Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie Was Born to Host SNL

And Your Host…

Connor Storrie might be an overnight success, but the Heated Rivalry star was born to host Saturday Night Live. I hadn’t noticed it in my pre-review catch-up on HBO Max’s “hockey, but gay” smash, but in sketch after sketch (and various bumper images), the going-for-broke Storrie was at times a dead ringer for Neil Patrick Harris.

This is not to engage in the “Is he???” sexuality guessing game that the actor and his co-star Hudson Williams (who did a similarly welcome drop-in) have had to cope with. Because, seriously, get a life. It’s more that, like fellow born performer NPH, Storrie loves the camera, and it loves him right back. (So does the audience, if the sheer whooping tonight was any measure.)

Not unlike his glowering Russian hockey hunk Ilya Rozanov, Storrie is a born showboat, hurling his body into dances, impressions, funny walks, and catty characters aplenty. (Bowen Yang must have been kicking himself he left before this one.) His monologue was an excuse to play up his ACTING! self-seriousness with overly dramatic, to-camera monologues before his goofy, “Just kidding!” grin washed it all away.

The writing could have been a lot better, but even when a sketch was straining, Storrie’s clear delight in being where he was raised the enjoyment level noticeably.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: “The Gentleman’s Code” pre-tape was a fine little period piece wherein some Gilded Age dandies’ glove-slapping “How dare you!” assaults find a very funny groove of escalation. Everyone’s clearly having a ball in their waistcoats and fine hats, prissily slapping each other across the face until Kenan Thompson’s seemingly identical fop stops playing and punches an offending Mikey Day right into the buffet. There’s a kid getting punted, a tiny dog slapping a dude, and plenty of finely timed slappiness all around, with Storrie (never more NPH-esque) channeling a bygone form of performative, gloved masculinity with obvious glee.

The Worst: As noted, a happy, committed host overcomes a lot, so I couldn’t get too grumpy about anything tonight with Storrie in the mix. Even in the ski lodge sketch, Storrie had a way of wiggling his little feet (or, the person operating the feet did) that overcame my indifference to the spectacle of Marcello Hernandez gamely walking around on impressively high stilts.

I was wondering why everyone had suspicious lap-blankies on, and the reveal that Hernandez had gone to Turkey for illegal leg-lengthening surgery (aided by Storrie’s unnecessary leg bone donation) at least was a surprise. Nothing especially funny happened as Marcello lurched around the set (and the non-ending was genuinely puzzling), but he and Storrie played off each other with palpable affection. And, hey, those were some tall stilts.

The Rest: For the first sketch after the monologue, “Mr. Fronzi” was another in a season’s worth of rundown miscalculations. It’s not terrible, but it’s effortful, as Hernandez’s exuberantly accented teacher mispronounces “peanuts” as “penis” and Storrie’s class cutup gets caught doing a mean impression of him. Hernandez came in strong in his SNL career, but his energy has never found the right vehicles. (I never even dug Domingo before he was run into the ground.)

Even opening with Storrie doing a silly dance in front of the class isn’t the big splash you want for a host, with the sketch relying on Hernandez to goose it into a groove it never finds. SNL seems complacent with “Marcello doing an accent is a sketch,” but at least there’s a core of sweetness to the bit, as everyone in the class reveals that they only do their impressions of the teacher out of genuine love. I defer to High Fidelity‘s Rob Gordon, who noted sagely, “the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art.” Same alchemy goes for a sketch show, and this was the sort of mix opener that makes your finger hover over the FF button.

Storrie similarly threw his all behind a sketch that strained when it should have coasted in “Office Dance.” There were plenty of amusing, absurd touches around the edges of this one, where Storrie’s office drone’s pitch for a company-wide dance sweeps everyone into its spell.

Sarah Sheman’s character has been needlessly crapping out a window. Andrew Dismukes’ sub-pitch for a Severance-style innie/outie arrangement (so he can cheat without guilt) is interrupted when his chair suddenly collapses. Thompson’s secret drinker totes a huge Sprite bottle emblazoned with suspicious warnings.

