Kate McKinnon/Billie Eilish (12.16.2023)

Okay, here's my review. While this show was more than a little uneven, it was uneven in a way that thankfully challenged me as a lifelong SNL fan. They took perhaps the some of the biggest conceptual risks I have seen them take in recent years so that while some of the highs weren't quite as high as last week, the lows weren't as low but they were at least more interesting to see play out in real time. The weaker sketches actually mildly confused me into submission a bit rather than just disappointed me with what they were doing. I was more intrigued to watch certain sketches progress in order to figure out just what the hell they were actually going for rather than just tune them out to try to take notes and get caught up on this review. Kate McKinnon did in fact deliver a show that was respectably mostly devoid of her recurring characters (aside from one) that reminded us why she was such a welcome presence at the show as I was hoping she would last week. They actually took some chances creatively and while not all of them were hit out of the park, enough of them hit just right for me to get some enjoyment out of it from some unexpected places. Aside from maybe Devon and Molly, everyone got a fair amount of screen time tonight. JAJ saw a major leap. Anyway, let’s get on with it.

95th Annual Christmas Awards - Boy, am I glad to see this up top after this week! I mean, it's still not the most ideal length or pacing for a cold open but it still defies any expectations I could've had so hey, I'll take it. The various "reenactments" from Mikey, Troast & Dismukes and the off-air awards presented by Marcello really made this for me along with the acceptance speeches from Kenan, Sarah & Devon. B-

Monologue - I can't tell you how refreshing it is to just see Kate be Kate and give us as much of a genuine glimpse into "real life Kate" as we'll ever get to see (especially after wrapping that real part of herself in a couple of layers of dadaist absurdity). I was actually starting to get Phil Hartman season 21 vibes until the sappy but pleasantly low key musical number started. Not even the genuine (given who else we were expecting) surprise cameos from Maya & Kristen (does she have the same eyebrow groomer as the Levys now?) could detract from this. I especially like Kates "prosthetics" and "required to sing" jokes. B+

North Pole Breaking News - It was a strange (but at least semi understandable) choice to open up the show with the template of a sketch that closed Eddie Murphys' 2019 episode but it mostly worked for me. I can understand the thinking that Kate would be one of the few performers who could really do this justice (hell, wasn’t she also in the last one? If so, did she have enough of a good time to want to bring this back for herself?). I liked the intense scottish character she bought to this. It reminded me of one of those town hall sketches from (I think?) season 41 where she played a nursing home resident apologizing for various acts of violence she committed while under the influence of Rockstar Energy Drinks. Weirdly, I was just thinking about that specific performance and how much I'd like to see her play that type of character once again. I even got a kick out of the sight gag of her vomiting Skittles but still, I have to say I liked Eddie's iteration of this sketch better because this one lacked the sheer raw chaotic energy of that one. C+

Pongo - Nice to see that with Sarah's help (and some assists from Mikey, Fineman and Dismukes) Kate can triple, nay, quadruple down on the dadaist absurdism vibes Kate bought in her monologue and bring some [adult swim] flavor with a dash of "That's Not Yogurt" & "Almost Pizza" to them. The benign nihilism that got mixed in there doesn't hurt either. B+

ABBA Christmas - Hmm...I didn’t love this or hate it. It was a fine sketch I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for. Weirdly, I did chuckle at the "Waterloo/Babadook" number. JAJ did a fine job anchoring this as the pitchman (that may be the first time he ever visibly broke on camera?)but I always pictured modern SNL placing Mikey in Mayas' role if they ever did an ABBA parody (I mean, she WAS playing the other male member of the grouo who incidentally does resemble Mikey Day quite a bit in real life but her one line of spoken dialogue got me). Other than that , this was well cast. All I can say about it is it gave me heavy "we just dusted off and resubmitted an old script from 2005 that Maya & Kristen couldn't get on until now" vibes. C+

Mom & Dads' Christmas Gifts - Honestly, this is the first sketch of the night that I felt was off putting in a bad way. It didn't really go anywhere and felt like a lower energy version of a MAD TV sketch I saw with Stephanie Weir & Andy Daly. I never thought I'd be saying this but JAJs' part genuinely could've been cut for going to far against the grain of this sketch. Nice of them to include Molly, though. D+

