Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars
REPUBLICAN DEBATE
Donald Trump (DAH), Ted Cruz (TAK), Chris Christie (BOM) rule GOP debate
— A fun description from Cecily and Kyle of what’s going to happen to any of the candidates that dip below 3% during the debate.
— Wait, what? Kate first played Lindsey Graham THIS early in her tenure??? I had no recollection of that. I had assumed she didn’t start playing Graham until the “LOL Kate McKinnon is playing a male politician!” era that started around 2017. I don’t like how the bad aspects of Kate’s later years on SNL (2017-present) are starting to pop up around this time (e.g. her breaking throughout her Update commentary in the Fey/Poehler episode, her playing lots of male roles), especially since I had remembered this period being part of Kate’s best years on the show (2014-2017).
— A good laugh from Taran’s Ted Cruz demonstrating how, when he smiles, it looks like he’s peeing.
— I’m enjoying how increasingly desperate and fraught Beck’s portrayal of Jeb Bush is becoming over the course of this season.
— Another good laugh from Taran’s Cruz, with his “Liberal Jews” bit.
— I love the visual of Bobby’s Chris Christie slowly moving both himself and his podium away from Jay’s Ben Carson after Carson’s very creepy, unsettling speech.
— A funny walk-on from Kenan at the end.
STARS: ***½
MONOLOGUE
host parries lightsaber wielder TAK, Kylo Ren cosplayer BOM, confused LEJ
— I laughed a lot at how Adam Driver was IMMEDIATELY able to tell it’s Bobby inside of that Kylo Ren costume, due to his body type. I then laughed even harder at Bobby’s dismayed response to that: “Hey, come on! It could be Kenan in here!”
— Leslie in her usual scene-stealing walk-on.
STARS: ***½
FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA
Packers’ 4th-string quarterback’s (PED) gruesome injury is replayed repeatedly
— A huge laugh from the initial footage of Pete’s horrific, cringeworthy injury on the field.
— The constant milking and replaying of the footage of Pete’s injury is very funny, a spot-on spoof of the way incidents like this are covered, and I like how it also reminds me of the same thing happening in the legendary Buckwheat Gets Shot piece.
— Kenan’s reaction to seeing the injury footage made me laugh out loud: “OH, LORD! TAKE MY EYES! BLIND ME, LORD!”
STARS: ****
UNDERCOVER BOSS: STAR KILLER BASE
Kylo Ren (host) poorly hides identity on Starkiller Base
— A well-loved short among many people.
— A very funny concept of Kylo Ren appearing on Undercover Boss and going undercover as “Matt, radar technician”.
— Leslie: “Can we rewire it please, so I can go have my muffin?!?”
— A particularly funny part with Adam’s Kylo revealing in his confessional that the reason for his guilt when Taran disclosed the death of his own son is because he’s (Kylo) the one who killed Taran’s son. I also love the part afterwards with Kylo trying to make it up to Taran by, while in disguise as Matt, giving Taran a cheap, sappy apology card on behalf of Kylo.
— So many great parts with “Matt”, especially him violently getting revenge on Bobby in the cafeteria.
STARS: *****
ALADDIN
Jasmine (CES) gets pelted during magic carpet ride with Aladdin (host)
— A decent laugh from the first hit Cecily’s Jasmine sustains.
— Meh, the progression to the hits that Jasmine suffers isn’t doing much for me.
— I do like the use of model toys to represent the visual of Aladdin’s carpet landing at an air base.
— The final minute of this sketch was at least good. However, this sketch as a whole felt very unfocused. The “Jasmine gets pelted with a whole bunch of things from above” conceit and the “Aladdin and Jasmine make an emergency landing at air base” conclusion felt like something from two completely different sketches.
STARS: **½
AMERICA’S FUNNIEST CATS
Joelle (CES) & Noelle (KAM) provide French ennui
— Blah, I don’t care for that opening “Finn Raynal-Beads” joke.
— Aaaaand now we get even more of writers’ James Anderson and Kent Sublette’s typical habit of giving characters “funny” names, with Kate and Cecily’s characters here having cutesy rhyming names: Noelle LeSoup and Joelle LaRue.
— After my complaints above, this sketch has really taken off with Cecily and Kate’s dark voice-overs for silly cat videos. The “Boi-oi-oing” thing is also a great running bit throughout their voice-overs.
— (*sigh*) That pointlessly ridiculous, out-of-place wig of Kenan’s in his small walk-on is yet ANOTHER typical bad Anderson/Sublette-ism.
— Overall, despite all of my minor quibbles, this was actually a solid sketch as a whole, as the main conceit carried the sketch through.
