything seems to count as a pretty good time.
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