“This sucks, man.”
And Your Host…
Five episodes in, a Season 52 diagnosis is in order.
This season is dire, with tonight’s Druski-hosted episode the worst of the bunch so far, its flaws simply the season’s writ larger, clumsier, and finally more impossible to ignore. There was no flow to tonight’s sketches, the show’s pacing, direction, and ensemble energy grinding gears as scenes lurched and limped to almost complete audience indifference. The writing is surface-level, at best. Premises are laid out then just lie there, twitching like fish under the hot lights, whatever stabs at absurdity or originality so poorly integrated they come off as embarrassed. The technical side is just as uninspired. The very first post-monologue sketch clearly suffered some mishap enough to throw off the show’s timing—unless SNL‘s idea of a big opener is for the return from the first commercial break to stutter and vamp like backstage was scrambling to cut a five-minute final sketch to 45 seconds. With five lackluster episodes in a row to start Season 52, Saturday Night Live is already out of juice on every level.
All that should let internet comic Druski off the hook, but it doesn’t. He was a lousy host, whose advertised brashness and billion-strong view count in no way translated to extended live TV exposure. I get that I’m not Druski’s demographic, but I challenge even the phenomenally successful YouTuber’s legion of fans to point to a single moment tonight where he elevated a sketch, or where his performance wasn’t labored, tentative, or loud without being funny. In practice, Druski came off like Anthony Anderson’s try-hard little brother, which is not, one imagines, what anybody is shooting for.
Druski tried to pump up his outsider cred as the first content creator/internet celebrity/influencer/etc to host SNL, claiming he had to promise he wouldn’t curse or do his signature female whiteface schtick, but in practice he came off about as dangerous as the kid sticking pencils up his nose in math class. Stand-up legends Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle appeared to surprise the young comic by showing up for his goodnights, but if their intention was a coronation the gesture makes them look even more out of touch than some of their recent work has. Druski had a gracelessness that made his characters’ boorishness just feel sort of ugly and unappealing. As ready as I am to blame an SNL studio audience for not being the hippest crowd in New York, the appalled silences greeting some of Druski’s lines felt right on the money.
John Mulaney’s in town next week, making him the first actual comedian and proven SNL host Lorne Michaels has thought to book this season. Someone like that—with experience, professionalism, and a working knowledge of how the place works—can’t hurt, but this is a season and a show desperately in need of major creative rejuvenation.
The Best and the Rest
The Best: I suppose the inevitable You Can See Everything pre-tape claims this spot, for sheer workmanlike craftsmanship if nothing else. Druski got to do his whiteface thing partway through, as he (playing himself) finally tired of dealing with subject Elizabeth Holmes’ creepy mind games enough to slather on some White Girls-level prosthetics to give her a taste of her own fraudulent medicine. In his prerecorded element, this is the closest Druski came to exhibiting some sort of comic authority, as his abortive pre-Nathan Fielder attempt to bring his unique sensibility to the stranger-than-fiction story played up their contrasting styles. (“Are you tryin’ to f**k me?,” he asks Jane Wickline’s Holmes after the pair’s trailer-familiar stare-down, “I ain’t mad at it.”) He gets in a plug for his Coulda Been Records audition videos when Ben Marshall’s suitably unnerving Billy Evans unwisely tries out his rap skills, and there’s SNL precedent in the piece’s “Black comedian would have done things differently” vibe, but whatever hopes this predictable but competent sketch brought were dashed almost immediately.
The Worst: Amongst the drifting wreckage, the birthday sketch was Druski showing his metaphorical comedic ass more than his oft-displayed actual belly. Playing a diva-esque birthday queen with his full beard, indifferently applied fake nails, wig, and undisguised voice, I kept wondering if his character’s unconvincingness was part of the premise. Instead, it just came off as shoddy, uncommitted boorishness, with Druski’s self-important lady rattling off lines as loud as they were unfunny. Even the physical bits (like uncomprehending nemesis Veronika Slowikowska’s sizzling hot fajita plate) were bumbled and tossed off. Here, Druski’s resurfacing crudeness landed with a thud—I suppose a brash character complaining that she didn’t want another woman to “help her wipe” in the bathroom because she might be gay might work somehow if performed by someone with a handle on what the sketch is trying to say or be, but here all Druski’s drag work is just half-assed and dully offputting. Truly the lowlight of the season so far.
The chilly silence greeting the would-be comic crescendo of this mess reminded me of a Bill Hader talk show story. Explaining how he and Kenan could sense that a dress rehearsal sketch was clearly doomed, he imaged the audience shouting, “NO… No thanks!” as he and his colleague soldiered on through another few interminable minutes. This felt like that, except that not even Bill Hader could make this disaster sound funny afterwards.