STARS: ****
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Parachute”
WEEKEND UPDATE
PED weighs in on who should undergo gun-purchase background checks
guest anchor Laura Parsons has partial understanding of adult news items
— A solid rant from Michael about the Oscars.
— Ha, for the second time in two seasons, Weekend Update does a hilarious brief cutaway to Colin giving the camera a cheesy smile and thumbs-up (the fourth above screencap for this Update).
— We get our first-ever direct mention on SNL of Pete’s mental health issues.
— Some good self-deprecating comments Pete’s making about his mental health issues.
— A great breakdown Colin does about Michael Bloomberg.
— Some really fantastic jokes from Colin and Michael tonight.
— Like the previous time Vanessa’s Laura Parsons appeared on Update, there are so many huge laughs from her delivering harrowing news stories in her typical cheesy delivery. The Bill Cosby bit at the end especially had me howling.
STARS: ****½
AWARENESS SEMINAR
“social puppeteering” warning instead inspires kids to bully elaborately
— I love the first example Adam gives of “social puppeteering”.
— Even funnier is Cecily’s disclosure of once “Honey I Shrunk The Kids-ing” her cousin.
— This sketch continues to be very funny with all the different styles of gaslighting-esque pranks being described.
— Solid bit with Bobby realizing he’s been “21 Jump Street-ed”, and I love his delivery here.
STARS: ****
DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE
FRA marks David Bowie’s passing by setting up 1979 SNL performance clip
David Bowie [real] performs “The Man Who Sold The World” {rerun}
— The audience wildly applauding and screaming cheers at a Fred Armisen cameo for practically HALF A FREAKIN’ MINUTE as if Fred hasn’t made a bazillion cameos on SNL these past few seasons. You’d think that was, say, the seldom-makes-cameos-in-this-era Bill Murray or Adam Sandler up there from how long the audience’s wild cheers went on.
— I’ll go light on my typical salt towards Fred, because I’m really liking the childhood story he’s telling here about staying up late one night in 1979 to watch David Bowie’s SNL performance that year. This story is heartfelt, touching, and interesting.
— A very nice way for SNL to honor Bowie after his then-recent passing, by showing a clip of one of his season 5 musical performances.
GOLDEN GLOBES
married (host) & (VAB) party after Golden Globe win; Liev Schreiber cameo
— I absolutely love the sweet, sentimental, realistic tone of the scenes with Kyle and Kate.
— Unless I’m forgetting something, I guess this can be counted as the very first of this era’s short films that go back and forth showing a gentle scene and a related chaotic scene, which would become a running theme of a number of SNL’s short films over the following years (e.g. the Day You Were Born short from the season 43 Amy Schumer episode).
— The increasingly wild scenes with Adam and Vanessa are serving as a hilarious contrast to the lovely scenes with Kyle and Kate.
— A particularly hilarious part where, after Vanessa trips and falls down when she and Adam are running away, Adam initially stops running, looks back at Vanessa on the floor, then immediately continues running away without even helping her.
— A nice Liev Schrieber appearance, reminding me of how much I like his later hosting stint from season 44.
— A beautiful ending with Kyle and Kate.
STARS: ****½
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “Nobody To Blame”
THE DOCTOR IS IN… MY BUTT 4
actual kid interrupts (host) & (BEB) in porno set in doctor’s office
— Already a decent cheap laugh from the porn title shown at the very beginning.
— Wow, Aidy is just NOW making her first appearance all night, in the final sketch of the show???
— Like the previous sketch this character of Aidy’s appeared in, there’s some pretty good laughs from her obliviousness towards the porno being filmed.
— Aidy, regarding an innocent statement Adam made to her: “Are you positive?” Adam: “Yeah, but don’t tell or they’ll make me leave.”
— A funny rapid-fire run of innuendos in the back-and-forth that Aidy and Adam have right before she leaves.
— What’s with Taran’s big pot belly in this? Or is he just randomly sticking his stomach out for comedic purposes?
STARS: ***½
GOODNIGHTS
IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS
— A very strong episode. An impressively large number of highly-rated sketches, one often-referenced classic short (Undercover Boss), one lesser-referenced-but-very-well-done short (Golden Globes), and only one thing all night that I didn’t care for (Aladdin, and not even that was horrible). Adam Driver is off to a solid start as a reliable recurring host.
