And Your Host…
It takes a brave performer to state up top that he’s a little dull.
Of course, if you’re a global music star, a competent actor, a style icon, and are pulling double duty on Saturday Night Live (in support of your new album), a little false humility goes down pretty easy. Add in the second week in a row where the Studio 8H audience was seemingly packed with fans being paid by the enthusiastic whoop, and you’ve got all the room you need to tell everybody you’re just plain old Harry.
The thing is, in his second hosting stint, Harry Styles—incessant audience whoops notwithstanding—was kind of dull. His first outing back in 2019 saw the then-fledgeling actor bring a winning touch of impishness that tonight’s return traded for an offhand coziness that called up no one so much as Jimmy Fallon. And not hungry, surprisingly versatile, first season-on-SNL Jimmy Fallon, either. More like playing-Double Dare-games-and-doing-karaoke-with-celebrity guests Jimmy Fallon.
Styles wasn’t bad. He just was. Roles calling for energy and eccentricity emerged blandly competent, while straight man roles (as himself or others) were just that. In his sluggish monologue, Styles referenced his “queerbaiting” reputation as a male superstar sporting gender-teasing couture on the red carpet, with two female cast members’ pop-in attempts at luring a kiss passed over in favor of a big smacker for Ben Marshall. There’s an undeniable boldness in so publicly smooching a guy on live TV, whether Styles’ teasing is part of his brand or not. (Marshall’s supposed great arse comes back in the 10-to-one spot as Styles once more praises the male cast for modeling his best-known fits.)
There’s nothing unlikable in Styles’ second hosting tour. But like the two wan musical numbers he performed from the oddly punctuated Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, there was precious little to get excited about, either.
The Best and the Rest
The Best: Of course, the show itself didn’t exactly give Styles a bounty of material in which to shine. His biggest showcase sketches (see next) fell flat, while the meager riches tonight came from some unexpected quarters. The drive-thru sketch was a low-key standout for featured players Veronika Slowikowska and Jane Wickline, as their awkward high school pals circle the burger joint that Styles’ quarterback works at in order to tag-ask him to the big dance.
Styles just stands around as the two underused women get the laughs, but they’re solid character-based laughs, even if you can tick off the SNL archetypes as they occur. Slowikowska’s braces-wearing motormouth has more than a little Amy Poehler to it, while Wickline’s barely suppressed nerd horniness recalls similar sketch figures like, well, the Nerds. Still, both make a decent snack of the conceit, the pair’s drive-by do-overs (“Perhaps a kiss for the lady, maybe on the front…”) blurted in sweaty but adorable teen desperation. (Slowikowska and Wickline ably delineate two specific types of high school social outcast while suggesting just why they found each other.)
There’s a sweetly unspoken non-competitiveness to the girls’ tandem pitch for a three-way dance date. As a former high school nerd myself, the way marginalized kids form a single organism with their one weird friend makes the girls’ courage as “two fives asking out a 10” all too relatable. The abortive come-ons are consistently amusing, with Wickline’s driver trying out an eyes-averted, “Hello, Steve. So does your penis—no, no, no, no, drive!” before screeching off.
That Styles’ jock is into the unlikely dance date might smack of wish fulfillment (and Styles doesn’t bring a lot to the table comedically), but it’s sweet, and the characterizations by two performers on the bubble echoes the underdog victory vibe of the sketch.
The Worst: The last several seasons have presented very few outright stinker sketches, but that’s not as great as it sounds. Serviceable competence as a guiding principle might not produce cataclysmic bombs, but it also doesn’t inspire bold comic greatness, either. There’s a resolute sanding down that renders modern Saturday Night Live the same unpainted pine. SNL writers rooms invariably churn out highs and lows and everything in between, but it’s clear that the decision makers’ tastes ensure that the palatable midsection of ideas are what make it to air.
The post-monologue sketch is usually the giveaway. What should be a bold flag-planting too often lately aims right for that middle ground, setting a tone of calculated mediocrity. Tonight, we got a return for Marcello Hernandez’s Sebastian Maniscalco impression, transplanted to a courtroom setting for the most tenuous reasons.
