Chris Rock is bad at live TV. He just is. In his unhappy tenure as a Saturday Night Live cast member, the young Rock was a shaky live performer, prone to blowing lines out of apparent nervousness. As one of this landmark season’s endless parade of returning alums, the elder comedy statesman Rock blew lines out of a live skittishness that never went away, coupled with the sense that he’s not really into doing sketches.
Rock is a stand-up first, and his monologue was the only time in this, his fourth hosting gig since departing the show for In Living Color back in 1993, where the old Chris Rock confidence was in evidence. The set was solid, if not his tightest. I got the sense that he was plucking good lines from an hour-long special he’s workshopping rather than crafting a unified set (his transitions were pretty nonexistent.) Still, Rock can bring it.
There were plenty of jokes throughout tonight’s show about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by a seemingly vengeance-minded would-be class warrior, but Rock’s were the only jokes that drew any blood. While he did bemoan the fact that people seem to be glossing over a human being’s murder, he did conclude by noting that “sometimes drug dealers get shot. You’ve seen The Wire, right?” He was also the only one who went after Donald Trump at all in this, one of the last shows before the legit threat to democracy takes office, mocking Trump’s openly racist plot to deport millions of immigrants (and brown-skinned American citizens) by joking that Jennifer Lopez is going to marry Ben Affleck again to stay in the country. (“She’s not Mexican, but Trump doesn’t know that.”)
He also courted the Twitter ire of Trump’s richest henchman Elon Musk by noting, “Nobody knows how to get rid of people like a South African,” and took a stab at debunking white Americans’ shock that a second Trump presidency would be “undignified.” “We’ve had presidents show up to their inauguration with pregnant slaves,” got the good kind of gasps, with his follow-up (“You know how many rapists are in my wallet right now?”) only upping the ante. Rock has famously expressed surprise that he’d get on SNL in the first place, noting to Lorne Michaels after his audition that he didn’t do impressions or have any of the usual performing tools the show relies on. When Michaels, to his credit, replied that “original thought” is what won him over to giving the very young Chris Rock a job, Michaels wasn’t wrong. Rock exploded as a stand-up after leaving SNL, and if his set tonight felt a little rusty in spots, it still rang with originality and comic assurance.
Not so Chris Rock the sketch performer, sadly. Reading cue cards is part of the host’s burden to bear, but for a guy with years of experience in this very same environment, Rock is egregiously reliant on them. And not remotely good at hiding it. There was nothing remotely approaching the train wreck status of one infamous night a decade ago (poor Leslie Jones and Rock had their live TV nightmare play out in real life), but man was Rock stilted, hesitant, and sluggish in every sketch. Whether it was a case of a big star not taking things as seriously as he should or someone simply not suited for live sketch work, each sketch suffered. SNL sketches can’t survive without the oxygen of performing confidence—any slip-ups or hesitancy from the people on stage makes us viewers too anxious to laugh. I didn’t laugh much tonight.
The Best: Not that this was a stellar night for the writers, but nearly every sketch’s potential suffered thank’s to Rock’s indifferent performances. If I had to pick one that suffered most, it’s probably the secret Santa exchange, where Rock’s boss can’t help but obsess over how his Simpson-ized cartoon portrait would fit into The Simpsons’ Springfield. I love a premise that launches into the weirder-verse from a seemingly ordinary starting place. Here I’m thinking of something like the AA meeting where attendee Jack Harlow’s sharing time spins out into his elaborate treatment for a Pixar movie about lost luggage, with his fellow meeting-goers gradually warming to the idea so much that they all earn screenwriting credits.
It’s not a great sign when your performance anchoring a similar scene has me longing for the sketch comedy skills of a Jack Harlow, but here we are. Rock is dead space at the very center of this promising premise, but you can feel the sketch attempting to nudge itself past Rock’s non-performance as he and his underlings get swept up in Rock’s proposed episode. Instead of the boring executive job he has in real life, the Simpsons Rock is Bart’s dance teacher who, sussing out trouble on Evergreen Terrace from Bart’s demeanor, confronts a drunken Homer at Moe’s, finds out that he’s been abusing Marge, kills Homer, and then joins the grateful Marge as the family’s sexually proficient patriarch.
