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!