Okay, here's my review. My biggest takeaway from this week is that any way you look at it, this show was the complete inverse of last week's premiere. Last week, the show was front loaded with stronger material and really fell off after Update. This week, the shakier material was upfront and the show really picked up after Update. Last week, the show seemed to make promises of big change it did not show intent to keep. This week, the show didn’t promise to do anything different upfront but some noticable changes snuck in among the previous era's tropes on display thanks to the new blood finally getting a chance to shine. Last week's show made a stronger impression on me than this weeks did, but after having some time to look back, I can see more of the that episodes' faults than I did initially. This week's show didn’t leave much of an impression at first, but it's already starting to grow on me. Brendon Gleeson was a charming host who handled everything the show threw at him well. He was the type of host the show had seemingly left behind in a previous era. Even when it felt like the show was wasting him in incidental background roles that could've been played by any host at all (and that seemed to happen quite a bit in the first half of the show) he still managed to shine and give it his all. Writing wise, the show was a real roller coaster where it was alternating between the type of played out sketch the show should be moving away from and something different that they let the new hires try to bring the show into a new era. Seems like they managed to give everybody a fair amount of airtime tonight (at the expense of relegating Punkie to a small silent role in the cold open). Anyway, let’s get to unpacking, shall we?
So You Think You Won't Snap? - At first, I though we were getting a more off the beaten path cold open until I began to realize that this was the type of cold open we used to get every other week during season 46. The only moments that I genuinely found funny were Kenan and Devons' parts along with the Euphoria reference at the end. C+
Monologue - Ok, this actually WAS "off the beaten path" for a monologue (and just for anything that would air on SNL after 1981...or anything that would air on any comedy show here in the states for that matter). This felt more like something one would see on the That Week In SNL Twitch stream on a Sunday night than anything. I liked Brendons' low key celtic energy and while he may not be SNLs' first Irish host, he'll definitely go down as the first SNL host to play a mandolin in a monologue (top that, Steve Martin!) and Colin Farrell was a surprisingly solid addition to this. B+
CNN Today - I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this was written by the same writer who wrote last week's BeReal themed pretape? Did someone just think it would be funny if the Try Guys "scandal" was explained to the audience in an authentic Irish accent from a character actor pushing 70 or did Mikey, Bowen and Dismukes all just really want to play the Try Guys this week? Am I the only person who thought Mikey almost breaking upon having to deliver a line with the word "amazeballs" the saddest moment in SNL history? Either way, as someone who's scrolled through Twitter just enough to be vaguely familiar what this whole drama (and quite honesty, hasn't even HEARD of the Try Guys until now, so...yeah, I'm sure that didn’t help and neither did the real bitchy responses to the sketch I've already seen on Twitter) I was with Ego all the way on this one. D+
Michael & Marcello & Devon & Molly - As refreshing as it was to see SNL finally showcase all of their new featured players at once without demeaning or outright hazing them,
this wasn’t QUITE the way I wanted to see them do it. Micheal and Devon had solid lines and Marcello just went straight to the "self deprication over lack of airtime" route. Molly was the clear focus of this sketch and while they made a strong showing as well, I wasn’t crazy about how as they went on about assasinating Putin this started to feel like an early draft of a Colleen Rafferty sketch that had been written for Melissa McCarthy and then resubmitted another week with Aidy Bryant before Mikey & Streeter decided this should be a Kate role. Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting down this piece. It was fun, but I don't really like to be reminded of old sketches the show has done when they are trying to introduce us to new hires who are expected to bring someone we HAVEN'T seen to the show before. C+
