What is a middle term between eager watching for entertainment and hate watching? I’m in Saturday night liveas it meanders through these strange years. But this weekend’s episode was just hilarious in a way that I don’t remember the show running years. And especially when the Pokemon showed up to give free Xboxes to all Americans.
It seems pretty fair to say that SNLThe best recurring feature right now is the Please Don’t Destroy videos, created by a group of young writers on the show. (Hell, the show doesn’t have a single recurring character of note at the moment, so there’s not much competition.) This week has been their best yet in which the trio learned of a new Covid-19 strain, but this one Good. Well, just look at it:
As a Brit SNL wasn’t something I grew up with and only started to piece together its undulating history of quality in recent years. But having become a regular viewer right at the last peak, it’s fair to say that the show is in a bit of a trough right now. Despite some absolutely brilliant comedians in the current cast, there’s a real sense of doldrums, one that had set in before all the lockdown measures began to wreak havoc on the programme.
This Saturday’s edition didn’t start well, with a misfire chill that saw Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong somberly head out to introduce New York’s (hugely impressive) Ukrainian Chorus Dumka with ‘Prayer For Ukraine’. It probably seemed like a nice touch, but came off as undue reassurance, not least when it ended with McKinnon and Strong reappearing in an awkward silence to mutter a sullen murmur of the show’s opening catchphrase, then the camera tilted awkwardly , to show some clumsily arranged Ikea tea lights almost in the shape of the word “KYIV”.
Yes No. A well-written piece of scathing satire that would ideally bring Beck Bennett back to revisit his Putin would have done much more credit to Ukraine. Then things felt even more incongruous when fifth host John Mulaney came out to deliver a stormy opening monologue about his recent time in rehab, preparing for the most enduring (and downright weirdest) episode since Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader’s heyday.
This sketch of Please Don’t Destroy was a perfect complement to what felt like a really bold lyric in the Covid Dinner Discussion (above), in which people at a restaurant dared to say the unspeakable words of the last two years out loud . Having a positive Covid variant felt like an incredibly wonderful dream, not least given all the new legitimate terror we’re feeling now with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that I swear to you when it announced Pokemon are real, i almost cried Oh god why can’t Pokemon be real right now while the whole world is a fucking shitshow?
Monkey Trial should have been awful, but Mulaney made it hilarious. The Blue River Dog Food VT was just so completely weird that it all made sense. The Five Timers sketch was a gold mine for guest stars with lots of laughs. Even the faithful family reunion sketch had a nice number of gags. And the musical Subway Churro? I mean it was spectacular and awful and damn I loved it. Sure, the Nickelodeon slime sketch didn’t go anywhere, but it was hard to cater to after LCD Soundsystem gave two stellar performances of such incredibly un-mainstream songs.
But mostly it was positive Covid, Paul Rudd’s twinkling eyes and Pokemon in the White House that brought me real joy in a week when everything feels way too scary.