The Rest: I didn’t find the Dominican cellphone store sketch very funny, but it served to demonstrate the wide gap between a real sketch performer and whatever Druski is. And I didn’t even find Marcello Hernandez’s accented mugging particularly amusing—it’s just that when he and Druski are both doing nearly identical schtick and only one is at least watchable in his doggedly energetic competence, the contrast is pretty stark. Marcello’s taken a step back, his fondness for bombastic clowning in a variety of ethnicities losing its luster after a fast start. Here, he’s a tight-panted, hip-gyrating, sack-tapping sales guy, and, bless his heart, he gives the beyond-threadbare conceit everything he’s got. Druski just pales next to him, not that what Hernandez is doing is particularly noteworthy. Like in so many of his sketches tonight, Druski seemed to recede the louder he got.
The marriage proposal sketch is an example of trying to inflate a leaky balloon. A lot of huffing and puffing went into the not-terrible premise (Jeremy Culhane’s elaborate musical restaurant celebration gets awkward when Sarah Sherman’s girlfriend turns him down), but nobody and nothing felt invested and Druski (as the hairy-chested Barry White-style crooner) once more came off like his internal dimmer was at quarter power. The pieces were all there for the sketch to take off into absurd heights, but even when the game Culhane is lifted out of his seat by some clumsily attached wires at the climax, he just sort of hangs there looking sheepish. While I’m not naive enough to imagine SNL‘s union crew is stifling uproarious laughter while doing their jobs each long, trying week, the pull out at the end of this sketch saw a number of stagehands desultorily going through their tasks with the dour energy of the damned.
Druski should have found a kindred spirit in Grace Reiter’s wedding photographer in the following sketch. After all, they both love to go big, broad and physical, and the roles of two intrusively shutter-happy photo-snappers getting all up in the bride and groom’s space allow for plenty of energetic pratfalls if nothing else. In practice, this was another exercise in flop-sweaty busyness, with everything from the blocking of the jokes to the transitions to Reiter and Druski’s one-note performances blurring into one discordant wash. There’s a line where Druski’s photographer corrects that he was not “a war photographer in Afghanistan” but “a whore photographer for Afgoonistan” that might be the single worst SNL joke in years, not that Druski’s delivery did anything to prop it up. It’s at the merciful end of this sketch where Marcello Hernandez’s groom drops a clumsy but accurate, “This sucks, man.” He’s referring to the wedding photographers. I’m quoting it for other reasons.
The other filmed piece was a commercial alternative to your data-snooping smart devices in the form of Druski’s loudmouth corner guy who’ll shout out your flaws in order to inspire your workouts. Again, I don’t get Druski—the concept could work (imagine Key & Peele doing it) with somebody able to fill out a caricature like this one with… something. Energy, inner weirdness—something. This was just, like the rest of the show, loud and clamorous without inspiring so much as a chuckle.
“Weekend Update” Update
Springboarding off of tonight’s high-profile cold open, I’ll deploy a metaphor. The studio audience tonight greeted not just Talarcio’s appearance but every single mention of the MAGA midterm wipeout with energized (and theoretically energizing) extended applause. But like the cold open’s Jeffries and Schumer, Che and Jost stayed contentedly in their tired old groove, two tenured professors refusing to seize the moment with renewed focus and vigor.
Which is to say you can read any of my Update reviews over the years for the same highs and lows. Jost and Che give snappy zinger, and can be counted on for at least one audience-baiting joke per Update. (Tonight it was Jost setting up Trump’s inability to recruit “new young talent” in nationwide races, the punchline—running under a Trump-Epstein photo—”he used to have a guy for that.”) After that, it was jokes about outgoing Speaker Mike Johnson looking like a Keebler elf, Trump “vajazzling” the White House, and mac & cheese. Let nerds like John Oliver and Josh Johnson do the heavy comedy lifting—we’re just here to make each other laugh.
Jeremy Culhane waded into the Elon Musk waters with an impression that was more accurate than laugh-out-loud. I like Culhane a lot, and his Musk is a subtler creation than the Mike Myers version we got last time, but again there’s not much meat on the bone here. Musk as socially awkward weirdo is on point, but secondary, one might wish, to a point of view on the South African oligarch attempting to literally purchase American democracy. Culhane’s Musk abandoning his cringe-y fist-bumps once his own AI minion Grok starts roasting him (“Maybe if you have 100 more kids, one of them will talk to you”) is a fleeting swipe on the way out the door, though.
Recurring Sketch Report
Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes are delightful as The Two People Who Just Hooked Up once again, here bringing all their tousled, post-coital charisma to a breakdown of the Democrats’ Tuesday midterms obliteration of all things MAGA, everywhere. There’s nothing much more to say about a joke that never changes, except to once more marvel at Padilla’s star quality and how endearingly Dismukes matches her here. Oh, the couple’s expected double entendres reveal that the duo has gotten into pegging, which, good on ’em both.
