You’d think Saturday Night Live would be having a field day over all the revelations that have come out the past week regarding supreme court justice Clarence Thomas and his rich Republican benefactor Harlan Crowe. The show has sent up the craven Thomas plenty in the past, and now they’ve got Nazi paraphernalia and a garden of dictators to work with. The cold open practically writes itself!
Instead, the show decided to kick its latest episode off with a lazy sketch about the bevy of “freaks, crazies and weirdos” headed to New York’s Central Park now that it’s warm out. We get treated to the standard run-through of characters (two jokes a piece), meeting the likes of “older man doing an aggressive power walk”, “two perverts who came to the park to pleasure themselves”, “guy with a clipboard who wants to know if you have a second for a good cause”, “crazy man with a microphone” and “woman debating nonsense”.
Good for a chuckle here and there – especially for those who live in New York or any similar metropolitan city – this nevertheless feels like mid-episode fodder, rather than a show opener.
Ana de Armas hosts for the first time. The Cuban-born actor reminisces about how during her first few years in the US, the language barrier proved doubly difficult when auditioning (she thought the phrase “beg your pardon” called for literal begging). Now though, she has an Oscar nomination to her name and is about to get her citizenship. She speeds through a short story about her Hands of Stone costar Robert De Niro paying her father in Cuba a surprise visit before quickly wrapping things up.
The Dome is a show in which two teams compete again against each other for a million dollars. The game takes a while to get started because Kenan Thompson’s befuddled host refuses to believe contestants Carmen (De Armas) and Matt (Mikey Day) are married to each other, being that she’s “an absolute dime” and he’s a poor, dweeby loser whose chest and stomach are covered in nipples. Any time SNL has a sex symbol host, you can count on them reminding you of how hot they are. In fact, they’ve had Day play this same character before, most recently for the Jennifer Lopez-hosted episode of a couple seasons past. Rather than a recurring character, though, it just feels like a tired retread.
Coming on the (high) heels of the new Barbie trailer, we get a preview of another live-action doll movie: American Girls. The prim preteens trade sad stories about tragic lives, which include cholera, slavery and the looming threat of sudden death. Right as the trailer seems to be building to a high concept turn, it comes to an abrupt halt.
Rap producer Young Spicy (Devon Walker) is in the studio recording a sexy new tag for his latest track with the help of De Armas and Ego Nwodim’s background singers. The options they provide start out normal enough – “D-d-damn, Young Spicy’s flaming hot!” – but quickly turn insulting and accusatory: “Young Spicy can’t read”, “Damn Spicy, you got that dark ring around your toilet, I’m uncomfortable here”, “I think Spicy put something in my drink … [he] needs to be on a watchlist.” One note, but De Armas makes the most of her line readings.
A high school Spanish class is thrown out of whack by the introduction of two actual Latin American transfer students (De Armas and Marcelo Hernandez), their natural grasp of the language revealing how little Day’s hapless white teacher actually knows. Musical guest Karol G joins in towards the end of the sketch – which, like every other one so far, comes on abruptly sans any satisfying conclusion.
A new Please Don’t Destroy video finds Martin, Ben and John nursing some heavy “hang-xiety” following the SNL post-show afterparty. In recounting the night, they’re horrified at their behavior: sexually harassing Michael Longfellow, smashing up the bar, creeping out De Armas and having coke-fueled breakdowns in the bathroom. Bad as they were, the rest of the cast was hardly any better: Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang went from screaming at each other to making out during karaoke, while Chloe Fineman pulled out a gun. A clever idea – who hasn’t racked their brains over what they might have said or done during a night of heavy drinking? – but it doesn’t get nearly as wild or surreal as you’d expect.
On Weekend Update, Colin Jost speaks to loopy meditation guru Genesis Fry (Sarah Sherman), who, rather than leading him into relaxation, destroys his ego by telling him how lonely and despised he is, accuses him of being a racist creep and gives him a Hitler quote for a mantra. A better version of the recording studio sketch and another winning antagonistic two-hander between Sherman and Jost, who continue to make the best pair on the show.
Michael Che then invites on SNL’s first non-binary cast member Molly Kearny to talk about transgender issues. After coming down from the ceiling on a harness, Kearny passionately advocates on behalf of trans kids while also complaining about the extremely awkward and uncomfortable harness cutting into their crotch: “My groin area is beefed! I’ve been hung up on my genitals for far too long and I’m starting to feel like a freaking Republican lawmaker!”
Then SNL brings back Nwodim’s popular new character Lisa, the stubborn lawyer from Temecula who has very firm ideas about food preparation (her “Cook my meat” catchphrase now becomes “Toss my salad!”). This time out, Lisa joins her sister (Punkie Johnson) at a wedding reception dinner, angrily fending off nonexistent flirtations from another member of the table party and making a giant mess of things while furiously mixing her own salad bowl. It doesn’t quite bring the house down like last time, but Nwodim’s antics once again cause her fellow cast members to break.
Enter Stage Woof is an acting school for dogs run by De Armas and Chloe Fineman’s teachers. Things go adorably off the rails when golden retriever Henry “improvs” and refuses to hit his cues. Later, Fineman attempts to get another dog to do a Lady and the Tramp bit of spaghetti eating with her, but it runs away (this feels less cute since the poor thing seems genuinely freaked out). Messy to the point of obnoxious, this sketch has nothing going for it beyond the cuteness of the live animals.
Then De Armas and Yang play a bickering couple in a nail salon. At first, it seems like masculine pride keeping him from him getting his nails done, but as we soon learn, it’s really because he’s recently become the Guinness Book of World Records holder for longest fingernails in the world and he doesn’t want to give up the role. De Armas, meanwhile, is furious over how much she’s sacrificed in the pursuit of his goal. “Where’s my certificate? I deserve the Guinness world record for wiping your butt for 12 years!” One solid sight gag can’t keep things from devolving into lots of annoying yelling and a pointless Twilight parody.
While not among the very worst episodes of the season, this one did not have much to redeem it. There were no standout sketches and the only time it achieved any sustained laughter was during Sherman’s short Weekend Update segment. De Armas was fine for the most part, although between this and the previews for her upcoming movie Ghosted, it doesn’t really seem as though comedy is her forte. Either way, the show didn’t give her much to work with. Nor us, for that matter.
