COLD OPEN: Trump at Courthouse

PREMISE: Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) speaks to the media about his second defamation case.

• The usual tired Trump sketch, complete with ramblings, pop culture, and other overused tropes that have come to define these JAJ sketches.
• I chuckled at the Darling Nikki / Purple Rain and Twin Peaks references, and groaned loudly at the Mean Girls reference.

RATING: *

MONOLOGUE: Jacob Elordi takes questions from the audience.

• Right off the bat, Elordi comes off very ill at ease. It doesn’t help that he has not been given any funny dialogue whatsoever and is just literally talking about Saltburn.
• The return of the Q&A monologue, always a sign that SNL is just spinning its wheels.
• Not a single moment of this entire Q&A-ologue made me laugh. I didn’t even crack a smile. Sarah’s part was especially awkward and frankly cringeworhy and self-serving.
• What even was Kenan’s part?
• This whole thing felt very underrehearsed and underwritten, as if they literally did parachute in a half-baked Q&A monologue to save Elordi from the task of doing one where he’d be front and center.

RATING: *

SKETCH: Crown Your Short King

PREMISE: A dating show for short men goes in an unintended direction when a very tall bachelor (Elordi) shows up.

• Short King? Did Marcelo write this?
• Not loving this premise, nor the oddly wooden performances from Mikey Day and Chloe Feinman.
• None of the insults directed at Marcelo are landing with me. Marcelo, to his credit, at least seems to be trying to carry this sketch somewhere.
• Really hating Mikey’s performance as the host.
• Jacob as the Pittsburgh douchebag Chloe Fineman’s contestant winds up choosing was a totally predictable direction, and once again nothing about it made me laugh.
• Chloe and Jacob making out barely got a reaction.
• Terrible sketch.

RATING: *

FILMED PIECE: Cub Shay Shay: Extended Cut

PREMISE: Shannon Sharpe (Devon Walker)’s interview with Katt Williams (Ego Nwodim) gets the extended treatment.

• Ooh, a Devon and Ego pairing, and this particular premise built around the absolutely batshit Katt Williams interview is a good vehicle for them.
• Ego is great as Katt Williams. Her voice and mannerisms were on point and made up for the fact that her lines weren’t really all that funny.
• Devon also gives a very strong performance as Shannon Sharpe.
• Despite the great performances, the actual content didn’t really do much for me. I wanted to like it way more than I did, but the writing was not there.

RATING: **

SKETCH: Lip Readers

PREMISE: Lip readers (Elordi, Bowen Yang) poorly decipher celebrities’ on-camera moments.

• Ego and Heidi are very good as the usual wooden Entertainment Tonights.
• A sketch led by Bowen and Jacob, the latter of whom still seems visibly uncomfortable. Wooh boy.
• Just as I feared, this was painful to sit through. I sat there stonefaced the entire time, waiting for this sketch to crawl to its merciful end.
• Renee Rapp is a terrible live performer, and she further dragged the sketch down.
• This was truly a terrible sketch. From the premise to the dialogue to the lead performances, it felt slapped together and undercooked. Throw in a gratuitous cameo and you’ve got the worst of modern SNL firing on all cylinders.

RATING: *

SKETCH: Bowling Alley

PREMISE: A couple on their first date (Gardner, Elordi) become distracted by increasingly bizarre bowling alley animations.

• A fun premise.
• The Split sequence was hilarious.
• Mikey’s performance as the angry dad in his Gutter sequence was awful. He just doesn’t have the ability to make that kind of hotheaded performance come alive. If it were Will Ferrell or Will Forte or Jason Sudeikis in the role, it would have killed. Mikey just doesn’t have the presence or whatever those guys had to pull it off.
• That said, Heidi’s line about shooting heroine between her toes in response to the video was an unexpected piece of dark humor that worked.
• Predictable punchline to the ‘Strike’ video, but it made me laugh.
• The punchline to Bowen and Devon’s lengthy scene wasn’t worth the wait.
• This could’ve been something great, but the execution left something to be desired. The sequences could have had some funnier lines, and there were some loose performances that further hurt it. Boy, this is episode a rough one so far.

