Anya Taylor-Joy/Lil Nas X (5.22.2021)

Okay, here's my review. Anya Taylor-Joy turned out to be another host that was far more capable for the show than they let on, but that's a little more excusable this time because this show turned out to not be about the host at all. With this being the finale to such a historic season and roughly half the cast being rumored to leave (everyone has their own little theories they've been speculating on) it was only natural that the host would get overshadowed a bit. Anya Taylor-Joy did show us she was capable of a lot more than what the show gave her, so I'd like to see her get another shot at hosting in the middle of a much more stable season some time in the future. Since there was a lot going on tonight and a bit of buzz surrounding this episode, I'd like to keep this intro short and just get right to it.

What We Learned From This Year - Wow...OK, there's a lot to break down here, but let me just start by saying...I think I have a good idea of who's leaving (or at least who is still seriously consider leaving and may make or publicly announce that decision in August) right off the bat just based on facial expressions alone. Say what you will about the actual quality of this season, one cannot deny that the historical moment it took place in and the circumstances that forced them to adjust their production process accordingly absolutely warranted this cold open. For me, this really kicked into high gear with the positive test result jokes from Cecily & Pete (whose green screen was obvious) followed by the Adele nose swab story from Chris and Beck & Kenans' stories. I'm sure Cecily (even ironically) naming Wario Musk as a "highlight" and even mentioning Morgan Wallen by name will get some online reaction but, what the hell? The whole theme of this monologue was already about leaving tragedies in the past and learning from them! I also liked Cecily pointing out the previously unseen audience medical reader. This was also one of the best possible uses of Andrew, Lauren, Punkie and Akira all season (as well as making sure tge entire rest of the cast gets on). Chris Rock really hit this out of the park for me. He really did highlight how it felt like way more than just ONE season of television had just passed us by, right? Overall, they struck the exact right balance between sentimentality and levity here to give us the perfect topical yet apolitical cold open to close the book on a momentus challenge of a season. A-

Monologue - Nice of Anya to acknowledged this being the first (and now only) show to full audience (who, come to think of it, did seem to do most if not all of the heavy lifting required to make this really feel like a finale) this season and then acknowledge her own...unique ethnicity. Even though "Queens' Gambit" seems to be a full year old at this point, it was smart of SNL to base most of Anya Taylor-Joys' monologue around it seeing as that's probably the thing she'd be most recognized from. Still, while Anya seems just as likable as she's been made out to be and I appreciate her ending the monologue in Spanish (possibly an SNL first?) I do wish there could've been a bit more energy here. B-

Hollywood Squares 1998 - Yeah, this is definitely my SECOND favorite Tom Bergeron era Hollywood Squares parody I've seen SNL do (but this does give Dustys' Love, Jingleheimer Junction and The 17th Annual Adult Film Awards and countless others some serious competition for the title of "favorite heavily edited TV broadcast sketch" in my book!) I feel like the comedic concept of "TV and movies from the past now bring incredibly problematic and thus necessitating heavy glaring edits" has already been heavily explored over the past few years. Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer and Jared Fogle have certainly (and deservedly so) been the butt of many of those jokes in that time. Thankfully, this sketch got those references out of their system quickly and spent most of its runtime hilariously piling on the overlooked target of pre-inexplicable YouTube/Comedy Central fame Jeff Dunham (who Mikey might have been my last choice to play but hey, Beck was already cast as Tom Bergeron) and giving us Aidy, Chris and Beck as anchors with Anya Taylor-Joy as my first conscious celebrity crush, Emma "Baby Spice" Bunton to tie up all the loose ends. I was a little conflicted about how this sketch was presented at first but thankfully it's the type of thing that (ironically) holds up better on rewatch! Additionally, it appears the squares we didn't get to see were Dismukes as Kevin Spacey, Lauren as Roseanne and a cardboard cutout of Apu from The Simpsons. Gee, I'd hate to think Lauren and Andrew had their lines cut there but I'd like to think that the Apu thing could've been done by just simply having another male cast member (possibly Dismukes? get another writer or extra to play a vague outline of Kevin Spacey?) to just play Hank Azaria being asked to do one of his Simpsons voices just before another edit sets in but now that I think about it, they kinda already covered that with Jeff Dunham (even if chronologically it would make more sense to do that joke with Azaria INSTEAD of Dunham). B+