Tampon Farm (She Sings) - This mostly felt like one big inside joke that Kate, Billie and the other women on the show were in on and I wasn't. I did like the ending reveal of the farm being condemned for too much singing. Paula Pell was the only odd cameo that really worked for me though. Her presence suddenly made this make sense. C+

Update was kind of all over the place. Only a few of the actual jokes worked for me and they were Josts' Rudy/$9.11, bird killing and Claudine Gay jokes (the latter if which was better than last week's entire cold open) along with Che's Haley/Sununu, Albert Einswine and inheritance jokes. Ego's Rich Auntie With No Kids worked for me just because I appreciated getting to see her doing this type of focused character driven piece rather than "generic 'no-nonsene' woman #427". It did remind me of Aidys' "worst woman on a plane" commentary from 10(!) seasons ago (which I guess was the closest the show could get to an actual Aidy cameo this week). I especially liked the threats of Veronda coming for Che's job (which if it wasn’t foreshadowing when Bobby played Riblet sure isn't gonna be foreshadowing now). I was glad to see them go all out for the two year long awaited return of the Christmas joke swap with Che finally getting his fair share of humiliation for once. I would genuinely love to know the story of how Dr. Hattie Davis got involved here (or on SNL even back in season 3 because I found nothing on SNL archives on her). At this point, Che & Jost may have more than made up for how gassed out they seemed this season. They seemingly did nothing concrete to confirm or deny those "last show" rumors but they did leave us with a number of different reasons to question why this WASN'T their last episode. B+

Office Yankee Swap - Wow...this sketch really was something else. I mean, it took some big swings and I can't say they didn’t work for me. They knew exactly how to play maudlin against frivolous here and I didn't mind how they escalated this exactly as far as it needed to go before ending it. Punkies' part felt a little telegraphed but I did like Dismukes "my family's white" line. B+

Cinema Classics: Meet Me In St. Louis - I feel like I've seen enough of Reese De'What for a lifetime but I do appreciate them bringing it back just to fold Troast & JAJ into this format. Kate was just fine here turning in the type of semi-contained insanity we've seen before in her early years. I liked her "Wizard of Oz was mid" line and her chainsaw gag. C+

Whiskers R Billie - Well, this was definitely my favorite of Billies' two sketch cameos tonight. Her acting suited this well. Honestly, I'm glad this was the only recurring character of Kate's we got to see tonight. It's a semi-deep cut I've always enjoyed just fine. Maybe Billie is a bigger fan of this than I am? Even though it seemed more watered down than the previous ones, I liked that the big telegraphed reveal this time was "long lost daughter" rather than "let's play off Billies' recent coming out as bisexual." C+

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

1. Nate Bargatze/Foo Fighters (10.28.2023)
2. Adam Driver/Olivia Rodrigo (12.9.2023)
3. Kate McKinnon/Billie Eilish (12.16.2023)
4. Timothee Chalamet/Boygenius (11.11.2023)
5. Emma Stone/Noah Kahan (12.2.2023)
6. Jason Momoa/Tate McRae (11.18.2023)
7. Bad Bunny (10.21.2023)
8. Pete Davidson/Ice Spice (10.14.2023)

Well, that was certainly a fitting way to end 2023 for SNL. After the holiday, the show comes back on 2024 with Jacob Elordi as host. Since he's someone who I only know as "that psycho asshole from Euphoria" and "the second kid to play Elvis in a biopic this decade" (maybe THAT was the real reason they reran the Butler/Lizzo episode before this?) I'd be intrigued to see if he has any comedic range.

Happy Holidays and to those of you who actively contributed to the outpouring of support this blog has received recently, thank you for making my tenth consecutive year doing this so special!