Again, I love a sketch that builds on one character’s loopy pet enthusiasm, and the sketch here is helped immeasurably by some lovingly Simpsons-accurate imagined animation cells. (The one of heroic dancer Rock spin-kicking the abusive Homer in the breadbasket is choice.) There are a few nice little absurd touches around the edges of the office party, too, with Heidi Gardner’s broken legs being held back for an at-home reveal as she opens coworker Dismukes’ jump rope present. “I panicked,” he admits. And Rock seemingly being insensitive by calling Gardner’s wheelchair-bound worker “Wheels,” is revealed to be only slightly less so since it turns out Wheels is her last name.
The Worst: The cold open curse continues in the absence of overt politics this week. In the sense of taking on the most contentious issue in the news while saying absolutely nothing at all.
Last week’s shooting of a health care industry CEO brought a mountain of white-hot, uniquely American issues to the fore. A disaffected white guy choosing to solve his problems with a gun. A healthcare system so unjust and deliberately evil that the alleged shooter is being widely hailed as a folk hero for everyone ever screwed over by it. Or the fact that the nation’s predatory millionaire execs have addressed the very real concerns that saw hundreds of millions of Americans seemingly cheer on the murder of one of their colleagues by taking a long, hard look at a system so fundamentally malicious—and hire millions of dollars worth of personal security.
Or you can just have Sarah Sherman put on a broad caricature of internet true crime vulture Nancy Grace and make fun of the public discourse around alleged shooter Luigi Mangione being kind of attractive. (With a running joke mocking YouTube’s blaring and intrusive ad policy.) The whole “murderer as thirst trap” issue is in the mix, certainly—America’s long legacy of superficial crushes on pretty criminals is a pathology worth satirizing. But even on that least challenging satirical level, Saturday Night Live can’t muster much comic courage.
SNL‘s willingness to court actual controversy is as much a part of its legacy SNL‘s penchant for boasting about it. There have been flashes of satirical boldness that couldn’t get completely ironed down by the NBC Standards department and Lorne’s ever-increasing willingness to self-censor. There are still morning-after conservative attacks on sketches like this for (and here I’m just speculating) “making light of the murder of one of our holy, blameless oligarchs,” it’s tough to imagine even Fox News putting their whole back into it. I mean, what is there to get pissed off about here?
Sherman’s gamely bombastic Grace is a caricature of a real life caricature, without an interesting spin to bring it to life. Does Grace pronounce it “cruntry?” I’m not eating up soul space to research it, but why bother since the sketch doesn’t add anything to Grace’s whole scolding scavenger schtick? The suggestion that Mangione used a “ghost gun” leads Grace to complain that she’s haunted by JonBenet Ramsey’s spirit shouting, “You used me!,” which is the one joke with any bite. Otherwise, the gag is that a self-righteous news parasite is superficial and self-promoting. Good one.
The coming years are going to out a lot of people. The prospect of an actual authoritarian administration with a started plan to persecute critics and late-night comics daring to mock its leader will put media figures under a very uncomfortable spotlight, and viewers’ (and critics’) antennae are already scanning which so-called truth-tellers will wilt and scurry toward the safely benign shadows. The lifelong Saturday Night Live obsessive in me would like to think the half-century-old show is preparing for a fight. The half-century of watching, however, suspects that this sort of cold open is the level of carefully crafted irrelevancy Michaels and his cruise ship of a comedic enterprise will steer into.
Bring up a potentially incendiary topic and expend enough energy in performance that maybe the audience will ignore how little you choose to say about it. Toss in a weekly smattering of former cast members for nostalgia, and that’s SNL 50. Happy anniversary.
The Rest: The sketch everybody’s going to be talking about features another big Season 50 returning cast member, as the sheet-shrouded OR patient in a hospital sketch turns out to be Rock’s pal Adam Sandler. Apart from the “look who it is!” of it all, the morning-after clickbait comes from the mid-sketch malfunction of the sketch’s squirting blood rig, as Sandler and Sarah Sherman have to undisguisedly fiddle with the recalcitrant prop to continue the all-out crimson shower of gore onto Rock and the rest of the aghast operating room staff.