Political Comedy Report
The big news from tonight is the cameo from newly elected Texas Senator James Talarico during the requisite Trump cold open. Setting all else aside, this is the sort of screw you energy Democrats need to capitalize on after the midterms. Just knowing that noted two-time host and hate-watcher Trump is currently on the can scrawling out an all caps complaint about SNL being SO UNFAIR for having “TALAFREAKO” on the show (“That’s Senator Talafreako,” the baby-faced senator-elect stated upon his entrance) makes all the wishy-washy wasting of James Austin Johnson’s stellar impression worthwhile. After Trump and his FCC lapdog Brendan Carr bullied a compliant CBS into yanking Stephen Colbert’s Talarico interview off TV earlier this year, I’m allowing myself a little schadenfreude.
As to the sketch… sure. Talarico got to mock SNL for doing the “Trump freezes time” thing too often, even momentarily freezing JAJ’s Trump so he could bask in some seriously rapturous hero’s applause. The framing device was a halfhearted take on current Dem leadership, with approval-tanking, questionably compromised, “reach across the aisles like the old days” Chuck Schumer (Sarah Sherman) and Hakeem Jeffries (Kenan) winking at their unsuitability for the still-in-crisis moment for democracy. We all knew Trump was coming though, and JAJ’s expertise was spent, as always, on a funny but irrelevant portrait of a sundowning lunatic. I love Johnson’s weirdo take on Trump as a pop culture-addled narcissist (he really digs deep on New Girl), even if Saturday Night Live will never grapple with the genuine, active evil underneath all the nonsense. Then it was the Talarico’s turn to bask, and rub it in the real article’s face on live TV. Not subtle, but more effective than anything SNL‘s done to the guy constantly threatening to take it off the air in a long time.
Okay, help me out with the “Washington in Focus” sketch, you out there. The joke—and I’m open to being wrong here—is basically, “Thank god there’s a white guy from the freaking Atlantic on hand who actually knows something about politics on this Black-hosted political talk show,” right? SNL‘s used the Black people political talk show format to pretty potent effect in the past, but the joke here appears to be that the seemingly smart Black panelists assume politicians with “Black” names like Sherrod Brown and Jerome Powell are themselves Black because the otherwise plugged-in hosts don’t do their research? Nobody in the sketch does anything especially funny (although Saidah Belo-Osagie does a creditable Ego Nwodim), but there’s a potentially funny bit where the panel keeps spotting one flamboyantly dressed Black guy (writer Carl Tart, who should get more screen time) in the backgrounds of the white politicians photos. I’ll conclude by noting again that this is the sketch where something obviously went awry, as we returned from commercial in progress and the whole sketch felt rushed and out of joint.
Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings
Even stuck in the middle of some bad, bad sketches, Ashley Padilla’s a star. Can’t keep my eyes off her.
Saidah Belo-Osagie had two mid-sized roles, which is nice. She was confidently Nwodim-ish in one and honestly pretty striking in the other, attempting to hold herself into a precarious looking wedding gown, but she’s in danger of getting lost on a show where funny Black women often get shut out.
Speaking of, even though Kam Patterson’s worked with Druski before, he only appeared once, in the very last sketch.
Jeremy Culhane’s being groomed for at least serviceable leading man territory, although I maintain he’s funnier than that.
This is the kind of episode where everybody blurs into the lukewarm slop if they don’t take control. Only Padilla (and Dismukes, to a lesser extent) really did.
10-To-Oneland Report
Andrew Dismukes played yet another nerdy white guy awkwardly assessing Black culture in the “Golden Age of Hip-Hop” sketch that mercifully ended this episode. Throwing to clips of the Druski-led ’90s inspirational rap group Lenny and the Street Smart Crew, whose lyrics all betray a rats’ nest of unexamined issues and prejudices, Dismukes’ host did what he could. Druski, Kam Petterson, JAJ, Tommy Brennan, and Ben Marshall don the appropriate gear and hair and work out their dated flow well enough. (As in the proposal sketch, Druski has some pipes.) But perhaps owing to earlier timing issues, this one was rushed, not that it had much going on in the first place. The framing device saps the energy, and while you can feel little bits of weird business nibbling around the edges (the crew seems to think gangs only like wine and graffiti), this closer was as limp and lifeless as the rest of a truly uninspired episode.
Stray Observations
- While I wasn’t expecting JAJ’s Trump to make one of his signature dementia detours about Winston Bishop’s character development on New Girl, I am fully on board with his assessment. Lamorne Morris is the show’s secret all-star, but it took the writers a while to stop treating him as just “the guy we got when Damon Wayans Jr had to do another season of Happy Endings.”
- Auto-tune lends The Strokes another ironic detachment gear I didn’t know they had. Their moving backgrounds were more engaged, and engaging.
- Having a champagne-swilling, shades-wearing Walton Goggins inexplicably stroll in to play bongos was at least weird, although Julian Casablancas shouting, “Walton Goggins everybody!” is decidedly uncool.
- In his monologue, Druski brought out a sheepish looking Emma Stone (his costar in the upcoming The Catch) to lend his already wobbly stage presence some legitimacy. Even Stone can’t perform that sort of miracle.
Episode Grade: D is for Druski, even if the grade is for the whole class.
Next week: Save us, John Mulaney. And do what you can, Phoebe Bridgers.