RATING: **

COMMERCIAL: Alaska Airlines

PREMISE: Alaska Airlines embraces the controversy caused by missing plain door.

• Not much to say about this one. Not a terrible premise, and I got a few light chuckles, particularly from JAJ’s brief bit as Sully. Overall though, this was a bit too underwritten and blandly executed. They could have done more with thos.
• The premise of this is somewhat similar to the USAir sketch from the Roseanne episode in season 20; that sketch was much funnier, and it made me wonder if this would have translated better as a live piece.

RATING: **

WEEKEND UPDATE WITH COLIN JOST & MICHAEL CHE

FEATURING: Sen. Tim Scott (Devon Walker), Deobra Redden (Punkie Johnson)

• Year 2024, Iowa Cacus, Tim Scott Endorsement, Trump / Sub-Zero Temperatures, Hand Herpes, Pope Francis, Tesla, Pregnant Women Vaping
• Colin led with some pretty sharp, funny insights about the inevitable Trump-Biden rematch; the best parts were his “Is it?” joke at the beginning and him calling the match-up elder abuse and comparing it to Bum Fights.
• Che describing Tim Scott as looking like “someone drew Ving Rhames with their eyes closed” was hilarious.
• Good to see Devon back as Tim Scott. This is a great, fun impression and Devon had several great lines here, especially the descriptions of his voice in the beginning.
• Okay, the ‘racist dog whistle’ bit REALLY got me. A nice unexpected subversion of the usual ‘Colin is a racist’ routine.
• Punkie’s commentary as the defendant who leaped at the judge in that viral video wasn’t anything great, but as usual Punkie had a fun, spunky energy that made it a lot better than it would have been with a less charismatic performer.
• Pretty fun, strong Update tonight.

RATING: *** ½  

SKETCH: Women’s AA Meeting:

PREMISE: A man (Jacob Elordi) disrupts an all-female AA meeting.

• Ego looks very good with that hair.
• * sigh * another painfully obvious ‘Elordi thirst trap’ sketch.
• We flat out get the punchline spelled out to us with Elordi’s “being sober forces me to act out sexually with women.”
• This was horrid. Just a painfully predictable sketch with no real premise, no funny lines or absolutely anything that had a whiff of effort. Also, the premise of using recovering from alcoholism as a setup for a terrible joke about sex addiction feels insulting in 2024.
• Dayum, Punkie.

RATING: *

SKETCH: Acting Class

PREMISE: A famous actor (Elordi) gives non-advice to acting students.

• Mikey is getting a lot of aggressive roles tonight, and he’s not convincing in any of them.
• Feels like Andrew has been almost completely invisible.
• Nice to see Rachel McAdams in a sketch. I wonder why she never hosted.
• I complain a lot about Bowen, but he’s actually at least trying to get into an actual character and his style is very good for this type of snooty character.
• Yet another sketch essentially gushing over Elordi’s looks. There was no content here.
• Bowen’s “I’ll answer that: no” kind of made me chuckle.
• Elordi not being familiar with rejection or auditioning was a groan-worthy recurring joke.

RATING: *

SKETCH: Garret from Hinge

PREMISE: Garret from Hinge disrupts a wedding.

• I…ugh…no. Fuck this.

RATING: *

EPISODE MVP: Devon Walker scored every time he was onscreen tonight. His Tim Scott commentary was the only truly excellent moment of the entire show (Update as a whole was the only quality piece in this episode).

BOTTOM LINE: Simply put, a very bad episode of Saturday Night Live. Tonight’s episode was entirely devoid of any actual content, just “OMG HOST HOT” fluff pieces that poorly hid the fact that Elordi just isn’t good at sketch comedy. That Update provided an oasis of humor in the midst of all this blandness is a miracle.