Saturday Night Live opens with CNN coverage of voter concerns over Joe Biden’s age. Stumping for the president is California governor Gavin Newsom (Michael Longfellow), who reminds voters that under the Biden administration, “he’s created more jobs than any president in history, inflation is down, the Shamrock Shake is back, and Beyonce has gone country”.
His further declarations about Biden’s lightening quick reflexes are less convincing, as are those from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (Ego Nwodim), Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas (Marcello Hernández), and NBA star Draymond Green (Devon Walker), who all make wild claims about Biden leading Soulcycle classes, winning pushup contests, and parkouring up the border wall. An attempt to FaceTime the president fails when Biden fumbles the phone.
Democrats’ desperate narrative spinning of Biden’s mental and physical acuity is well worth skewering, but this, like most cold opens these days, is as milquetoast as they come. Also, why does no one actually impersonate the political figures they play? Longfellow makes for a perfect Newsom, but he doesn’t even attempt the governor’s gravelly intonation. It adds to the overall sense of laziness.
Sydney Sweeney hosts for the first time. The prolific actor remarks that people have probably seen her in Anyone but Your Euphoria, “but you definitely didn’t see me in Madame Webb”. She recounts her upbringing in Spokane, and how she convinced her parents to let her embark on a career as an actor by presenting them with a five-point plan, as well as a much shorter backup plan: “Show Boobs.”
The (light) self-effacement continues as she touches on a few controversies that have sprung up around her, including pictures of her attending a Trump-themed party for her mom, her weight loss regimen, and rumors that she was having an affair with her Anyone but You co-star Glen Powell, whose presence in the live studio audience puts her denials into question.
In the first sketch, a squad of NYPD detectives welcome two college interns (Sweeney and Heidi Gardner) to the precinct. The girls present a bratty, apathetic attitude, but they immediately crack a bunch of cold cases via social media savvy: “We’re 22 and can find out literally anything about anyone with literally no information.” One of the detectives pulls a Chris D’Elia and freaks out when he learns that you definitely can take screenshots on Snapchat, while the chief books it once his OnlyFans account is discovered. If for some reason you find the mere listing of social media platforms hilarious, you’ll love this one.
A new Please Don’t Destroy sees the boys despondent over the passing of a close friends, who died while on vacation in Arizona after “a donkey kicked him in the nuts so hard he fell into the Grand Canyon”. They share this info with Sweeney, who finds this – as well as the rest of the outlandish details – hard to believe, until they show her video footage of the tragedy. Instantly forgettable. They’d have been better served doing a follow up to their recent showdown with Sweeney’s Madame Web co-star Dakota Johnson.
Next, Sweeney plays the captain of a high school cheerleading squad crushing on the new star basketball player. Being the queen bee, she decides she must date this mysterious hunk, only to discover it’s actually Air Bud (played by a real dog). This in no way deters her. The sketch itself is no great shakes, but Sweeney’s committed performance is an early highlight.
Big Bench is a new Court TV series featuring not one, not three, not 10, but 17 judges. The “honorable everybody” preside over a juicy case of redneck love gone wrong. Much mugging ensues. Sweeney’s attempt at a southern accent is pretty bad, but it’s somehow better than Chloe Fineman’s.
During the show’s dress rehearsal, Sweeney tells Nwodim and Gardner that she has a crush on Bowen Yang. They encourage her to go for it, which confuses her because she was working under the impression that he’s gay. It turns out this is not the case – he only “plays gay on the show because it’s a shortcut to laughs”. They soon hook up, only for Straight Bowen to dump her. There’s a funny idea in here somewhere, but it never quite emerges.
Sweeney and Sarah Sherman play Long Island wedding beauticians who’ve just finished applying makeup to a soon-to-be bride. When their client receives a letter from the groom dumping her hours before the ceremony, they feign sympathy while simultaneously trying to get her to Venmo them, leave a good review on their Yelp page, and pose for a photo for their portfolio. Sweeney’s East Coast accent isn’t any better than her southern one, and there’s a lot of dead-air and obvious cue card reading further dragging this one down.
Following the first performance from musical guest Kasey Musgrave, its time for Weekend Update. Their first guest is Woman Who is Aging Gracefully, there to discuss the announcement of a forthcoming season of The Golden Bachelorette. The overconfident, over-sexed, surgery-addicted senior believes that “age is just a number – ignore it, unless you’re in a school zone!” This starts off annoying, but Gardner’s unhinged performance and a late, unexpectedly gross visual gag save it.
Later, Michael Che welcomes on Charlotte, a sting ray who’s lived for years in a North Carolina aquarium without a male companion and yet is somehow pregnant. She’s got big news for Che: “You gonna be a daddy!” Che denies his paternity and floats the idea that her pregnancy is a case of immaculate conception, which she confirms: “It was immaculate, in that you immaculated, then I immaculated three times back-to-back.” While not as prevalent as the ongoing Sarah Sherman/Colin Jost Update rivalry of the past few seasons, the running joke of Che knocking up various characters (always played by Nwodim) is one of the better ones the show has going.
It was a given that tonight’s episode would be loaded with obvious boob jokes, so small credit to the show that, outside of the one example in Sweeney’s monologue, they held off until the halfway point. At a small-town Hooters, Sweeny’s new waitress makes a small fortune in tips on her first day, for obvious reasons and much to the chagrin of her co-workers. She chalks her popularity with the customers up to her friendly service, even though “spilled all over them and made one guy relapse.” This hits all the expected beats before going off the rails towards the end when James Austin Johnson shows up as company mascotHooter the Owl.
Musgrave takes the stage for her second performance, which is followed by a commercial for Chanel & Chanel Interior Designs, the world’s “number one designers for Airbnbs”. Their vibe is “bland, generic, downright uninviting”. As a takedown of Airbnb, this feels two years too late, but it’s a good roasting of the type of cringeworthy Bansky-meets-Bed, Bath and Beyond-style American home décor that’s so prevalent these days. On a side note, it says something quite dire about both the show and its audience that the biggest reaction of the night–not laughter, mind you, but simple, mindless applause – comes from a mere mention of the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience debacle from earlier this week.
As is the show’s wont, the episode wraps up with a restaurant-set sketch. Andrew Dismukes and Sweeney play a couple out for a dinner date, which is rudely interrupted by the loud, drunken antics of four bros one table over. Dismukes goes over to confront them, but instead of telling them to shut up, he gets them to admit that they love each other. This succeeds in quieting them down because “nothing shuts up a group of guys like an earnest expression of how much they mean to one another”. Sweeney pulls a similar tact with a noisy group of women on their other side by reminding them “of their mother’s humanity”. In a last minute, Sweeney’s character dumps her husband for her hunky boss, played, of course, by Powell.
A low-key note to end a low-key episode. Sweeney was mostly fine, but this is yet another entirely forgettable episode in what is turning out to be an incredibly underwhelming season.