Adam Driver/Olivia Rodrigo (12.9.2023)

Okay, here's my review. It was great to see SNL back on stable ground this week after taking so many broad swings and misses lsst week. This show definitely felt more grounded and only slightly uneven compared to last week. While both of these last two weeks had solid dependable hosts, this week had a host who knew his own strengths better and how to play into them. As expected, Adam Driver elevated everything he was in and thankfully knew when to not play it too big. No one felt more shut out than anyone else in terms of cast airtime (but maybe Michael Longfellow took a minor hit this week and Punkie took a major one). Airtine felt pretty evenly distributed among the cast. I would definitely say this is Adam Driver's second best SNL episode ever just behind his one from season 45. Wanna know why? Well, let's break it down, shall we?

C-SPAN Campus Antisemitism Testimomy - Wow...ok. This is...certainly an out of left field choice for a political cold open. It definitely took me a few rewatches to fully parse what was going on with this one. Full disclosure: my only real exposure to this actual news story were headlines I saw earlier that day about the real life UPenn lady having to resign due to how badly this hearing went for her and even I feel they may have painted with broad brushstrokes here. Nice to see Chloe Troast and Molly Kearney in such prominent roles right up top. Molly teeing up Ego to deliver that "Dr. Gay/fire island" joke doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence thst they'll handle this subject matter as delicately as they should, but somehow Heidi's whole performance is putting me at ease. Troast is certainly making some strong choices with her accent, but I can't say they're NOT working for me. (Did whoever say Cecily was going to make a cameo in this cold open simply confuse these two women again?) Kudos to her for getting to take the lead on another group LFNY (again, I thought we were past these?) Kenans' whole character seems like he was pulled straight out of an unused cold open from 2011 but at least he got to deliver the only genuine laugh lines in this. Hope Twitter treads lightly with this one...aaaaaand I'm already starting to see that they didn’t. Still, I'd like to thank my friend Monette Moradi for actually raising the level of discourse surrouding this cold open (at least in the social media circle I'm the most immersed in) by pointing out ways this COULD have worked if they focused it up writing-wise instead of just taking the "both sides are dumb & crazy" route because, well...let's just say I know her perspective is going to be the one that matters the most here. C+

Monologue - I'm really relieved to see that this solo piano monologue matches the offbeat goofiness of his season 45 episode and is more reminiscent of that than any of his other previous episodes so far. Also, it's nice to see Adam Driver had this hidden talent for actually playing piano this whole time. Yep, you're gonna have a pretty damn hard time convincing me Zach Galifianakis DIDN'T come in this week to guest write this monologue (but I am willing to bet that if whoever helped write Harry Styles' and Timothee Chalamets' monologues in seasons 45 and 46 respectively is still on staff that they helped with this, too). The Kattan mention didn’t totally work for me, but hey, I'll take it. His "couples' pranks TikTok" and "gingerbread house" jokes got the biggest laughs out of me. Thank God this turned out to be more than just a mish mash of random one-liners. Does anyone else get big Tom Hanks vibes from this? B+

Adults Only Ski Trip - On paper, this seemed too idiotic to work but in execution, Adam Driver and Bowen Yang as two gay men who barely know how sex let alone conception or pregnancy works played out10 times better than it had any right to once it simply turned into a list of absurd details such as ham & cocaine, geriatric pregnancies, three out of seven holes, phones & Andy Milonakis (were Dan Licata and Stephen Castillo guest writers this week, too?). See, this is the more down to earth, grounded stupidity I'd like to see more of from Bowen rather than the listless, gimmicky vanity pieces he's been giving us lately that haven't landed. My only real complaint about this was that it was a bit too long, and maybe everything after Ego's entrance could've been cut. C+

Old Friends - This seemed to be going for the same thing that the Christmas Dinner pretape from Billie Eillishs' episode two years ago was going for. I honestly prefer this even though I thought everything after Devon "Big Filthy" Walkers' appearance should’ve been cut. The "big ones/big titties" bit in particular felt telegraphed as hell, and the facebook ad tag at the end (while expertly cut and well timed) felt unnecessary. C-

Beep Beep - This may have been my favorite live sketch of the night. It had a very Key & Peele setup followed by typical modern SNL overexposition, but it was still such a Dismukes sketch, and he and Driver just owned it. The ending with Kenan worked perfectly for me, and it didn't overstay its welcome. A-