Picture With Dad - I liked that this went the extremely dark route it did because it would’ve seemed extremely cliche otherwise. The level of commitment to this exhibited by Beck, Heidi, Aidy and Andrew were what made this for me as repetitive as Beck made parts of it. B+

Human Man Design - This also felt like a comedic concept that has been done do death before but I think the bigger problem here was how unfocused this felt both times I watched this. I couldn't tell if the humor was based on fake names for extremities, first drafts of things that thankfully aren't real (like one giant toe) differences between male/female body functionality. It seemed like the latter but they should've tightened the script up a bit to make that clearer. Also, I was left a bit confused by the inclusion of Kyle as Jesus. Normally, I'm a fan of Kyle's but this seemed so pointless it was almost like they realized that this was something they absolutely had to edit but it somehow didn't occur to them to edit Kyle out of the sketch entirely. Finally, it was nice to see Melissa get a very Melissa role in this sketch rather than being edited out entirely after her recent Instagram drama. As far as my take on that, I'll just say that while it would be a bummer to see her go without the show even having come close to utilizing her to her full potential I would support her seeking better opportunities for herself elsewhere if it came to that. C-

It's Pride Again - Well, I appreciate Bowen and Kate getting big pretapes that allow them to celebrate their sexual identities but like most pieces if that nature, I recognize it as something where the jokes were lost on me because I am far from the target audience here. Thankfully, I decided to give this a rewatch in order to process the hidden secondary theme to this piece of "quarantine driving us to miss interpersonal drama and other minor irritants we had no business missing in the first place but we only miss anyway because they were outside and not at home with us." Shout out to Bill Kenney of SNL Stats for pointing this out. Thanks,, Bill!! I believe this marks the first time for me that joining the live chat of a post episode SNL Stats stream has actually made one of reviews better rather than gotten in the way of me finishing them. Good way for them to sneak in the obligatory Lil Nas X rap pretape cameo, though. I also liked the "theory/podcast" bickering between Bowen, Kate and Anya. It's rare you see something that real and leftist Twitter on SNL. B+

Celtic Woman - At least I could immediately recognize this as having a clear focus and being able to introduce me to something I was unfamiliar with but not necessarily excluded from. Yeah, I've seen the phrase "Celtic Woman" in emails from the Paramount Theater in Denver listing their upcoming events but never actually considered going so, it's nice to be filled in on what I've been intentionally missing. The brief cameos from Chris, Beck, Kyle and Chloe made me laugh. Good use of Lauren, Punkie, Heidi and Alex as well. I also liked "Sweet Home Alabama" as a random set list inclusion. Also, did anyone else get the vibe that Cecily was playing the same character she played in the Irish Dating Game sketch from Bill Haders' Season 43 episode (or that this also could've been a pitch that Saiorse Ronam rejected when she hosted that season)? B-

Update was one hell of a way to cap off this season. Thank God the "gift exchange" has become a bi-yearly Jost/Che tradition since those were the strongest ones tonight outside of Josts' Biden Truck/Boom Airline and Che's Andrew Guilianni ones. I appreciate Jost really having gone H.A.M. on Che (do the kids still say that? "going H.A.M"?) with that police brutality joke and I'm sure Dennis Perrin will have some extremely mixed feelings on Josts' Woody Allen joke. Yeah, I can see that "Man Of Steal" getting some light unfounded accusations of plagiarism tossed SNLs' way. Please don't ask me why I think this, though. Pete and Cecily gave us some strong commentaries to have gone out on (and yeah, they very unsuited hinted to us that they were in fact going out). The only things that surprised me were that Cecilys' as-of-this-very-writing-unofficial final Update piece was that it was Judge Pirro instead of Cathy-Anne or "Party" Girl and that she found a way to top vomiting Jost and soaking him via Zoom but a big musical number was a very Cecily way to exit the show. She did promise an "Irish Goodbye" for this season and since we already saw her play Irish in the previous sketch it's nice to see her make the "goodbye" part just as obvious. Overall, I liked how much of a throwback this Update was to the Eddie Murphy/Lizzo one from last season. B+

