I expected Melissa McCarthy would do her usual bang-up job in her sixth stint as host of Saturday Night Live. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.
McCarthy seemed to be sleepwalking through this show, and following two strong episodes to finish off the month of November, the writing was terrible this week. No cast members stood out either, in what was a strange, eerily lifeless episode of the long-running show.
If I had to choose the biggest culprit in what was a bad episode of SNL, it was the uninspired (almost disinterested) performance of McCarthy. As a member of the five-timers club, McCarthy usually gives us much more than this. While a few pretape segments were solid, in several sketches, McCarthy was quiet and not at all as dynamic as we usually see from her.
Musical guest Dijon was easily the best part of this program, delivering superb vocals fronting an excellent harmony ensemble in two numbers in Studio 8H. Somehow, Dijon managed to sound like Michael Jackson and Prince in his second song, and also brought John Legend vibes. His vocal style is a refreshing gift in today’s homogeneous musical world.
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Cold Open
Colin Jost was featured as Pete Hegseth at a press conference discussing the “war” between the U.S. and Venezuela, as well as the controversy about a recent bombing of an alleged drug smuggling boat.
In addition to Jost, we see Jeremy Culhane, Andrew Dismukes, Ashley Padilla, Ben Marshall, Sarah Sherman, Tommy Brennan, Bowen Yang, and of course a cameo by James Austin Johnson as you-know-who.
Jost is out of his element as a sketch player. Here he makes the classic mistake of being angry instead of funny. It’s too bad this was a long, unfunny cold open, seeing as McCarthy was in the studio and could have lifted this sketch into a few laughs.
Monologue: Snowy Melissa McCarthy
After a quick “mouth horn” rendition of a Christmas song, Melissa was joined on stage by Marcello Hernandez and Kenan Thompson for some physical comedy and snowy version of “Christmas: Baby Please Come Home” with Jane Wickline, Padilla, Dismukes, Thompson, and Hernandez.
The physical comedy didn’t land very well, it was just sort of sandwiched in the middle of the monologue around the silly singing bit.
It was a short, simple monologue. Seemed like a quickly pieced together bit (the monologue is famously the last bit that the writers tackle). It was a ramshackle effort.
Post-show, in the days following this episode, many fans focused on McCarthy’s appearance. The comedian has lost a bit of weight.
Grocery Romance: Free Sample
Culhane is working in a grocery store serving free samples of goat cheese. He encounters McCarthy in a turn as one of her familiar awkward, sad-but-sympathetic characters. McCarthy mistakes Culhane’s attention for affection, an the sketch ends in a passionate kiss that finally wins him over.
Veronika Slowikowska, Marshall, Brennan, and Padilla also appear as shoppers. Mikey Day appears as a grocer.
This was an odd choice to open an episode, as it was rather short, and not a very strong sketch. I’m guessing it did much better at dress rehearsal. It seemed to serve as a simple concept that was intended to be a showcase for McCarthy’s sad-sack comedic skills. But compared to edgier (and better written) sketches from recent episodes, this was weak.
Holiday Neighbor
McCarthy appears as a neighbor who goes overboard in helping a boy next door. As has been the case all season, the pre-tape is well done, and features much of the cast, including Day as the dad, Thompson as a pimp, and Culhane as a police offer.
Possibly the highpoint of this episode, this pre-tape will almost certainly live forever in SNL Christmas clip shows.
UPS Donna
Here’s a typical “Melissa at a desk sketch,” where the performer is her outrageous best interacting with foils, in this case Human Resources at UPS, where she is a driver.
Padilla and Day show videotape of McCarthy damaging and mistreating packages and gifts as she delivers packages.
This sketch died. Maybe it was the audience: but I can’t remember a sketch that was met with so much silence. It also seemed there must have been a number of late edits, as none of the cast or McCarthy could keep from glaring at the cue cards. I would have liked to have seen it better executed.
Weekend Update
After two episodes in November when Weekend Update was shorter than usual, we got 13 minutes of the news desk tonight.
Michael Che made a dick joke about the Washington Monument. Yes, really. It’s time for someone to exit him out of the building to give someone else a chance at the desk.
Lance: A Redhead who Just Went on Vacation
Marshall unveiled a new character at the WU desk. I’m almost certain SNL used a laugh track during this bit. For some reason it wasn’t used when Marshall squeezed a Hungry Man frozen dinner and “warmed it up.” Crickets. Yikes.
This segment was dreadful, and made me want to hate all redheads for the holidays, at least.
Drunk Raccoon
This segment had to be either Yang or Sherman, In this case, Sarah performed in a raccoon costume. It was funny, a well-executed character bit with some physical comedy. It harkened back to the type of things SNL produced for Gilda Radner at the WU desk.
At one point however, it sounded like Sherman called Jost a “fag.” Can’t be, can it?
Truth or Dare
In this sketch we see most of the ladies at a party: McCarthy, Padilla, Sherman, Wickline, and Chloe Fineman. The ladies are gathered in the kitchen sucking down wine when they decide to play Truth or Dare. Slowikowska gets a brief appearance as a disgruntled teenager.
The dares increase in intimacy and weirdness as the ladies gradually get more disheveled. It’s far from a clever premise. The audience seemed to like this one better than the other live sketches tonight.
This sketch is a great example of how far the show has devolved. There was a time when SNL would have a sketch like this and have a smart turn on it. Or when the show would deliver well-written sketches that worked on multiple levels: outrageous silliness sure, but also clever. We just don’t see that in sketches much at all any more on SNL. It’s either retread premises or raunchy humor.
If this sketch had established a reason for these women to be so subversive, such as repressed feelings from their husbands, or whatever, it would have worked better. I would be willing to bet anything that this sketch was gutted after dress to make time for another sketch being squeezed in. You can tell there are bits missing. At some point, will Lorne Michaels stop clinging to the crazy methods of producing comedy this show relies on? The misses are more frequent and the “hits” are less funny year after year. Maybe committing to a few great sketches and honing them is better than dressing for 15-20 sketches to cut most of them down (gutting humor and context along the way)?
Sunday Supper
Next up was a couples sketch featuring Andrew & Melissa; Bowen & Sarah; and Kam Patterson & Ashley. The three couples are wrapping up a night together at the home of McCarthy/Dusmukes.
Dismukes is the driver in this sketch as a desperate, passive aggressive host. He shines, and the writing is good here, finally. Again, you can tell some of the premise was trimmed, which hurts the effectiveness of the sketch.
“I don’t belong in this world, sugar,” is one of the best-delivered lines this season. Kudos, Dismukes.
Cousin Planet
For the 10-to-1 we got a video collaboration from Slowikowska and Wickline that examines the holiday tradition of “catching up with the cousins”
Apparently, this idea stems from a video the pair published to TikTok earlier in the week. It had a (very) low-fi quality, which added charm.
It’s nice to see Wickline get some screen time. I guess we should have guessed that Veronika and Jane would become pals. There’s a shared nerdiness, quirkiness there. It sort of feels like Lorne has instructed this huge cast to “find a buddy, everyone.”
Christmas Village in Yonkers
McCarthy and Yang as a cantankerous, eccentric, and gender-ambiguous couple from Yonkers who lavish their home with Christmas decor.
This sketch featured Brennan as the TV host interviewing Yang and McCarthy, whom he mistakes for a gay couple.
Again we get a “funny” name for the TV host (“Ribbed Con-Dom”). If Lorne Michaels was alive we would never see such lowbrow humor.
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