MY PERSONAL CHOICE OF “BEST OF” MOMENTS FOR THIS EPISODE, REPRESENTED WITH SCREENCAPS
RATED SEGMENTS RANKED FROM BEST TO WORST
Undercover Boss: Star Killer Base
Golden Globes
Weekend Update
Football Night In America
America’s Funniest Cats
Awareness Seminar
Republican Debate
The Doctor Is In… My Butt 4
Monologue
Aladdin
HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler)
a slight step up
My full set of screencaps for this episode is here
TOMORROW
Ronda Rousey
Why does Kate playing male roles irk you so much? I’m not even trying to be aggressive or sarcastic. I genuinely want to know and don’t understand the anger.
Maybe because he thinks a male in the cast could do it? I don’t know who he’d have in mind though
I can’t speak for Stooge, but my dissatisfaction with the trope is that is comes with the smug sense of self satisfaction from the show, as if having a woman play a man is “sticking it” to the man (an idea that may have been transgressive in, say, 1995, but comes off as dated as best now) when the sketches themselves never have any teeth beyond that.
I don’t know. Kate is very clearly going for jokes when she’s playing these men. It’s not like the only joke is that she’s playing a man. I do enjoy that it gets under the skin of the people being mocked though.
I guess if I completely take away the comedy aspect (as very little of these drag roles have made me laugh, any more than the times that Newt Gingrich’s sister was played by a man made me laugh – pretty much the peak of this type of piece for me was Terry Sweeney as Nancy Reagan or Phil Hartman as Barbara Bush, and that was never passed off as activism), I can understand some protest point, but the main problem for me with this type of protest move is that aside from a few articles about Trump in 2017, there’s no indication anyone who is being impersonated gives a hoot about these drag roles.
To be fair, it’s not just Kate – Cecily and Aidy do this too, occasionally – but Kate is the main one that stands out because she gets more airtime in these roles whereas Cecily and Aidy tend to just participate if she is already there. And in many cases, she is also buried under truly awful prosthetics that make her look more like a woman in bad drag than she would look if they just did the bare minimum, as they did in this cold open.
I think the whole activism concept is mostly just a cover to use as much of Kate as they can because she’s the main star of this cast and because the last 4-5 seasons of her tenure have become increasingly wrapped in these gestures toward pleasing and acknowledging liberal viewers and ideals. This gets very muddled (I’m not sure what liberal viewers out there were looking for 2-3 pieces on what a hard time Theresa May had), but that’s the main goal, I assume. And in such tough emotional times, I can understand why some viewers need the comfort of her making fun of Rudy, or of her showing everyone how tough and funny RBG is. Or dressing up as Graham, or Sessions, or briefly Mueller, so that the fans who love Kate can see her in the middle of the political dramas they follow But this is a world further and further away from any actual comedy. And in the case of some of these impressions, like Sessions, it moves from being time-consuming fan service/Kate service to stuff that inexplicably seemed to try to make the politician involved seem fun and endearing. Why in the world did anyone ever need to see piece after piece of her trying to be cute and drawling on about her “opossum”?
As comedy, this stuff does not work for me. As political activism, it sure as hell doesn’t work for me. I can sympathize with and respect the viewers it does work for, but 5 years of this stuff, so much airtime spent on these concepts, just feels like such a huge waste to me, especially with so many talented cast members waiting for a chance.
“Why does Kate playing male roles irk you so much? I’m not even trying to be aggressive or sarcastic. I genuinely want to know and don’t understand the anger.”
One reason is because it feels to me like it’s become too much of a crutch for the show in more recent years. For all of my other reasons, commenter John voiced them perfectly.
I know this episode’s example is before the fact, but I’m thinking Kate playing so many men from the Trump administration might also be compensation for not being able to/not having a need to play Hillary throughout that tenure. And like someone else suggested, she’s being pushed as the star of the show so we’re going to have to see her in prominent roles whether we like the set-up or not. That being said, the Lindsay Graham impression probably works better than most because he has a rather prissy personality to begin with.
My general take on “Kate or other female cast members playing male roles of Trump allies” is that while this started off humorously and led to some fun characterizations, the joke just became self-indulgent and half-assed “roasting” satire, as if the idea is, as John pointed out, that the performances supposedly irk their targets.
I do not mind if the performer creates a distinct impression or comic persona–Kate’s Sessions as like a Forrest Gump elf worked for me, as did Melissa McCarthy’s overly caffeinated Sean Spicer. But increasingly the performances look/act nothing like their actual targets and aren’t that particularly funny to boot–Kate’s Rudy is abysmal in my opinion, and I didn’t enjoy Aidy playing Ted Cruz just recently. Such performances add to the level of over indulgence that has plagued some of the back end of these successful cast members’ tenures.
