Shane Gillis/Tate McRae (03.01.2025)

White House Cold Open

• Well, no use delaying the inevitable.

• Hey, maybe Emil would've made a better Zelenskyy than Mikey but…Ok, sure. It's not like he'll have any lines in this anyway.

• Marcello as Rubio. Hey, that's an…interesting wrinkle. He made the most our if the two lines he actually had.

• Somehow, I'm actually enjoying Bowens’ louder, slightly more queened up Vance. Maybe it's because we haven't seen this impression in about five months and they finally found a decent use for it, but whatever.

• I got a forced chuckle of of JAJs lines about Pokémon cards and the Homer Simpson hedge meme. I also liked his "Epstein files released/names A through S only/ No Ts" joke but sadly that's about it. He seemed to just be there for others to steal focus from anyway.

• Mike Meyers is Elon now? Well, if anyone can do more interesting things with this character it's Mike Meyers.

• Well, to tell you the truth…Mike Meyers seems to be playing Elon Musk as an exact cross between every member of the Rolling Stones and all his Austin Powers characters (perhaps a more senile version of Austin himself?) with maybe a little dash of Ozzy Osbourne thrown in there but…still, it was nice if them to give us some surprise here.

• I do have to admit the real Musk was ultimately right about Carveys’ impression of him sounding like Carvey more than anything…so part of me is morbidly curious to see how he might react (if at all) to Mike's impression of him.

• At this point, I'm personally open to the idea of Mike Myers making regular cameos through the rest of this season much like Dana Carvey did as long as they don't just have him keep playing Elon each week and let him play different unique roles. 

• I say this because when I saw Mike on screen I flashed on David Spades’ recent cameo as Hunter Biden from a few months ago and how they could both be grouped together with guys like Adam Sandler and even Eddie Murphy as “former cast members from a distant past era who made cameos infrequently enough in recent years that it's intriguing to see how they play into the current show”.

• I got some chuckles out of Dismukes as “bigballs”. His “DOGE/DOUCHE” lines were OK.

• Overall, I at least appreciate them adding a couple new characters to the basic cold open we were all expecting. C+

Monologue 

• (*sigh*) Here we fuckin’ go again…

• Hmm…let's see where he's actually going with this Trump stuff. Absolutely nowhere? OK.

• Now, he's on to his Biden stuff. Ok. This does feel like stuff I've seen him do before so…whatever.

• He's doing a really good job of “both sides-ing” this monologue, I'll give him that but once again his own insecure, self deprecating side comments are bringing him down.

• The stuff about interracial dating may have been the most “nothing” part of this monologue.

• I never would've guessed Shane Gillis has ever watched any historical documentary ever…but sadly the “Cosby/roofies” comment (*ugh*) and the Shelby Foote stuff are suddenly making this make sense.

• I wish I could say ending the Civil War stuff with a callback to the interracial dating stuff worked for me…but it did not.

• Jesus Christ, I mean, some things I have heard about Shane make him seem like he could be a semi-decent guy behind the scenes but I can NOT get into his standup AT. ALL. D-

Winery Tour 

• Hey, Ashley and Dismukes are getting prominent roles upfront. Cool.

• Women ALWAYS be takin photos on their iPhones, am I right, fellas?

• Heidi actually got a couple of chuckles out of me, actually. I liked her “I look like Michael Cera” joke and her “be a man” lines to Shane were…OK.

• I wish I could say I could actually get into the new wrinkle to this being Heidi emasculating Shane and belittling/mocking her parents so suddenly…but nothing could really make this work for me. D+

CouplaBeers & aLilBump

• This is a real basic-ass premise but it's actually the one thing Shane is making work for me. It's just like a lesser version of Rock Bottom Kings from his last episode.

• I didn't quite like the reveal of beer and cocaine being a medical treatment after this seemed like it was lazily drifting in the general direction of an actual comment on the state of men's mental health…but I did like the ending reveal of a pantsless Shane stumbling in on his own intervention. C-

Mid-Day News

• Uuuugggghhh…why the hell did they have to dig up this solid sketch from the season Shane actually got fired from only to suck the life out of it and add a low-key “punching down” feel to it by putting Shane, Heidi and Devon (to a much lesser extent) in Alex Moffat, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Chris Redds’ roles respectively?