Shop TV Christmas - Hmm...I think Rosebud Baker (or just Michael Che, let's face it) simply just went for broke at 4am on Tuesday and just set out to write the single most derivative, most telegraphed, most pointlessly censor baiting, LEAST creative SNL sketch in the entire shows' history. That's the only way I can process this making air. Oh well, at least Adam gave me a couple of laughs in his obligatory "meek, milquetoast, playing against type" role of the night as did the brief phone calls. Also, did whoever say Cecily was gonna cameo tonight get confused here too and think they were doing "Right Side Of The Bed" again? Did this person also confuse Mikey with Taran? I could legit see that happening? D+

Update was quite an improvement from last week (which, I know, isn't saying much, but still...). The jokes overall were fine. None of them stood out that much (well, that RFK Jr/Epstein and "conservative women = flat asses ones" did) but both Jost & (especially) Che made up for how out of it they seemed last week. Marcellos' standup seemed a little unfocused for me in the middle there, but overall, that worked for me, too. His "barbershop/salon" and "delayed plane/breakup" bits made me laugh the most. Chloe Finemans' commentary was at least a nice format break for modern Update (as much as it reminded me of Jon Rudnitskys' Dirty Dancing commentary from season 41 and one of Melissa Villaseñors standup bits about how NSYNCs' dance moves are so violently herky-jerky and all in the shoulders they'd be better suited for a bar fight than a date) and it was at least a little different from what she usually gives us in her calculated vanity pieces. I had heard rumors of a "surprise cameo" during a potential second update commentary, and while I could definitely tell who it was gonna be once Chloe mentioned "Save The Last Dance." Still, I do have to say that Julia Stiles was one of the absolute last people I would expect to cameo on SNL in 2023, so...yep, you got me there, bud! Nice use of Devon, though. B-

Babys' First Flight - Okay, I guess Marc Weiner was a guest writer too this week? Or maybe whoever wrote those Adam Grossman Benihana sketches for Jonah Hill came back this week? Either way, this was something that only Adam Driver could’ve put over for me because it absolutely went nowhere on the page. Thankfully, Adam didn't go too over the top. Honestly, the only way thing that should've been cut was the "baby plane" ad tag at the end. C+

Septugenarian TikTok Prank Victims - This was definitely my favorite pretape of the night just for the sheer spontaneous silliness of it played against the sincere, pleading PSA tone. Kenan, Adam, JAJ and Marcello sold the hell out of this for me. Even Heidi turned in a strong performance here. B+

Tiny Ass Baggage - An Ego/Marcello pairing was something I didn't know I needed in my life until I saw it. Adams' purposely stiff lone readings were the icing on the cake for me. Olivia's cameo worked well for me too (although I can't help but think she's gonna get some shit on the TikToks and the YouFaceTwitters for using that accent that I'm sure Ego could get away with better). I already have seen that I may be alone on this but this was definitely my second favorite live sketch of the night. I probably would’ve liked this much less if it were in any other episode with any other host but this was already preceeded by such stronger material that I choose to associate it with in my memory. B+

Now, just for fun (and because I know you may not feel like scrolling all the way back up to my intro after having read all that), I'd like to updare my ranking of each of Driver's episodes from best to worst...