The sketch itself barely exists, centering as it does on Sherman’s “hottest girl in North America” screwing up every possible detail of the procedure, complete with Sherman’s “Are you guys mad at me? catchphrase. It’s only when Sandler unexpectedly pops his head out from beneath the sheet that the crowd perks up, the ensuing klutzy blood-hose turning the sketch into one in the long and proud string of SNL sketches where various fluids are pumped all over the place. Good, disgusting fun.
But Sandler’s performance in his game cameo shows the distance between Rock and Sandler on SNL. Rock might have had his originality stifled by a show completely at a loss how to use a brash young Black comic, but Sandler, with his silly voices and to-camera mugging, was every inch a live TV natural. Here, with a burgeoning (and still kind of shocking) dramatic leading man career in progress, Sandler is right at home back in Studio 8H. The knockabout laziness of the sketch itself might smack of the Sandler-Rock partnership of the Grown-Ups movies, but Sandler’s serene confidence as he punctures the silliness of his throwaway drop-in is easily the funniest element of tonight’s show.
When the prop stops working, old pro Sandler doesn’t miss a beat, repeating his cue line several times as Sherman scurries under the operating table to figure things out until the thing starts spraying again. Hosing down each member of the OR team, Sandler, in signature gravel-voiced confidence, delivers some knowing jabs at the show’s conventions. “And you,” he says, drenching new guy Emily Wakim, “not sure what your role in this skit is but happy you’re getting airtime, good luck. Hope your parents are proud of you.”
It’s not especially respectful of the institution of sketch writing or performing, but Sandler’s brief goof is the only snatch of unpredictability and energy in an otherwise airless slog of an episode. Finally turning his alarmingly juicy artery on surgeon Rock, Sandler abandons all pretense and promises, “You know what, I’ll stop bleeding if you open your mouth,” guffawing gleefully once Rock is dutifully coughing up stage red. It’s cheap, and stupid, and easily the most fun part of the show.
Another sketch that would have benefitted from a host with a little more oomph was the mall Santa. Or Santas, as the premise is that a local mall has hired two Santas—one white, one Black—and forces white parents to publicly choose which one they want immortalized in the family album. It’s a potent little set-up, slightly defused by Rock’s elf helper and his halting cue cards. The target here is white guilt, or at least white awkwardness, as several sets of parents unsuccessfully navigate Rock’s social trap. “The regular one?,” Mikey Day’s dad stammers out hopefully, to no avail.
The whole “this made up corporate-invented holiday creature is white and I will die on this hill!” Fox News annual panic is fertile ground, and, as with the recurring sketch (below), there’s also a potentially fruitful smack at liberal self-righteousness in Chloe Fineman’s mom performatively picking Devon Walker’s unoccupied Black Santa. (Or “Blanta,” as Walker indicates he never wants to be called again, ever.) Honestly, if Kenan had taken over what was clearly meant to be a Kenan role as the devilishly knowing elf, this would have been around twice as funny. But with Rock fumbling his way through, the gleeful prankishness of the social experiment fizzles, even before the sketch introduces Jane Wickline and Emil Wakim as a pair of other alternate Santas (queer lady Santa and chain-smoking Arab Santa) for sheepish parents to reject.
Hey, did you know this was the Christmas show? Oh wait, it wasn’t? A lot of holiday sketches tonight is what I’m saying. Which wouldn’t be a terrible thing if these were indicative of a writers room brimming with inventive Christimas sketch ideas. Sadly, the monster truck rally-narrated office party filmed piece is the sort of sort-of amusing observational gag fest that set the tone. The workplace observations are fine, with the best ones centering on the quiet desperation of the year-end, semi-mandatory office holiday gathering.