• I mean, yeah, I can see why this sketch would fit Shane like a glove, but come on.

• I mean, I chuckled at the Shaboozey jokes but that's about it. D+

Dads’ House

• Allright, another sketch that seems right up Shane's alley, I guess.

• I like Dismukes and Sarahs’ performances in this sketch.

• Jesus, these alimony jokes are coming off mean.

• I do like the audience reacting to Shane's preparing the Vienna Sausages and Syrup dish and then “shooting the juice”.

• Wow. They even made the sudden appearance of a Heidi voiced puppet more disappointing than I expected.

• I did like Ashley & JAJs’ appearances. They each played off Shane well. They provided the best possible note to end this sketch on. C-

PDD: The Sound

• I'm intrigued by the idea of PDD + Ego doing a knockoff version of “The Voice” where they play actual characters instead of themselves (maybe Ben & John could've switched roles though?)

• I'm not crazy about the addition of Shane as a slightly more cleaned up Chris Chan type (yeah, sorry guys, I just…I couldn't be bothered to think of a better description of this character).

• Did anyone else think this quickly became reminiscent of that “Pop The Balloon” short we saw in Chappelles’ episode from January?

• I liked Ego somehow revealing her chair had a stick shift she could drive out on. 

• I will say though that Tate McRaes’ cameo felt…apt. Offputting, but still appropriate. 

• Hey, speaking of Tate…I caught the set design from her performances and I didn't know she was such a big Whitest Kids U'Know fan. Good for her! C+

Weekend Update w/Jost & Che

• Ok, I thought Josts Elon/Emilia Perez jokes were funny and Ches’ DeSantis crack was…fine. I giggled at his Cuomo and Silk Sonic jokes, though. Nothing else from them did much for me.

• Nice to see Che just honestly and openly begging to get fired for once.

• Marcello as “The Movie Guy”? Have we…seen this exact thing before?

• Ok, Marcellos’ adding just enough dopey, goofy silliness to put it over for me.

• I liked that brief beat where Marcello seemed to start breaking when his “Spongebob/plot is unlimited” joke bombed so bad you could hear it get an actual hiss. Too bad the kept breaking in a way that seemed to suggest he was thinking “shit, I gotta do something to save this.” I mean, compared to most of the rest of this episode…this needed the LEAST saving.

• Side note: When was the last time a a movie theater employee actually dressed like a hotel doorman from the 1950s? What the hell was the look he was going for?

• Yeah, I know Marcello is becoming the new “divisive” cast member but he hasn't quite pushed me personally to the point of wanting to hate him or just being annoyed by him yet (Domingo be damned).

• Come on people, I'm grasping at straws here. I wanted to cling to SOMETHING in this episode that I could genuinely enjoy just for it not giving me the ick right away!)

• …..aaaaaaaaand of COURSE we get a one-two punch of a “women's basketball/it's the 90s” joke from Che. SNLs’ 50th season is BACK, baby! Woo!

• I may usually be more welcoming of a new Jane Wickline piano number, but compared to her previous two, this seemed to have the least going for it.

• I'm sure I'm not the only one who wanted to see Jane do more than set “the trolley problem” to music.

• Ok, I know Jane Wickline is enough of a divisive figure among certain posters on r/LiveFromNewYork so I don't want to just pile more hate on her unnecessarily. It's not entirely her fault that she came in midway through an already frustrating an disappointing episode but what she came in WITH wasn't exactly her best. C-

Wedding Interruption

• Ok…this seemed like it would peak WAY too early. Good thing there were WAY more coupons.

• I liked this a bit more than I thought I would. I guess my favorite part of this would be seeing Sarah on the verge of breaking. It's nice to see SOMEONE appear to genuinely have fun during this episode.

• There's not much more I want to say about this sketch without potentially spoiling it, so…I'll just say seek this one out on YouTube at your own risk. B-

Doctor's Visit

• Hey, a sketch where Emil has a lead part. All right.

• …and it immediately gets real dumb. Whatever. At least Shane and Emil are as committed to it as they need to be. 