1. Adam Driver/Halsey (1.25.2020)

2. Adam Driver/Olivia Rodrigo (12.9.2023)

3. Adam Driver/Chris Stapleton (1.16.2016)

3. Adam Driver/Kanye West (9.29.2018)

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

1. Nate Bargatze/Foo Fighters (10.28.2023)

2. Adam Driver/Olivia Rodrigo (12.9.2023)

3. Timothee Chalamet/Boygenius (11.11.2023)

4. Emma Stone/Noah Kahan (12.2.2023)

5. Jason Momoa/Tate McRae (11.18.2023)

6. Bad Bunny (10.21.2023)

7. Pete Davidson/Ice Spice (10.14.2023)

Well, that was a breeze. Next week, Kate McKinnon returns to the show, a mere year and a half after leaving, to make her hosting debut. You know, much like Pete hosting this seasons premiere (after the first of this year's two Hollywood strikes prevented him from hosting in the homestretch of the previous season) I would probably be looking forward to this more if Kate had given us more time away from the show to miss her before she came back. With Kate hot off the heels of here mere supporting role as "Weird Barbie" in...well, "Barbie", it just feels either too soon or not at the right moment in her career to just...host. She should host to promote something she is the lead star in but I can see this booking as SNL wanting to provide a solid ending to a difficult calendar year for everyone. The Christmas shows (when done right) tend to be comfort food for the audience and a big Christmas party for the cast and crew so I get them wanting to book a familiar face as host who can be counted on to carry the show into the holidays if not the new year. Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not denying that Kate's a truly talented and committed performer. It's just that the best examples of her being the shows most valuable asset are from her first four seasons on the show. After that, they just kept pounding the square peg that is Kate McKinnon into the round hole that was SNLs desperate and feeble attempts to keep up with the exhausting and demoralizing political scene of the time. Hopefully, she can do what fellow alums Pete, Marty, Adam and Seth did in recent years and just deliver a strong show carried by solid original performances and or character work (by which I don't mean recurring characters obviously since with Kate most of those were two handers between her and either Cecily or Aidy who as far as we know aren't guaranteed to make cameos) making us remember why we originally liked her as a cast member (hey say what you will about Pete's episode being weak, he was by far the least weak part of it). I know Kate had some chemistry with Billie when she first hosted two years ago. I'd be fine seeing them paired up in sketches again just as long as they can keep the breaking to a minimum. See you then!

Emma Stone/Noah Kahan (12.2.2023)

DISCLAIMER: Due to a long first week of training at a new job and some minor personal concerns, some of my ability to discern amd watch Saturday Night Live extremely critically and as more than just as an escape from substantial life changes may have been corrupted. 

Unfortunately, I did not have access to any deepfake or A.I. technology and neither John Higgins, Bill Brasky, Soaps and Scifi, or Blood Meridian were available to yassify this review on such short notice. 

Luckily, I had the idea to open with this lame attempt at a meta in-joke parodying one of tonights pretapes just to fully cover my own self consciousness at my latest batch of polished hot takes not exactly lining up fully with the groupthink of the small cult following of people I regularly interact with on Discord who I know are the only ones actually reading any of this and yo therapeutically acknowledge the nagging fear of losing considerable clout within said group.

Now, at the risk of possibly losing some of your respect for me as a writer, please enjoy.

Okay, whew. Sorry for making that disclalaimer, like, four times longer than what it was parodying (I swear, I'm gonna start learning to actually edit these better), but here's my review. As you can tell, this turned out to be a shockingly divisive episode amongst fans online. On paper, this isn't that far off from some of the weaker episodes of the season (so pretty much the ones not hosted by Bargatze or Chalamet but on a different level just slightly above Bad Bunny as that one was beset by its own unique issues). On the surface, what actually put this episode over (at least for me personally) was mostly Emma's performance and the fact that the show made use of some much beloved and underused new cast members who might not have seen as much screentime lately. Now, I don't know if the kids today still say things like "the Longfellow stans and the Troast tribe have been FED" on the TikkityToks and the YouFaceBlueThreadTwitters, but yeah, I would say that exact thing happened. Back to Emma, though, she proved she is still the solid reliable host she always was. As I've said before, Emma has a special way of working within the show to make sure none of her episodes feel exactly the same (well, aside from one recent recurring sketch) so even if the show itself was pretty cookie cutter in its basic outline, Emmas such a unique performer that she can bring her own special flair to sketch premises and templates that you feel like you've seen the show attempt multiple times before. Emma, Longfellow, Punkie and Troast in particular really helper push the highs of this show that much higher to take the sting out of how low the lows actually were. She just makes the show that much more fun to watch but smoke and mirrors aside, this reminded me more of her season 42 episode than anything else with it starting off fairly strong and falling off quite a bit by the bottom third (and her also hosting the first of three consecutive episodes taking place in December). As far as screentime, only Molly Kearney suffered a steep drop (don't worry, Molly... you'll get 'em next week), but everyone else really scored. Anyway, let's not waste any more time and just get right to it.