One coworker will drunkenly reveal her OnlyFans side-hustle. Another will hurt himself being “the funny guy.” The cleaning staff will glower at every canapé your drop on the carpeting. And one visiting spouse will finally eyeball the “work wife” her husband is always texting from home. But the ones that hit hardest for any former or current office drone center on the mundanity. Why is the cheaply catered steam tray food always soggy as hell? Who thinks the beige dreariness will be offset by turning off every fourth bank of lights? And dear god, who holds a boozy office party on a work night so everybody can feel pressured and/or guilty about letting off some drunken steam? Not groundbreaking stuff (I mean, NBC did The Office), but passably clever and well performed, with the futility ofn the voiceover hype man a nice touch.
The other filmed pice sees Mikey Day’s grandson realizing that his beloved dead grandpa’s lovingly preserved 1950’s-vintage car is magic—and racist. It’s a funny bit. The reveal of Kirby the car slamming its doors shut on Day’s three Black friends before they can join his promised enchanted ride comes as a nice comic twist, while even Chloe Fineman’s female pal isn’t spared Kirby’s retrograde, Mad Men-style sexism (the door slaps her on the butt). The animations on Kirby’s bumper and lights approximate the Netflix-quality CGI a Kirby movie would settle for, and the final joke is delivered with a nifty little slam of its own. “You guys thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?,” Chris Rock’s pal says, addressing the repeantant Kirby’s promise of a free ride to the big party. Cut to the upbeat music abruptly cutting out and a shot of the kids watching Kirby’s barn engulfed in flames. Maybe a little too gentle for its comic good, but a solid enough little film.
Jost and Che and Luigi was the theme of tonight’s Update. And that’s fine—the fact that a self-proclaimed vigilante for healthcare justice straight-up murdered the head of one of the most predatory and murderously callous health insurance companies a few blocks from SNL’s HQ is bound to focus the hive-mind. Colin Jost kicked things off with a nimble tonal fakeout, speaking to the “delicate, sensitive debate” over who will play Luigi Mangione in the 100 percent under-construction Netflix miniseries.
Still, SNL stuck with the tack of tonight’s cold open and spoke about pretty much everything except the crux of the matter. So there were jokes about Mangione’s “hypocrisy” in decrying big companies while leaving clumsy evidence at two chain restaurants, a joke about people leaving bad online reviews of the McDonald’s where Mangione was turned in, and a Jost joke about how he looked more like a high school killer in his graduation picture than valedictorian Mangione did in his. All ably delivered and largely inconsequential, which is the Jost-Che guarantee.
There are better, bolder jokes sitting right there inside the jokes Jost told. The Yelp review joke of a McDonald’s franchise (“Open, five stars”) ignores the groundswell of support for a a killer targeting seemingly untouchable plutocrat greed-heads that strikes at the very heart of some very touchy and weighty societal issues. That’s a choice the show is making to tell one sort of joke and not another, more risky and potentially insightful one. If you want to skate on past that choice with a glib little grin, expect to be called on it.
Che led off with another one of his “women, amirite?” jokes when addressing the conspiracy-bait New Jersey drone sightings. That one crashed because it must have been flown by a woman, amirite? Che’s “I’m a misogynist… or am I?” little stinker act is beyond played out, and his “It’s the 90’s” reframing of the schtick is wearing awfully thin. He did a few passing politics jokes about accused GOP underage sex creep Matt Gaetz’s new right-wing talk show (topics: quinceañeras and prom jitters) and Trump’s plan to deport millions of not-white people, but like most Update whiz-bys they don’t land with much impact.
Call me beholden to the concept of comedic integrity and courage, but if I were the hosts of a satirical weekly fake news segment and the incoming president had openly called for “retribution” against your show by name multiple times, and has the power to install a cartoonish right-wing stooge at the FCC who’ll carry out his every aggrieved whim, I’d assume that people would be watching just how willing I was to speak truth to power. I’d up my game, is what I’m saying.
Andrew Dismukes put on a bald cap and acted angry as a bald guy trumpeting a British court’s ruling that calling a bald guy bald is some form of hate speech or something. I like Dismukes a lot—he can play to the cheap seats while also getting weird with things, which is a deceptively tough trick. Here, he’s fine. The premise doesn’t have much behind it, and I liked best the long bit of him defiantly polishing his impressive dome with a squeaky chamois. The one line that tapped into the madness of the bit was Dismukes complaining that the defendant in his all-bald jury made fun of them for looking like a carton of eggs, Dismukes smugly telling Jost, “Everyone laughed! And that guy killed somebody—or at least that’s what we decided.”