Enid & Astrids' Brawr Barn - Well, I spent most of this sketch just being thankful that Anya Taylor-Joy had what would’ve obviously been Kate's part given the fact that Aidy was standing right next to her. Now, I'm starting to wonder if there was a specific reason for that? Maybe Kate just couldn't emotionally handle being on camera in this sketch with Aidy of she knew it would be their last and thus Anya was a last minute replacement? I know neither of them ha e dropped hints that they were leaving yet but maybe they each know something we don't? Beck and Heidi brief walk ons along with the "load bearing brawr" were the highlights for me. Other than that, I kept imagining a viewer tuning into the show just in time to catch this sketch, mistaking Anya Taylor-Joy for Emma Stone and becoming very confused. In fact, I'm starting to think a lot of the sketches in tonight's show were just dress rehearsal cuts from Emma Stones previous episodes. C+

NYU Panel - At first, I was trying to determine if Che wrote this since he may have had to plug his own HBO Max show recently and this piece seemed largely critical of white women. Then, the names "Sudi G" and "Fran G" were both mentioned and suddenly this got a lot looser and sillier and then I noticed how coherent this always was and I was like "yeah, nah this ain't Che". I did like Bowens' slow burn and how the direness of the questions aimed at him, Ego, Punkie and Heidi contrasted against the light puff piece trivia lobbed at Pete. B-

Vin Deisel for AMC - Nice of SNL to close out this season with some escalating silly baritone nonsense from Beck with some assists from Chris, Melissa, Kenan and Anya Taylor-Joy. Plus, (again, as Bill Kenney said) that secondary theme from the Pride pretape was there but with much lower stakes. B+

Now, for my updated rankings for this season…
1. Timothee Chalamet/Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (12.12.2020)
2. Regé-Jean Page/Bad Bunny (2.20.2021)
3. Issa Rae/Justin Beiber (10.17.20)
4. Anya Taylor-Joy/Lil Nas X (5.22.2021)
5. Keegan Michael-Key/Olivia Rodrigo (5.15.2021)
6. John Mulaney/The Strokes (10.31.20)
7. Kristen Wiig/Dua Lipa (12.19.2020)
8. Dave Chappelle/Foo Fighters (11.7.2020)
9. Regina King/Nathaniel Rateliff (2.13.2021)
10. Daniel Kaluuya/St. Vincent (4.3.2021)
11. Maya Rudolph/Jack Harlow (3.27.2021)
12. Dan Levy/Phoebe Bridgers (2.6.2021)
13. Elon Musk/Miley Cyrus (5.8.2021)
14. Carey Mulligan/Kid Cudi (4.10.2021)
15. Nick Jonas (2.27.2021)
16. John Krasinski/Machine Gun Kelly (1.30.2021)
17. Chris Rock/Megan Thee Stallion (10.3.20)
18. Adele/H.E.R. (10.24.20)
19. Jason Bateman/Morgan Wallen (12.5.20)
20. Bill Burr/Jack White (10.10.20)

Well, good or bad, we may never see another season of SNL that resembles this one. So, as SNL and the world at large prepare to go back to a rough approximation of "normal" let's hope for a livlier, safer season. Here's to also hoping for a more manageable cast size this fall that gives the less senior cast members more time to shine. Whoever doesn't return, we thank them for the great moments they gave us and wish them the best with their careers. Have a great and fulfilling summer, everyone!