Supposedly, Saturday Night Live hasn’t particularly intended to favor stand-up comedians when casting the show in recent years; Lorne Michaels has said (and I’m sure I’ve repeated here) that there was a influx of stand-ups auditioning because of the pandemic, when comedians were more likely to continue attempting to hone their craft than, say, improv or sketch groups. (What that means about the stand-up comics who particularly decided doing live shows in 2020 was of utmost importance, and how that contributes to the Woke Ruined Comedy Podcasters, is a discussion for another time, or for the comments section in the likely event that this parenthetical annoys someone.) But apart from the specific hope of finding the next Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, or even Pete Davidson from the stand-up world, it’s easy to see the general allure comedians, rather than comic actors, might have, especially at this particular moment. Some of them are capable of engendering precisely the kind of personality-based loyalty that SNL as an institution hungers for.
Take the stand-up material deployed on this week’s episode. I’m not a hardcore Nikki Glaser fan, though I’m familiar with her act and find her funny enough. Her material in her monologue tonight certainly wasn’t all killer; some of the punchlines were visible from a distance, and some of her bits felt curtailed before they could add some kind of smarter twist. But for 10 minutes or so, it was easy to get on her side as she toyed with jokes about short guys, body image, and, most daringly in this mini-set, pedophilia. Unless the comic in question is instantly off-putting, there’s an automatic rooting interest that buys more time than, say, a sketch about a frat boy sneaking into a sorority house. (More on that momentarily.)
A more SNL-specific version of the stand-up glow-up was visible in Pete Davidson’s return to Weekend Update. It should have been as tired as Pete’s eyes, especially as the only commentator segment for the week; instead, he slipped back into his self-deprecating (and also Staten Island-deprecating) faux-disinterested routine seamlessly. Not on a technical level, mind; his style has never been the most polished in the room. But damn, he knows how to work that crowd in the guise of just chatting it up with his old buddies. (Loved the joke at Lorne’s expense.) No wonder if Michaels wishes he could bottle that for his sketch-comedy show; the man is nothing if not impressed by celebrity, which these days increasingly involves a cult of personality.
It’s easy to get wistful about Davidson’s brief return, despite his own professed underachieving on the main body of the show, during the worst moments of this week’s rollercoaster episode. Several sketches felt like they were waiting for someone to justify them by sheer force of personality. It’s not a good sign (for the sketches, I mean) that first-time host Glaser understandably wasn’t quite up to that task; it’s a worse sign that one particularly terrible sketch, with Mikey Day playing a frat guy infiltrating a sorority with a “realistic” mask and disguise, felt like it was specifically waiting for Rob Schneider to show up. If you’re asking a segment of your audience to hurdle over the reminder that anti-trans panic is being stirred up daily by equally outlandish imaginings of boys pretending to be girls, the sketch in question should be, at minimum, laugh-out-loud funny. Sell your reason for going there. Instead, the sketch offered… horny frat boys donning disguises to peek on sorority girls? This would have been musty in 1994. In fact, it was musty when Schneider basically did do it in 1994. Less deadly but similarly predictable and adrift was the lead-off sketch with Nikki Glaser and Tommy Brennan as a brother and sister singing inappropriate karaoke duets in front of his new girlfriend played by Sarah Sherman. They seemed to be abiding by a revised rule of threes: do a joke three times and then shrug it out. As much as I generally prefer sketch comedy to stand-up, these bits had me yearning for a solo comic who could simply pivot into a different type of joke without striking a whole set.
The night’s best moments, though, leaned even further into the material that only an ensemble could do, even if it’s not material anyone would have expected or asked for. But bless the show for bringing the 4AM-on-writing-night vibes of the mechanical bull sketch, where in two drunk woo-girls (Glaser and Sarah Sherman) take off on a planet-wide, and eventually space/time-transcending, mechanical bull ride. From Jane Wickline immediately storming off in a fit of lovelorn frustration to Kenan Thompson accidentally setting the bull free following a brief soliloquy to James Austin Johnson earnestly singing a lengthy country tune about the situation, the sketch just kept throwing goofy ideas to cast members who seemed delighted to catch ’em and run. There was similar energy to the delayed-flight sketch, which hopscotched from airline frustrations to Johnson giving another straight-faced performance as a pilot rattling off dispiriting information as well as updates about his progress on a dating app to Sherman and Dismukes’ own barely-contained relationship troubles.
So the episode wound up balancing itself out, even as it took some massive dips along the way: a few stand-up moments shared space with sketches that felt like everyone throwing in their silliest ideas (even though they were likely conceived the same as any other sketches on the show). Maybe Michaels is enamored of stand-ups because they keep the show productively at odds with itself.
What was on
In addition to the two previously mentioned sketches, the ad for “American Girl XL” had exactly the kind of turn missing from the night’s worst stuff. It seems like it might be a goof on twenty-and-thirty-something anxieties as reflected by grown-up versions of American Girl dolls, until a bunch of dudes gradually take over, even bringing their own announcer. The “Make Believe Meadow” sketch wasn’t quite on that level, and the “not having kids” punchline landed kind of flatly sour, but I have to hand it to them: It’s not terribly off-base in terms of what having kids is like.
What was off
Besides that college sketch, two more bits absolutely failed to grappled with different cults of personality. That the show didn’t suddenly find a way to savage Trump after weeks of exhausted, half-hearted satire wasn’t a surprise, but it was a little jarring to experience that level of surrender, as if Michaels had been counting on a Zohran Mamdani post-election appearance for a buzzy opening and then just had to hastily commission a placeholder when he turned out to not be in the city this weekend. Less depressing but still a dereliction of duty: Taking an opportunity to parody the allegedly Gen Alpha-beloved Mr. Beast in all of his uncanny-valley, capitalist-dystopia horror, with a disturbingly close facsimile in Ben Marshall, and turning it into a “what if Mr. T and E.T. had a baby?”-level sorta-trailer spoof. They scored a few decent laughs, but any real satire was muffled by the elaborate costumes. It’s for the best that the show doesn’t go all-in on nasty celeb-bashing as was the style the last time everyone was too depressed to make political satire work consistently (so, circa 2003), but c’mon, go a little harder on Mr. Beast!
Most valuable player
James Austin Johnson showed off his break-proof versatility in multiple sketches. So what’s a guy have to do to get a few-week break from impersonating Trump?
Next time
Glen Powell’s risen star and batting position assures high expectations for his episode, so maybe brace yourselves for some disappointment?
Stray observations
- • In theory, it’s a good idea for <em>SNL</em> to mix in some cartoons. Just as music videos don’t have to belong to the Lonely Island, animation on the show doesn’t have to be the exclusive property of Robert Smigel. But the recent animation on the show always seems ill-timed. The “Brad & Dad” short was certainly in a different register from a lot of the sketches, but the problem with a poor man’s Mike Judge is that it’s exceedingly easy for it to come across as more mean-spirited than funny. If Day and his writing partner Streeter Seidell want to do an Animation Domination pilot for Fox, maybe they should just let us know when it’s done.
- • Where the hell was…? This is the part of the recap where I ask where the hell someone was for the whole show. Where the hell was Marcello Hernández? (Besides living for the Jennifer Hudson Spirit Tunnel.) Did someone give him COVID?
- • Speaking of which, Jane Wickline sounded genuinely hoarse in her few appearances tonight; weirdly, a very funny cut-for-time song from last weekend’s Update offer a plausible (if possibly coincidental) reason.
- • As far as Sombr’s songs go, he has an enormous wingspan.
