When Amy Poehler hosted Saturday Night Liveearly this season, I mentioned that she’s probably one of the best to ever do it—the show in general, I mean, not just host. I think a case could be made that Will Ferrell deserves the top spot on whatever alumni list includes Poehler in the top five. To some extent, this might reflect the old saw about the SNL cast from when you were in high school looming largest in your memory; Ferrell started on the show on my fifteenth birthday, a few weeks into my sophomore year, and left about a week before I graduated from college. Then again, those years also included several cast members that wouldn’t make my top 50 (and plenty of weeks where I lost track of the show and had to catch up on certain episodes years later). Ferrell wasn’t the only one holding the show together in that era—one of his strengths was the sheer variety of great scene partners he worked with—but he’s the perfect combination of showcase recurring character machine, utility player, and true weirdo with a highly specific sensibility. Has anyone hit those three roles so hard since? Or, for that matter, before? (Aykroyd and Radner arguably did it in those legendary first five years, but they logged significantly less time at it than Ferrell did.)
Case in point: In Ferrell’s sixth hosting gig, he put real effort into areas that usually shield the host (the cold open) or exist to gently ease them into the show and make them look likable (the monologue). Sure, he was delivering more or less the jokes you’d expect as the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein in the cold open, but he does those sorts of jokes so guilelessly that he can make them sound somewhat less like they’re being recited straight from Jost’s last-minute, ink-still-wet revisions. He then bounded into a conceptual monologue that might have been well overdue but still felt like vintage Ferrell: Sending Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer and Ferrell doppelganger Chad Smith out in his place so he could claim that Smith knocked him to the ground and attempted to take over the show. He clearly wants to break routine; even when he threw to the questions-from-the-audience standby, it was to knowingly tweak that formula.
That sensibility continued as the show moved forward. As SNL itself has drifted away from explicitly recurring characters, so too have alumni hosts refrained a bit from revisiting their most beloved old sketches—but it’s still remarkable how infrequently Ferrell has done this over the past decade. Sure, the doctor he played in tonight’s show—the one who confesses to the minor mishap of cutting off and destroying Mikey Day’s penis during gallbladder surgery— isn’t worlds away from Dr. Beaman, the nonsense-generating weirdo he played in a couple of obvious “this one’s for me” type of sketches. But the sketch wasn’t looking for laughs of recognition; once again, Ferrell got there honestly with his nonchalant delivery of quotidian details about the pleasant lunch he had with his wife just after removing and discarding a patient’s genitals. And if the sketch about a manipulative drama teacher fussing with the last-minute posting of a high school musical cast list felt vaguely familiar, that’s because it was a cut-for-time sketch in 2019, nonetheless sequelized here in what may have been a show first. (There have been sequel sketches relegated to YouTube, but I’m not sure if a YouTube-only sketch has ever leapt back to air in this way.)
If anything, the season finale was a weird victim of Ferrell’s natural chumminess with the show, the cast, and even the musical guest. The cold open ran a little long for having Ferrell added to the usual Trump hit parade; appearances from Paul McCartney in the monologue and a post-Update sketch padded those segments out a bit; and in general, Ferrell’s work is funnier when it’s allowed to build, which meant even ending-less sketches weren’t exactly mercenary in length. All of this added up to a show that, like a lot of episodes this season, felt as skimpy in the back as Ferrell and Sarah Sherman’s costumes in the final sketch of the evening. That, too, felt like a tribute to the general vibe of a Will Ferrell Sketch, even though this wasn’t a particularly (re)inventive version of it. Mostly it felt like an excuse to get Veronika Slowikowska, Andrew Dismukes, and Sarah Sherman their screentime with Ferrell before Macca came back for a third song, and who could begrudge them that? He makes it look like a lot of fun. The less he leans on his SNL legacy, the stronger it gets.
What was on
I never did high school theater but I deeply love the cast-list sketch; it’s physically lively in a way that classroom-set sketches don’t always have the room to be, it gives Ferrell a memorable character who doesn’t much resemble any of his classics, and gives performances like Slowikowska just enough room to create quick-hit characterizations, like her “funny” girl’s shrug of self-satisfaction in the wake of her “lady boner” line. Just the idea that it was rescued from the virtual discard pile is so delightful—even if the 10 million views on that discard probably beats a lot of stuff that made it to air and might have had a hand in its revival.
