Jason Momoa/Tate McRae (11.18.2023)

Okay, here's my review. This show may have been more underwhelming compared to last week's episode, and it would be hard for me to say Jason Momoa actually redeemed himself from his 2018 episode, but at least he turned in a more mature and grounded performance here. It was still an uneven episode, but it felt more "safe" somehow. The lows were more middling than outright shocking and the highs were pleasant, but not as high aside from one Update piece and one choice pretape near the end of the show. Overall, it was another Thanksgiving episode that felt like it easily fell into SNLs' usual November/early February/mid May trap of losing focus on what the overall guiding vision of the season will be and what the new hires can bring to the show in favor of getting big name stars and personalities for "sweeps week/month" and having to appeal to a wider mass audience for ratings and ad dollars. Thankfully, airtime seemed to be evenly distributed this week. Longfellow, Walker, Dismukes and Hernandez each got a well needed bump but Kearney and Troast seemed to take hits (although in Troasts case, that might just be because she didn't get her own center showcase sketch like last week...and come to think of it I'm not sure she appeared in any live sketches, either). Anyway, let’s get right down to it.

Biden Press Conference - Ok, I guess they're really sticking with Mikey Biden then. Good for them. I genuinely liked the "Roman Numeral 11" and "panda" and "fake elevator" jokes. They seem to actually have some more pointed takes on Bidens' actual polices. Oh, no. Bowen just walked in wearing a panda suit...playing a panda who's quite full of himself. At least he made an actual pointed statement on Trump (even if it was the kind of thing the show SHOULD have been saying eight years ago). It's such a shame. This cold open had some real potential. At least we got to see Longfellow, Punkie, Marcello, Ego, Heidi, and Molly as reporters. That's something. Good for them. Mikey Longs is already starting to make up for his absence. C-

Monologue - It's truly nice to see a more focused and settled monologue from Jason than the one he gave us in 2018. We got a more personal glimpse into Jason, and the show let him explain more about a cause he cares about and has started his own environmental organization to pursue. I have to admit though, I considered the far off possibility that he MIGHT have been using this monologue to explain that he hasn't been in many memorable acting roles inbetween Aquaman movies because he took some time off to focus on this project. Ironically, this was reminiscent of the type of monologue that your Halseys, your Schreibers, your Damons, and your Elbas gave us the last time Jason hosted. It now seems like Momoa was the only season 44 host to NOT give us one of those monologues then. At least this monologue gives me a bit more confidence about the rest of this show than the cold open did. B-

Masters Of The Pen - Hey, a premise heavy period piece. Maybe one of the writers got some inspiration from that lost Charlie Chaplin sketch Dana Carvey (R.I.P. Dex) posted on Twitter a while ago (or maybe those Jim Carrey "Background Guy" sketches from In Living Color)? I mean that sincerely and affectionately and not as an accusation of plagarism. Maybe Day & Seidell wrote this? I wonder because it also reminded me of his sniper sketch with Chris Pine from 2017. I liked this as a decent glue role for Longfellow and as a fun old timey take on modern technology obsession and its symbiotic relationship with good old-fashioned timeless human narcicissm. Interesting choice though to end this on a zoom out from home base where the old timey footage was being staged from. B-

Ancient Rome Rap - Hmm, I have two theories about this sketch. Either the some of the writers saw the flak the show got for that Britneys' Audiobook Audition sketch last week (particularly Molly's role as Kevin James' meme) and decided to write this sketch as a giant middle finger to them or someone was just saving this for the exact right host because I'm having a hard time imagining any other male host besides Jason Momoa anchoring this piece. Ego, Punkie and Troast (who for a quick second there I thought might have been Tate McRae, Camilla Cabellos' non-union Canadian equivalent) did great jobs in this, but the main thing this will probably be remembered for is a child actor (who seems like they want us to recognize from somewhere based on how prominently he was featured...is he one of Momoa and Lisa Bonets' actual kids?) saying "goddamn Tyrannosaurus". C-

Nightclub - Hmm, it seemed at first like they were trying to bring back that towel boy sketch from Michael B. Jordans' episode (except they made the questionable decision to give Jason Momoa an accent he probably shouldn't have attempted). Then it seemed like they were trying to bring back that restaurant sketch from Pedro Pascals' episode last season (except they let Mikey Longs share some of the burns with Sarah Squirm). Either way, this came very close to working for me but didn't quite get there, but it's still good to see Marcello (and Kenan) try their damndest to put it over. C-

Hudson News Thanksgiving Week Airport Parade - Well, this is an interesting rearrangement of those "regular crazy person red carpet" sketches we got twice last year. Ego as a cohost instead of an interviewee is a nice change. Even if they gave us the obligatory "flirtation" between her and Captain Jason they just gave us a few small concentrated doses of it. Somehow, they managed to give Chloe Fineman actual funny dialogue that she could deliver in a way that landed with me. Usually, Kenan spouting gibberish and Mikey and Heidi as a bickering couple work better for me than they did here. Marcello in a stereotypical gay role is something I'm not sure I needed (hell, the direction and timing of his part kinda blew the eventual reveal that Ego and Jason snuck off to hook up), but Longfellow and Dismukes cameo was a highlight. I liked Molly and JAJs' parts (when in doubt, have a child swear, huh? Let's just be careful and not make that too much of a crutch). Punkie had some funny lines. I will say I feel like Sarah's viral woman felt a little much and could've been cut (if my first theory about the Rome rap is true) but hey, Devon had a good line to tag that with. C+