• This is another one I don't want to spoil aside from just saying I did like lines like “beef to teeth” and “me j” and “diy”. Again, YouTube at your own risk if you missed this one. C-

Ranking The 50th Season Best To Worst

1. SNL50: The Anniversary Special (02.16.2025)
2. Nate Bargatze/Coldplay (10.05.2024)
3. John Mulaney/Chapell Roan (11.02.2024)
4. Bill Burr/Mk.Gee (11.09.2024)
5. Chris Rock/Gracie Abrams (12.14.2024)
6. Paul Mescal/Shaboozey (12.07.2024)
7. Timothee Chalamet (01.25.2025)
8. Dave Chappelle/GloRilla (01.18.2025)
9. Martin Short/Hozier (12.21.2024)
10. Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks (10.12.2024)
11. Charli XCX (11.16.2024)
12. Shane Gillis/Tate McRae (03.01.2025)
13. Jean Smart/Jelly Roll (09.28.2024)
14. Michael Keaton/Billie Eilish (10.19.2024)

Overall Thoughts

• Well, I shouldn't have expected them to clear the low bar set by Gillis’ episode from season 49. I mean, I expected even LESS from this one and it somehow failed to deliver.

• It seemed like both Shane and the writers deliberately spent the entire week thinking of new ways to play into the worst aspects of Shane's whole image.

• I think the bigger problem with this episode was with how derivative nearly every sketch seemed.

• Boy, Shane really wasn't kidding when he said he was “really more of a MADtv guy”, was he? I say that because whatever DIDN'T feel like something SNL had done before (The Sound, Doctor's Visit) felt quite a bit like something MADtv had done (Winery Tour, CouplaBeers, Dad's House)

• I noticed that Longfellow and Fineman seemed to be entirely absent from this show. I understand Chloe had Covid (I wish her well) but Longfellow really seems to have drawn the short straw this week.

• Everyone else made it on (even the three featured players) but I find it a bit odd that Bowen and Shane weren't in anything together after they seemed to hug it out and have a cathartic moment at the end of his previous episode. Oh well, I'm just gonna assume it was a coincidence and move on.

• If you've made it THIS far, you may be wondering why I didn't rank this episode DEAD last in my rankings after I just spent so much time trashing it. Well, that's because the few episodes I ranked below this one aired earlier in the season. I went in (perhaps foolishly) hoping for a LOT more from Smart & Keaton episodes since they COULD have set a much better tone for the season. Sadly, they were both consistently dull and bogged down by some weak election related material. 

• This episode aired at a point in the season where the tone had already been set for the current show, but AFTER they had already pulled out all possible stops for their BIG anniversary celebration, so that combined with my general view of the host made this feel like the hardest crash back down to reality possible.

• Man, the way these last two seasons have been playing out have been REALLY making me reconsider my general episode rankings from time to time.

Closing Thoughts 

• Next week, Lady Gaga returns to the actual show (coming off a couple of stellar performances at the SNL50 homecoming concert) for her second double duty outing.

• Last time she did this was in November 2013 (back when she was barely taken seriously and seen as divisive of a figure as Jane Wickline, if my memory serves me well).

• I remember my take on Lady Gagas’ first episode being that she wasn't much of an actress but the show knew how to pick the exact right spots to use her effectively. 

• Well, Gaga has had a lot more acting experience under her belt since then and season 50 of SNL seems to be going through a lot less “restructuring” than it did in season 39 (although there may be the same amount of distraction from the current shows’ shortcomings involving former alumni…and there's a good chance the show will be facing a lot MORE “restructuring” if it can push itself past season 50 and into season 51).

• Next weeks’ show will be hosted by an entertainer who's been around long enough to be accepted and recognized for their talents as an actress and musician. This is, of course, all the more reason to be cautiously optimistic about next week's episode (a lot moreso than this one anyway).

• Yes, I also see why a comedian would make a better host for SNL than a pop star (especially now) but Lady Gaga is a more appropriate host for the audience SNL (and most mainstream linear television programs) actually have now. Shane Gillis was another one if Lornes’ attempts to pander to an audience he may have lost 30 years ago (and may never actually attract again barring an extremely specific set of circumstances that wouldn't be worth the trouble).

• After I review that show for this blog next week, I have a feeling I may post another blog entry tied into a future episode of the We Heart Hader Podcast, but I will update you on that further once Deej and I plan out what our next few episodes will be. See you then!

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!