Situation Room - Well, opening the show with Squirm Blitzer was certainly a choic... Oh, THIS is what they scrambled to write for Bowen on Friday. Huh, I was kinda wondering how they would handle the Santos news? I gotta say, though, as cold as I've always run on Bowens' Santos, his actual performance here made this feel about a hundred times less "scrambled" than it had any right to feel. He actually imbued this with some dramatic theatrical energy that a Santos piece may have actually warranted by now instead of just cheekily droning his way through another Update desk piece (probably because he knew as well as we did or just flat out hoped this would be his last time ever playing him). I'm glad to see he had fun with it. I could even look past the boilerplate gay camp that came with this. The Princess Diaries and Beyonce references stood out to me the most. Even ending it with a slightly clumsy clunky "Candle In The Wind" parody was a nice touch (even if I thought replacing "candle" with "scandal" was far beneath even SNL but hey, it was probably 4:00am on a Friday night). His singing was decent, if not a little bit pitchy. I did genuinely laugh at the "evil Forrest Gump" line. I mean, I wouldn't go as far as to say that should've been cut or anything, but it did need some serious work. Eat shit, Randy Rainbow! Bowens got your number! B-

Monologue - Here it is, the obligatory jacket ceremony. We were all expecting this since we all know what a huge SNL nerd Emma is and what a deep and emotional connection she has to the show (not one deep enough that she felt she could do a solo monologue, apparently). I guess they're all gonna be as stripped down and bare bones as what Paul Rudd ended up having to get? Nice to see Tina and Candy again. If only I could forget that the last time they introduced the concept of a "ladies only" five timers club, Drew Barrymore and (somehow, inexplicably Jonah Hill) were involved. I genuinely did laugh at the Mulaney/Woody/Marty jabs and Tinas' "youngest members" and Candys' "places to cry" joke. Also, was anybody else actually hoping to get to see Dave McCary and maybe a brief overview of his history and involvement with the show rather than just visual confirmation that Lorne has...well, seen better days? B+

Question Quest - Thank God this show held off on opening the show with a game show sketch until they could put together a very absurd, writerly, detail/premise heavy one anchored by Michael Longfellow with a BIG assist from Punkie Johnson and Emma and JAJ (who really has a realistic game show announcer cadence down) there to pick up the slack. Oh hai, Molly & Chloe Troast. I laughed consistently throughout this (especially at Punkies' "same color penis" line and her string of fake reindeer names). I mean, it was very reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite State sketches (just replace the tortoise with orphaned children) but this was different enough conceptually that I cannot count that against it. A-

Fully Naked In New York - Wow, two absurd detail heavy sketches in a row. This one really just hits you out of nowhere, doesn’t it? There is just so damn much going on in this sketch that it's impossible to fullly process in one single viewing. I'll say that my first official thought upon the reveal was that SNL has fully escaped the November sweeps trap of getting big names and pandering to a wide audience for ratings and ad money and have allowed themselves to return to letting previously well established friends of the show take over and do unique things. This really started to pick up for me once we heard the Troast/Hernandez duet. The brief cameos from Fineman, Dismukes Punkie and Sarah helped this, too. The last SNL cast member I saw jump on the back of a garbage truck before this was Dennis Miller in season 11 second intro. Thank God he wore a big plaid coat there. B-

Treece Returns - Hmm, I never thought we needed to see this again. Bowen filling in for Kyle Mooney and Emma going all Fargo on us didn’t do anything to change my mind. I mean, I remember the one with Seth Meyers from 2018 being just fine mostly due to Seth but this couldn't make it past dress when Eddie Murphy last hosted. I will admit to chuckling at the "sewage" and "human dumbass" lines. D+