No, I Like Lindsay The Least ! Maybe, That is because Of How She Looks ! I don’t think They need to have A Woman Play Lindsay Because Of How He acts OR Speaks OR any Thing !
Saturday Night Taped (Episodes from S39 on where the top 2 or more highest ranked sketches are pre-taped): 11
Okay, I know the Anderlette funny name trope has been done to death…BUT…the combination of Beck’s voice saying ‘WITH YOUR HOST, FINN REYNAL-BEADS’ and Adam’s dismayed, disturbed reaction does me in every time. It shouldn’t work, but dammit it does. And yes, America’s Funniest Cats is a sentimental favorite of mine for lots of reasons.
As much as I like this show, I feel like the major difference between this one and his later two is that here, he’s given a lot of material any old host would get, and isn’t really being relied on for much other than Star Wars stuff. Starting with his S44 show, the writers start giving him stuff they know he’ll knock out of the park, like Career Day, Medieval Times and Marrying the Ketchup. I can only imagine he’s gonna keep coming back as well, he’s a natural.
If you didn’t already know, Bobby Moynihan is a huge Star Wars fan/nerd.
He even voiced a character on Star Wars Resistance.
Ironically, he is NOT of the two SNL alums that have appeared on The Mandalorian, although I’m expecting cameo in a future season.
“Oh, we must be over Syria.”
Most underrated line in a very fun episode.
Adam Driver is a real natural of a host, which is not easy. You can see a celebrity being funny on a talk show and think, “They would be fun on SNL,” but that’s not usually the case. There’s something about his very specific intensity that fits live sketch comedy like a glove, but that’s not enough either (see Jason Patric). He also has great comic timing. I wasn’t sure if the car crash of his second episode would make him reluctant to return, so I’m glad he hosted again last year and absolutely killed.
I agree with your criticisms of the Aladdin sketch (on top of those, the ending also doesn’t really make sense), but I still find it very enjoyable. A big reason is Cecily’s performance – she absolutely nails the escalating confusion and hesitancy of Jasmine, and her line deliveries of some absurd dialogue works just about every time. And Driver sells the obliviousness of Aladdin over everything happening to her.
Driver is also absolutely priceless in America’s Funniest Cats, with his barely controlled hysteria managing to be very funny instead of seeming tryhard. Kate and Cecily’s asides (basically like a French Sprockets) are also funny, especially the random “She will not be missed,” about one of the ‘dead’ cats. The ending doesn’t work, but the rest is great.
The porn doctor sketch manages to make the length (no pun intended) work, with lots of great lines all the way through (one or two of which I’m half-surprised got past the censors), and probably the best use of Beck Bennett’s thighs that a sketch will ever manage to have.
Of course the main takeaway from this episode will always be the Kylo Ren sketch, which was extremely well-received by Star Wars fans, and has had a life of its own. Not just fan art and fan fiction, but Matt the Radar Technician is now actually canon!
https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2019/9/1/20841483/snl-kylo-ren-sketch-star-wars-reference
All the writers of Undercover Starbase actually were Star Wars fans, I believe, which helps, but what also makes this stand up to scrutiny is the honest ending where Kylo kills the one technician who had been there for him the whole time because he just can’t help who he is.
They revive this character/concept in Driver’s 2020 episode. It was not the best idea, because you can’t top the first one, but, fortunately, the second installment still manages to be entertaining and manages another pretty good ending.
The Golden Globes pre-tape is a true gem. One of the big reasons it’s such a gem is because it wrings so much out of a simple concept (the Hollywood couple who say “go to bed” to the kids at every awards ceremony), the other being the high quality of the performances (more of Vanessa successfully playing against type, more of Adam’s mania, a rare Kyle and Kate pairing, and good ‘kid’ performances from them both). The surprise cameo and ending just mean it all wraps up as well as it began.
Promo:
Adam Driver’s second episode surely was a step down from this one BUT it had the Career Day sketch, which is probably one of my favourite acting performances from him and favourite sketches of the decade.
Fitting that there’s a Packers/Cardinals sketch given that the actual Packers/Cardinals game that aired beforehand delayed this episode by about 45 minutes.
Time for the barely used Rhonda Rousey episode. Kate Winslet got more to do in her episode.
No reviews yet for Kenan. I wonder if Kenan is so gung-ho about staying on SNL because he knows it’s going to bomb
It does look pretty bad. However, I thought the same about Barb and Star, and I ended up really liking that!
I spoke too soon.
https://www.metacritic.com/tv/kenan/season-1
Kenan has positive reviews.
The promoting of the Force Awakens is doing my head in reading these