The “switching sides” pretape bit from Dan Bulla, with Will Ferrell as a Bilbo Baggins-type scrappy little guy who blatantly betrays his fellowship-style compatriots, was also pretty fantastic, even if it was missing the extra dash of surrealism that I think of as part of Bulla’s whole deal.
What was off
The “What It Feels Like Talking to a Mechanic” sketch had a few laughs—I love Ferrell’s explanation that they’re going to “keep the oil” despite rebuilding the car from scratch—but boy, did it go on, only swerving away from predictable jokes when it went for the kind of ending you might have expected to see in the 1994 version.
This may be an unpopular opinion, and certainly one I’ve stated already, but the mechanic piece being one of just two sketches in the second half of the show is why Weekend Update should come down in length. And yes, that’s true even if it means cutting down or out the annual (or is twice-annual? Thrice?) Joke Swap between Jost and Che. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they were each just limited to one and had to make that one as good as possible? That will never happen, and I know some will be aghast at the very idea. I’ve just had it with all their go-to stuff at this point. I daresay the actual political jokes in this edition of Update were better and sharper than the cutesy version of a humiliation ritual they have going for Joke Swap. It felt like the anchors were getting some last real swipes in before the break, and the inevitable speculation about whether they’re leaving, followed by them definitely not leaving.
Most valuable player
I mean, it’s actually Ferrell. Again, almost to the episode’s detriment; this wasn’t really a standout installment for anyone else, and some of my personal faves had very little to do. On the other side, it’s just neat to see Ferrell (and, for a moment, Molly Shannon) dropped into a cast that’s completely different than any of his seven seasons. I guess a case could also be made for Paul McCartney, who matched Ferrell by doing more than the average musical guest: three songs, a sketch, and a monologue walk-on. Not bad for a man who is somehow 83 years old.
What’s next
Nothing but speculation about who might leave over the summer, and maybe some lighter speculation about who might host the season premiere four-plus months hence. I know we already got the lead of The Odyssey but I’m going to wild-guess Anne Hathaway (how can she not come back in the year where she has half a dozen movies out?!) or Tom Holland (how is he the only live-action Spider-Man not to host?!). Then again, you know who else besides Holland is in those two presumed contenders for the summer’s biggest movie? That’s right, Jon Bernthal!
Stray observations
• This has been a break-heavy season, and there’s something both endearing and baffling about Mikey Day, who has been on-camera for a decade and played opposite Ferrell multiple times, visibly struggling so hard to keep it together opposite a guy who has, at this point, done significantly less SNL than Day has! And it happened twice!
• I like Jeremy Culhane in general and I hope he comes back next season. But I can’t say I really get Mr. On-Blast. It feels like a Beck Bennett bit, both in general, and specifically like his Update character Jules who “sees things a little differently.” This should actually make me like it even more, but it doesn’t do the trick.
• This episode was so packed with Ferrell and Macca stuff that Chloe Fineman did a sequel to her “show understudy” bit from a few years back as an Insta original. It clearly wasn’t shot for air to begin with, which still makes me think she could be planning to peace out from the show; reviving a bit as a DIY show-night video feels like a now-or-never move, doesn’t it?
• Gonna keep things positive, though, and say that Fineman is my only prediction for a departure in Season 52. Everyone else will get another shot, even the freshmen players who failed to follow the near-impossible Ashley Padilla trajectory. (Obviously this was Padilla’s last episode as a featured player, where she fittingly had more screentime than many mainstays.)
• So yeah, that’s a wrap on Season 51! My favorite episodes of the season were Melissa McCarthy, Colman Domingo, and Glen Powell. The average grade for the season was right around a B-, which seems about right to me.
• Thanks to anyone following along with me all season, or even partway through before quitting in disgust the fifth or sixth time I said a Jane Wickline or Andrew Dismukes bit was the undisputed highlight of the episode and/or decade. This is truly a dream pop-culture-writing gig for me, analyzing the show I most genuinely anticipate episode-to-episode.
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