Jane Wickline got to do another song, a carryover from her pre-SNL stage act. It’s as good a way to break out as any for an airtime-deprived featured player, and like her first outing, I enjoyed it. Even if her vibe is a little low-key to be a true breakout at the Update desk, I think. Telling Jost defiantly that she will be singing along to her Casio keyboard as Sabrina Carpenter—even though she neither sings nor writes songs like the pop superstar—Wickline delivered a musical lament that nobody will engage in the sort of headline-grabbing speculation about her sexuality her peers get.
Not being super plugged-in to current pop divas (I’m old, as most have figured out), yet I could glean that Wickline’s contention is that, while other stars get the internet buzzing by dropping the merest lyrical hints about same-sex attraction, Carpenter full-on smooching Jenna Ortega in a video garners nary a whisper. A cursory Wiki search gives no clues, so I’ll just assume this is a Wickline original concept rather than anything the “Espresso” singer has ever publicly fretted about. And that’s okay with me—Wickline’s waif-y persona might be a touch diffident for her own good as far as SNL stardom goes, but I like how it translates to these musical interludes.
None to report. Don’t worry, it’s not like there’s anything going on. And yes, I’ve used that joke two weeks in a row. I’ll stop when SNL gives me something else to say.
I’m pretty open about my opinion that Kenan Thompson should stay at Saturday Night Live as long as he wants. The show biz lifer may not have been born to star on this show (he did have several popular franchises while still a teenager), but Saturday Night Live fits his entertainer’s journey perfectly. Kenan’s a sketch performer, pure and simple—he can do other stuff (he’s going to finally find a sitcom worthy of him someday) but Saturday Night Live is uniquely situated to allow Kenan Thompson to steal scenes with effortless-looking ease.
A few years ago, I was taken to task by not a few crabby online types (not you, LateNighter commenters, you’re shiny and nice) for placing Kenan as high as I did in a list of the all-time greatest SNL cast members. The crux of their invective-strewn, often misspelled complaints was mainly that Kenan, in his even then absurdly long tenure on the show, didn’t truly break out with fan favorite characters like other huge SNL stars have. And while Kenan doesn’t have Stefon or Mr. Robinson to his credit, there’s a lot to be said for two decades of never-miss scene-stealing and reliability.
Just look at tonight’s one repeater for proof of Kenan’s worth. The Charlie sketch is a one-joke premise making shaky points about workplace inappropriateness. The single gag being a queasy point that the old-school sexual comments of Kenan’s beloved ancient security guy Charlie are given a pass while the less-offensive(?) sexism, racism, and homophobia of a sheepish executive (Rock here) is greeted with righteous outrage as the two men are set up for termination.
The uneasiness comes from the underlying implication that the modern workplace, with its picky HR rules and workers daring to object to every little thing, has gone too far in curtailing the office funny guy, a message that needs to go right to the shredder. As each outraged worker details their complaints about-to-be-canned boss’ comments concerning their personal appearance, personal lives, and suggestions of sex-for-advancement, good old Charlie’s open holiday party exhortations for a female worker to pick up the dollar in his mouth without using his hands is waved away as “just Charlie being Charlie.”
It would be even more insufferable if not for a bald-capped Kenan plugging away. Charlie’s catchphrase-happy come-ons and unconcealed innuendoes in any other hands would be boorish and creepy. With a beaming Kenan delivering them, the sketch finds a passable tone of knowingness. The joke becomes more about privileged, mostly white white collar types excusing a deeply problematic old Black man (he’s also on coke and robbing the company blind) because they’re conditioned to find his rascally inappropriateness adorable. And without Kenan to sell it, this recurring wisp of a sketch would be a tonal disaster.