Meanwhile, Storrie plugs away with starry-eyed passion to star in a high school love story of his own making. (James Austin Johnson’s employee so buys into the class nerd role he’s assigned that he’s named Eggbert and wheezes an inhaler.) There’s an unrealized potential lurking all through the sketch, although the finale with Ashley Padilla woozily accepting Storrie’s proposal to join him as dance royalty sees the two all-in performers matching up nicely.

Speaking of Padilla, JAJ, and sketches I was rooting to be better, “Tutoring the Cool Kid” likewise squandered some serious talent. Ben Marshall plays the nerdy teen (named Dirkus) whose success in teaching Storrie’s jock how to subtract wins him an invite to the cool kids’ table. Sadly, Dirkus’ thank-you takes the form of a blooping keyboard song (complete with sparkly silver top hat) about his new pal’s “ass like Minnie Mouse” and the like, causing second thoughts.

The songs (JAJ and Padilla’s arriving parents have a song of their own) aren’t funny enough, boinging noises aside, but there’s another sweet payoff that suggests Storrie is the sort of mensch whose sensibility informed much of his sketches. (His monologue ends with the actor obliquely referencing Heated Rivalry‘s commitment to LGBTQ+ representation while standing between two hockey jocks currently getting dinged for going along with a noted misogynist’s crappy joke.)

SNL‘s shown a creepy tendency to side with the bullies for cruel laughs in these sorts of sketches, so I’m giving Storrie credit on this one.

‘Weekend Update’ Update

See the political comedy section for more, but perhaps the Colin Jost/Michael Che wiseass approach has some merit at this point. After all, on the very night when another failing U.S. leader illegally starts a Middle East war to distract from his failings/scandals, what else can you do but smirk at how predictably stupid everything is?

I mean, you could abandon your successful, too-cool-to-truly-give-a-crap schtick and string together something more insightful and engaged, but the cool kid thing is really working for you, right? As ever, the jokes still had some power behind them. Jost’s opener showing a 2011 clip of Trump falsely claiming President Obama was going to do the exact thing Trump’s doing now is the sort of “We got him now!” hypocrisy that has led us to a second Trump term, so what do nerds like John Oliver know anyway.

The wartime “Update” at least followed the Cold Open in treating this bloodbath like the transparent war crime it is rather than putting its head down in mock “support our troops” submission. (Look for SNL‘s wonted deference the longer this atrocity goes on and American bodies start arriving home.) Che was greeted with catch-up silence after a pretty good joke—”I can’t believe our leader could just attack Iran with no vote, no permission from Congress, or anything. I mean, what is this, Iran?”—but as usual, the anchors seemed eager to move on to easier targets.

Easier targets like the Republicans’ chosen boy being voluminously implicated in a child sex abuse scandal worse than any fevered fantasy his cultists ever came up with about Tom Hanks in a pizza dungeon. A Che-Jost hallmark has always been a willingness/delight in baiting outrage, and Jost’s “Hear Me Out” segment about ALS-stricken physicist Stephen Hawking’s photograph on Epstein Island got the gasps he aimed for. With a mix of ableism and “edgy” jokes about rich men raping children, sure, but that’s what makes them the longest-serving “Update” team ever.

Che quipped, “This show is for someone else” after one of his own clever zingers” (about that racist slur that interrupted Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo), but this is indeed the Jost and Che “Update.” Smirking, smart, but never alighting long enough on one subject to suggest they’re more angry and engaged than pleased with themselves.

Recurring Sketch Report

Sherman loves nothing more than getting into an animal costume and doing rude things to Jost. Here she’s the mother of that adorable little monkey at the Ichikawa City Zoo who drags along a stuffed orangutan doll after his mother abandoned him and, ow, my heart. Anyway, Sherman, in a pink bikini sagging off her hirsute form, is the brashly accented mom, whose defense of her abandonment pales next to her desire to get Jost to look at her butt, compare famous monkey lovers, and donate the 2% DNA separating monkey from Jost.

I’ve been sometimes disappointed with Sherman on SNL, the tingly promise of her Sarah Squirm-ness infecting the too-safe institution with genuine, unsettling weirdness settling into a penchant for mugging and the occasional bout of funny Jost-bashing. Never a subtle worker, she loves her animal skins, playing to the cheapest of seats with admirable gusto.