PDD: Ramen Fever - For some reason, I was expecting this week's PDD short to be something where the joke turns out to be the boys letting their Peacock streaming movie fame go straight to their heads. Instead, what they gave us this week was a short where they built on the formula of the matzoh ball soup sketch from Amy Schumers' episode from last year. Ben and Big Mart-Mart are too distracted by thoughts of gourmet restaurant ramen to console John through his very sudden breakup. I did like the "spicy/with buns" bit in the middle and John subtly getting his wallet stolen near the end. That added a bit of variety to this. Even with their signature quick cuts and manic pacing, this felt just a little longer than it needed to be since they established the joke in a bit of a rush. Still, it had the perfect ending. B+

Update was really only worth it for 2/3rds of the commentaries (sorry Bowen, I don't think we needed to see your Santos again...especially if those were the best OnlyFans jokes you guys could come up with). Weirdly, Jost had better jokes this week with his "feeling menopausal" crack and his meta NBCUniversal/X (even as awkwardly delivered as that was) and Six Flags/fraud awareness jokes. Che's jokes didn't really land with me but I did like his delivery of that "gender death gap" joke JUST for how he and Jost leaned into the reaction to it without cracking themselves up over it. Every bit of Devons' Draymond Green gave me my first genuine laughs of the night. I especially liked how it was written in such a way that you really didn’t need to follow basketball that closely to get the jokes. It's nice to see Devon find another impression role that fits his voice and niche within this cast. He definitely put that over better than Kenan would've. It was great to see JAJ & Dismukes as another musical duo initially (especially as Colins' intro made it seem like this would be more of a unique format break than it was). I even laughed immediately just at JAJs jacket and that sphere/cylinder joke but as soon as it dawned on me that they were just giving us a 2018 updates of Geminis' Twin and Jon Bovi in 2023 (seriously, Dismukes was even vocally channeling Forte REAL hard) I realized this may not have been their best work as much fun as it was to see them pop up at this point. One particular piece it reminded me of was when Beck Bennet played himself on Update in early 2017 to "sing" brief fake pop songs he wrote for himself. Sadly, I think I liked that better than this. C+

Guess Who's Coming Straight Off The Island To Dinner? (Or Yassified Castaway...wait, Yasss-taway is right th...nah, I'll just stick with the first one) - Well, Chloe sure gave us a lot of exposition for what turned out to just be her "Ok, Ego. You had your fun in the airport sketch. Now, it's MY turn to hang off of and drool all over Jason!" sketch. Still, you gotta hand it to Dismukes for trying his damndest to put this one over (and hey, bud...you should be proud of yourself for getting just as much audience lady screams as Jason did when YOUR shirt came off!) C-

Untold: Battle Of The Sexes - Sarah Squirm as the woman who suffered the most gruesome public sports related death imaginable so Billie Jean King could run. It's great to see Sarah finally found a way to sneak in as much Squirmgore as NBC would allow in one sitting. She gave us a more interesting twist on a sketch template we've seen previously when Mikey Day got pummeled by both John Cena and J.J. Watt and when Vanessa Bayer got pummeled by Ronda Rousey. Hell, we even saw it earlier this year when each of the PDD boys got wrecked by Travis Kelce. I also loved how precisely measured it seemed. She knew exactly when to escalate this and what the perfect ending would be. By far, this was the best sketch of the night (minor pacing issues and an unnecessarily edgelordy line from Chloe aside). A-

Cab Ride - This was fun, too. A list of increasingly absurd bad medical news delivered via speakerphone ending with a Kenan comfortably and casually speed walking out of a slow moving cab. Not every little detail worked for me, but I did chuckle at "Hepatitis Gold" and "Purr Night," and Jasons attempt to high five Kenan over the worst things ever. I had heard via the SNN Hot Take show that this sketch was actually cut from Keiran Culkins' episode two years ago. After hearing that, I am thankful that we got a cut sketch from THAT episode instead of any litany of cut sketches from Travis Kelces' episode back in March. I considered the possibility that that's what we might be getting after I noticed a slight facial resemblance between Jason and Travis during the monologue and also just from the semi-gassed out, last show before they get to go on a holiday break feeling I got from this and really most Thanksgiving episodes of SNL. C+

Now, for my updated ranking of season 49...

1. Nate Bargatze/Foo Fighters (10.28.2023)
2. Timothee Chalamet/Boygenius (11.11.2023)
3. Jason Momoa/Tate McRae (11.18.2023)
4. Bad Bunny (10.21.2023)
5. Pete Davidson/Ice Spice (10.14.2023)

Well, they sure put that episode as a whole over. After Thanksgiving, SNL returns on December 2nd with Emma Stone (our first female host this season) returning to most likely receive her five timers club jacket! I have to say, I'll be looking forward to this one. Emma has proven herself to be a dependable, versatile host who the writers always knew exactly how to write for. She has proven she can gel well with three very different casts so it will be great to see her do the same with a fourth. Seriously, of the four episodes she has hosted thus far, I can't think of one that stands out as being any worse than the others. Even during the weaker seasons she hosted in, she always found some way to elevate the show. Yes, Emma Stone is a welcome presence at SNL who has demonstrated her deep love of the show (and I mean that literally as she married and had a baby with a writer/producer/director who I'm fairly certain has left the show recently) so it should be great to have her come back and try to steer the show back on course. See you then!