PDD: Please Don't Deepfake - Were Please Don't Destroy a little self conscious about the light criticism they may have received for some lightly A.I. assisted crowd scenes from "Foggy Mountain"? Anyway, while I liked how they used Punkie here (besides just reusing the old framework of "Punkie doesn’t know white celebrities or pop culture very well") this is something I couldn't fully get on board with until I saw how they used Marcello and how they showed a self-Yassified John Higgins in this. Honestly, the constant disclaimers kinda hurt this for me. It led to an unhealthy "tell don't show" feel for this and kinda hurt the pacing of an already slightly inconsistent pretape that started to feel like four separate sketch ideas smashed together. It reminded me a lot of the cold open to Scarjos' season 40 episode in a not so good way. C+

What's In The Kiln? - Hmm, I'm not too crazy about the pairing of Chloe & Heidi right from jumpstreet. Still, this is far less over the top than their demonic posession commentary from a year ago. It's much more than just a watered down version of Delicious Dish or the baking competition sketches that Cheadle, Murphy, Chalamet and Simu Liu gave us. It's much more prop and visual based in a similar vein to the grey pigtails sketch with Natasha Lyonne or the big dumb hat sketch with Amy Schumer so...this definitely has the feel of a female writer who recently left the show coming back. Either way, it's something I have a surprising amount of appreciation for considering I'm not exactly the target audience for it. C+

Update was possibly the strongest it's been all year (and in terms of THIS season, that's really saying something). Jost & Che had a string of great pre-commentary jokes but they really started to taper off post-commentary. Ironic that Che told an A.I. joke since he seemed so stumbly bumbly tonight it was almost like he was replaced with an A.I. deepfake of himself. Mikey Longs absolutely killed it as the old fashioned cigarette. Good to see he can still absolutely crush Bowen at playing inanimate objects. B-

Mama Cass Sessions - While this wasn't QUITE the Troast showcase I was hoping for since she was deceptively snuck into more of a supporting role, her voice alone put this over for me. Anyone else get slightly more Aidy vibes than Cecily vibes from her here? While I wasn’t too crazy about the idea of Emma in drag being the main focus, I loved how committed she was to it. Once she started acting out violent montages with Bowen, Mikey and Dismukes I could fully get on board with it. I especially liked the ending, too. B-

Return Of The Posters - With Pete being in the first two and him already having come and gone this season, I seriously wasn't expecting them to bring this back at all (and I was kinda hoping they wouldn't but Chrissy Knox seems to be Emma's only recurring character on the show, but Emma must like playing her and Mikey must like writing them). Still, this had a level of variation to it the others didn’t have (and I'm not just talking about Marcello being used in a pinch). Even Chrissy herself seemed to have four or five brain cells instead of the usual two. Did they let other do a major punch up on this one? C+

Diet Coke By Olay - Thank god this got in and got out quickly. There seemed to be absolutely nothing to this besides "lol (mostly white) women be mainlining Diet Coke amirite?" Was this written by whoever wrote the vagina sketch from Pete's episode? Would Diet Coke have been replaced by Starbucks if they did this a decade ago? It's a shame we may never hear or see what cut for time live sketch this replaced at the last second. D-

Now, looking back at my review of Emma's 2019 episode, it seems I DID actually try to rank her previous ones, so let me try and update those rankings right now.

1. Emma Stone/Coldplay (11.12.2011)
2. Emma Stone/BTS (4.13.2019)
3. Emma Stone/Kings Of Leon (10.23.2010)
4. Emma Stone/Noah Kahan (12.2.2016)
5. Emma Stone/Shawn Mendes (12.3.2016)

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

1. Nate Bargatze/Foo Fighters (10.28.2023)
2. Timothee Chalamet/Boygenius (11.11.2023)
3. Emma Stone/Noah Kahan (12.2.2023)
4. Jason Momoa/Tate McRae (11.18.2023)
5. Bad Bunny (10.21.2023)
6. Pete Davidson/Ice Spice (10.14.2023)

Well, THAT was certainly a journey. Next week, Adam Driver returns for his fourth time hosting. Now, he's anothrr solid, reliable host I always enjoyed seeing on the show. For as much of a sharp dynamic performer as he is, even he could still use some help from strong writing to put things over. Let's just hope this episode turns out more like his 2020 one than his 2018 one. See you soon!