It’s not a repeater per se, but I’m putting “Ice Skating” here. For one, its “wacky stuff happens in the background of serious scene” vibe recalls various Waffle Houses, Spring break hotel rooms, and subway stations. And two, you’ve gotta break up the format or you just bury everyone in text.

I really liked this one, with anniversary daters Tommy Brennan and Veronika Slowikoska playing out an unexpected relationship hiccup foreground while a trio of exuberant 30 Rock skaters (Marshall, Day, and Jeremy Culhane) gleefully have the time of their lives behind them. Brennan gets a decent role for once, his puzzled suitor’s dismay at his date’s engagement hesitancy increasingly distracted by both the skaters’ childlike joy and the odd hints they keep dropping about their whole deal.

“I can’t get a read on these guys,” Brennan marvels as the flamboyant skaters reveal that they’re at a bachelor party, one of them is Kendrick Lamar’s producer, and they apparently hang out with late arrival Hudson Williams. (The crowd went nuts. As Storrie joked in his monologue, a lot of Heated Rivalry viewers have discovered that their own sexuality really is “Gay Guys.” Especially those with hockey butts.) When Brennan disappears during Slowikoska’s final, anguished confession only to pop up frolicking with these carefree weirdos in a quest to discover their bliss, the sketch finishes up on a sweetly funny little grace note.

Political Comedy Report

Hey, who’s up for another unconstitutional, illegal, needless war? Well, you’re in one as of early Saturday morning, with JAJ’s curse/cash cow the (alleged) pedophile, (adjudicated) rapist, and all-around evil grifter bombing some brown people once again.

Strapping into his Trump carapace once more, JAJ noted in an aside that Trump’s unconstitutional war on Iran was launched when it was to both avoid a weekday stock market collapse and to sow “immeasurable fear, rage and, chaos in the SNL writers room.” Which is the sort of line you slip in when you’re about to disappoint everybody.

The thing is, it’s hard to imagine being disappointed with Saturday Night Live‘s political acumen/courage at this point, especially if you’ve been watching it all your life like some people. Double-especially under the Trump twofer, where an initial inability/unwillingness to engage with Trump’s obvious chaotic evil nature segued into a buffoonish pantomime where said bottomless awfulness is accepted as read.

As far as these Cold Opens go, a little thing like a war-fit pitched by a gibbering white supremacist wasn’t going to usher in a more nuanced or hard-hitting Trump show, no matter how many little kids he literally just murdered. (It’s 100, and counting.) Instead, JAJ soldiers on, his Trump sporting his made-in-China baseball hat merch to gloat, “Happy World War III to all who celebrate!,” and mocking the soccer people for throwing together that peace prize trophy for him.

I’m not even that mad. Johnson’s impression is a little artwork in itself, a master craftsman’s caricature of a figure whose abyssal venality and callousness is rivaled only by his utter ridiculousness, and that of all around him. (Jost came out again as Pete Hegseth, chugging a Four Loko and calling the assembled press “dillweeds.”)

We’ve had a decade’s worth of Trump satire, zingers, and insults and the fact that we are, without exaggeration, on the razor’s edge of a full-on global meltdown and internal dictatorship only underscores how little clever wordplay can do in the face of people without the capacity for shame or self-reflection.

So JAJ does his thing, bless him, his Trump dutifully dropping the kidding/not kidding intent of stealing the midterms, abolishing U.S. elections, and starting a civil war if those don’t work. MAGA complainers get mocked for supposedly not realizing this sort of open plundering and bloodshed is exactly what they were voting for, while this Trump crows about the even more open fact that this is precisely the plot of Wag the Dog (but with a child-rape secret even Hollywood couldn’t anticipate).