Blonde - Ugh, this had to be the most aimless, pointless, jokeless sketch the show has done in at least a decade. This felt like a leftover Tina script from season 30 or 35. Honestly, the most interesting thing about this sketch was the fact that Brendan was in drag (mostly because it didn't fully hit me until he made his entrance wearing a skirt that Brendan is the rarest of rare male hosts that Lorne didn’t force to shave his beard for the show) and the sheer senseless oddity of Brendan's role gave this real "Robert Culp on a submarine" vibes to me. On the SNL Network Hot Take show, Jon Schneider mentioned that this was basically a re-enactment of a specific scene from "Blonde" so I guess you would've had to have seen that specific scene to even understand what was going on let alone find it remotely funny. The one thing they did right here was giving JAJ the laugh line at the end. D-
Headshots - Kudos to Dismukes for having played fully against (what feels like) type for him and to Longfellow for getting a sketch role that suits him well. Once again, Brendon was a welcome presence here. I would put this just a step above the "Blonde" sketch. It was a bit hard for me to get into and it was light on hard laughs for me (the closest I got was Dismukes' BTTF reference at the end) but compared to everything that proceeded it, this sketch was very focused and grounded in its' premise. Even Colin Farrell didn’t feel like dead weight in his cameo and the ending Tiger Beat button pretty much popped up at the perfect time. B-
PDD: Senior Year - First off, I am impressed that the Please Don't Destroy boys are finally starting to branch out, leave their writer's office and play characters that aren't 100% just "themselves". Secondly, I'm impressed that PDD are still able to do write and produce pieces that make the absolute most out of basic, threadbare premises like "one of these grown men is friends with a 'cool' 10 year old boy" and "a group of high schoolers discover one of their supposed 'peers' is way too old to be attending high school". This was possibly Brendons' best performance of the entire night. I also love the twist that his character just suddenly decided to go back to high school after watching "Gossip Girl" and how they added some genuine emotional redemption to the end of such a silly piece. B+
Update turned out to be a real bright spot for the show. Jost & Che came out stronger than last week (and Che looked marginally happier to be there from last week except when he had to deliver the punchline to that "women losing too much weight" joke but his "pumpkin spice trash bags" joke may be my all time favorite Update joke of his I ever saw). Still, the commentaries pretty much saved this episode. Ego's Little Mermaid was brilliant and while still being very much in her voice still came across fresh and original compared to everything she has done. Kudos to Marcello for making a strong debut in only his second episode and having a much stronger presence than Micheal Longfellow. B+
Blood Oath - Wow, the first time all night Brendon is doing the type of sketch he should’ve been doing and it's buried in the post Update slot. While the setting fit him like a glove (no pun intended), I immediately recognized this as the premise of something I had read got cut from last week's dress rehearsal (with either Dismukes or Miles Telller in Gleesons' role?) This ramped up quite quickly but once it got to where it was going it seemed like it had no where else to go and just meandered and spun out without an ending (I know that's nothing new for SNL but while I appreciated how much fun everyone was visibly having with this one, I also wish they could’ve tried a bit harder). C+
Denver Pitch Meeting - Well, you all know how much I love a good Denver shout out on SNL but I love to see Sarah Sherman get one of her own sketches on the show even more. The material underwhelmed me at first (part of me still would've rather seen her cut fir time Elvis sketch made it to air over this) because it wasn’t quite up to the level of bizarre horror that "Meatballs" and "Chucky" were but then I realized that Sarah's voice really shines the most in pretapes. Still, for a live sketch, this was quite ambitious and really pulled off expertly. I was very impressed by the way The Squirmstress was able to memorize her lines, marks and blocking (assuming she actually couldn't see in the first place) and make this sketch seem way more rehearsed than SNLs' typical schedule would allow the time for. She didn’t make it look like she adlibbed her way through it either. That really speaks to what an unexpectedly strong actress and live sketch performer Sarah Shermam really is and why she fits in so well on this show. Truly, Sarah Squirm contains multitudes. B-
Well, that was certainly a pleasant outing. Next week, rapper Megan Thee Stallion makes her return to the show to pull double duty as both a host and a musical guest. Hmm, she did well in both her sketch appearances in Chris Rocks' last episode (although one was already a rap pretape) so I really don't know what else to expect other than a more low energy version of Lizzos' episode (and especially with the way this new season's been going, who can say?) Either way, I hope to see them keep trying things they haven't been doing lately and making more new changes. See you then!
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