I’ll say it for this year’s three new kids, they’re getting some quantity—if not quality—airtime. Jane Wickline got her Update song, but for most of the season, she, Ashley Padilla, and Emil Wakim have gotten on the show a surprising amount, even if they often haven’t had a lot do do there. The thing is that Padilla and Wakim are both very good sketch actors, with presence. (Wickline needs to lean into her outsider oddball role more—this cast could use a Kyle Mooney.) When they’re on screen Padilla and Wakim have considerable talent and presence. You get the sense that they could settle into the main cast nicely. But in a season swamped with big star drop-ins and a middling writing profile, they’re getting stifled—along with almost everyone else.
It’s an issue—and with Martin Short closing out 2024 next week, I can only assume there will be [rolls 20-sides SNL die] 3-4 outsiders sucking up studio oxygen along with him. This core cast—apart from Kenan, who just cruises along—may have untapped abilities to take over the show like talented performers have through the years. But time is running out. After the Season 50 hype dies down (watch for another worshipful SNL behind-the-scenes docu-series before Febriary’s gala 50th anniversary special!), I get the sense there’ll be an evaluation—with an eye toward cleaning some house for Season 51.
Okay, I can’t pin this one all on Rock. The blind date show-closer had glimmers—the 10-to-one slot seems to attract sketches about lonely weirdos unsuccessfully trying to connect. And I could see a couple of into-it performers turning this scenario into a little gem of absurdity and character bits. But, whew was this a barely-there finale.
Ego Nwodim had one of the most thankless roles she’s ever gotten on this show (and think about that) as her lone diner is hoodwinked by Rock’s opportunistic bar patron so easily the sketch becomes less about Rock’s clumsy pick-up tactics and more about our concerns that Ego’s character was beaned with a falling AC unit on her way to the restaurant. A clueless protagonist could be funny if her blank willingness to let this obvious scammer replace her running-late date were part of the joke rather than the writers giving her no personality.
And Rock’s signature non-appearance sucks away whatever comic juice this thin stew might have had. As the jackal-like date-scavenger, Rock needed to play each move with the energy of someone who actually wants something to happen, rather than going through a few desultory motions. Taking a neighboring diner’s steak dinner to keep Ego interested should be a Groucho-esque ballsy play, while his lie about his very prominent wedding ring suffers from a similar lack of urgency. Meanwhile, his intermittent gambit to baldly propose he and Ego go have sex in his car lands with a thud instead of being part of his player’s whirlwind seduction. Honestly, my only laugh came from waiter Michael Longfellow’s promise, “I’ll be back when I fee like it,” which at least had a little of that absurd 10-to-one spirit.
Not to grind old axes as I plug old articles, but a certain publication’s editorial meddling on that much sweated-over SNL rankings list completely omitted a performer who I had initially chosen as my all-time number 2 cast member. See if you can guess who it was! I’m still furious about it!
Chris Rock not being a live sketch guy also extended to prop work, as he killed a joke in the secret Santa sketch by clumsily revealing his Simpson-ized portrait before he was supposed to.
Even though we’ve got one more pre-Christmas show to go next week, the SNL writers room is just blowing through the holiday sketches. It’d be less of a worry if most of tonight’s Christmas jokes didn’t already feel like the show was running on fumes.
Gracie Abrams’ voice is nearly pretty enough to make you forget her dad is one of the most powerful men in show business.
“A lawyer working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. ‘Cause it ain’t Christmas without some Tiny Tims.”
colin Jost
[Over a smiling picture of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)] “… seen here watching a gust of wind blow away a homeless man’s lottery ticket.”
michael che
“The Golden Globes were announced this week, with the most nominations going to Emilia Perez. Which is a musical about a Mexican cartel leader who transitions into a woman. The movie was written when I asked ChatCPT to make my grandpa’s head explode.”
colin jost
“Today marks the 205th anniversary of Alabama becoming a state. To find out what life in Alabama was like 205 years ago, go to Mississippi.”
michael Che
Episode Grade: A Slack C-Minus
Next Week: We finish up 2024 with five-time host Martin Short. (Okay, one of those times he only co-hosted with Steve Martin but I’m not going to be the one to stand between Martin Short and a Five Timers club sketch. Are you?) Musical guest, Hozier.