It could have been worse. I still recall when then-producer Dick Ebersol forced host Bill Murray to read out a somberly scribbled (and erroneous) announcement that the Soviet Union had just invaded Poland. (Whoopsie.) And don’t get me started on poor Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton singing “Hallelujah.” That this War: Day One opener stuck with what’s been barely adequate for so long at least maintained SNL‘s stance that lobbing tomatoes at the tanks rolling us into fascism counts for something.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

JAJ’s Trump joshed that the brand-new war had scuttled what would have been a big Culhane outing, but Culhane popped up in quite a few sketches.

Brennan finally got a decent lead role. It was sort of a Mikey Day castoff, but he was good in it.

Veronika Slowikowska had a big night for a featured player. She had to play the skating sketch straight, but shone in the so-so “Update” piece as the champagne-toting “Beth’s Maid of Honor Katie,” interspersing horrifying catch-up news stories (cartel violence, Ukraine, Epstein) with awkward wedding toast chit-chat and bad jokes. An “Update” piece is all about performing confidence as much as the premise itself, and Slowikowska does an admirable, Heidi Gardner-esque job of it here.

Not so good a night for Jane Wickline and Kam Patterson. They got a few lines, but in the featured player sweepstakes, their hopes are fading.

Padilla and Johnson remain my two favorite performers, so seeing them team up was a treat, even if the homework sketch never took off.

Chloe Fineman, meanwhile, was completely MIA—even for Goodnights—which suggests that this might have been an excused absence. (She was spotted at London’s Fashion Week earlier in the week.)

10-To-Oneland Report

As far as physical comedy sketches go, here’s to former professional clown Storrie going all the way in the bachelorette party scene. Apparently something Storrie brought with him from his pre-fame performing days, the bit sees Storrie’s on-call stripper hobbling painfully in to a Vegas hotel suite, his protestation that he was only “hit by a little car” belied by his groans on erotic agony.

Even fake hockey players have strong ankles, so Storrie’s bent-legged walk is suitably horrifying, while the audience gets to whoop its heart out once more as Storrie’s maimed but game sex worker enlists reluctant help in finally getting down to some leopard print briefs and floor-humping.

The long-suffering actor’s movement classes (he was briefly a Groundling) pay off on live TV, as Storrie’s stripper refuses to break his professional code, each pelvic thrust and somersault off of a half-horrified Sherman testament to his willingness to go for it with Melissa McCarthy commitment. His upside-down thrusts and a loose waistband no doubt had the Standards people a bit nervous, while his plunger-aided, anguished wriggle to bridesmaid Padilla’s feet is irresistible stuff.

After a long and exhausting show, Storrie’s clear joy in showing off a bit that shows off all that hard work he did getting in hockey shape was a final flourish capping off a very good night.

Stray Observations

• Storrie’s hockey-themed monologue handed things off to four members of the two U.S. gold medal hockey teams. Jack and Quinn Hughes came out first to do some (“Seriously though, we’re not gay”) jokes, while the crowd measurably went bananas for the late-entering Hilary Knight and Megan Keller. The Hughes brothers booking got some backlash, thanks to the victorious boys team guffawing at Trump’s typically misogynistic slighting of the women’s champs, so the rapturous response to Knight and keller felt like a cathartic slapshot right into the now-apologetic guys’ snaggly kissers.
• “The last time the men [won gold], it was 46 years ago.” “And the last time we did that was two whole Olympics ago.”
• The Cold Open does close with JAJ’s Trump admonishing Americans not to get any ideas from their government “[taking] out a horrendous, horrible leader who was oppressing his own people.” Look for Trump’s FCC attack dog Brendan Carr to launch a probe in 3…2…
• It also reminds everyone about Hegseth’s white supremacist-y, Crusades-themed tattoos. Seems like a good time for that.
• Hozier joined Mumford & Sons for some added indie goodness, and the crowd was into it.
• Che referenced the BAFTA Awards’ N-word/Tourette’s debacle on “Update,” and this cut sketch was a lot funnier and more pointed than much of what we got tonight, as various bigoted/predatory celebrities try to hop on the disability as an excuse.
• Episode Grade: Connor Storrie pumps it up to a B-Minus.
• Next Week: Ryan Gosling returns for the fourth time. Let’s see if Mr. Giggle-Puss can keep it together for once. Musical guest: Gorrilaz, in all their animated glory.