It’s a funny enough impression, even if “Marcello can do a pretty good impression of a mid-tier stand-up” remains the only reason the sketch exists. I mean, the mannered Maniscalco fronted a streaming series you’ve not heard of, and worked with Scorsese that time, but he’s more schtick than superstar. Here, the premise—”What if Maniscalco was a lawyer?”—attempted to justify Hernandez’s star turn, but it’s still a question of, “Him?” (Kenan Thompson’s judge describes Maniscalco as “the world-famous comedian,” which may be more or less accurate, but underlines the shakiness involved in fashioning a showpiece sketch around the guy.)
Meanwhile, Styles’ prosecutor is awfully low-energy, at least until he decides to play the game with his own, court-baiting Maniscalco impression summation. It’s not the best sign that the best idea the show had for Styles was for him to kick off the show with the second-best Sebastian Maniscaclo impression, and all Hernandez’s hammy attempts to tempt Styles into a Gosling-esque giggle fit with some repeated ad-libs can’t overcome the so what of it all.
The Rest: It really was a featured player kind of night, as Jeremy Culhane scored his most high-profile impression yet, trotting out a pitch-perfectly insufferable Tucker Carlson on “Weekend Update.”
There’s nothing more infuriatingly hilarious than when right-wingers attempt to fit pop culture into their blinkered, pinched world view—for all the conservative clichés about liberal Hollywood’s virtue signaling (or whatever meaningless talking point they’re onto this Oscar week), right-wing culture warriors love nothing more than missing the point of great movies entirely in their smirking, red-faced rush to cram complex art into their meager cultural boxes.
Culhane has the disgraced former Fox blowhard down so well that I only wish the material were better. Running through the Oscar nominees with an outraged cadence rising and falling at random, unmotivated intervals, Culhane’s Carlson is clearly the result of many, many hours of tape study, for which Culhane should receive hazard pay. (At one point, someone said Carlson’s signature look was “confused thumb,” and I’ve never been able to shake it.)
Carlson’s takes on the week’s pop cultural outrages conclude with the noted white supremacist conspiracy twerp‘s meaninglessly leading, “What are we doing? What’s going on?” precisely capturing Carlson’s line in professional offense-taking. Again, the actual Carlson’s takes on movies grappling with issues of race and revolution like Sinners and One Battle After the Other are so packed with fruitful strains of lid-shaking bigotry and performative victimhood that Culhane’s truly uncanny impersonation feels like a missed opportunity, as good as it is technically.
“Oh, those wacky foreigners” is a Saturday Night Live sketch template I’ve never been that into. A truly broad and inspired performance can liven up one of these things (and thanks be that racial cosplaying is mostly a thing of the past), but the Dutch-German cruise ship sketch was only fitfully amusing. (Why is mocking overly literal, supposedly humor-deficient middle Europeans fair game? Hey, I don’t make the rules.)
Styles and Chloe Fineman are our hosts, with Fineman outshining the show’s host all around. I’m still baffled that SNL won’t use the talented impressionist’s talents more, but Finemen’s certainly into the swing here, as she fits her mouth around her character’s off-kilter syntax. (She clearly pronounces the word “Europeans” as “Europenis.”) Meanwhile Styles looks like he’s dressed up for “The Barry Gibb Talk Show,” and a little sheepish about it.
The parade of shipboard acts are hit or miss. JAJ’s romantic crooner slips self-excoriating confessions into his smooth come-ons. Mikey Day’s magician extends a single trick to a full hour with endless preening. There’s a phonetic new wave band, and Kenan’s French Def Jam comic Jean K. Jean bewilderingly makes his first appearance since 2013. (I genuinely had forgotten about the guy, although jokes about bad cassoulet will never go out of style.)
There’s nothing wrong with the sketch apart from its “ha ha, foreign people” premise failing to justify its existence by being, you know, very funny.
Styles got his own music video pre-tape, the “She’s a Dancer” premise seeing his on-the-make club-goer’s anticipation only slightly dampened when his intended conquest’s métier turns out to be of the Irish step variety. (For those without dear, departed Irish moms, the practice involves holding your upper body stiff while your feet, as the song states, “go f*ckin’ nuts.”)
Apart from Styles being from the Isles and the approach of an off-week St. Paddy’s Day, the video seems inspired by someone’s understandable fascination with the lively, awkward national dance of Ireland, tossing in some jabs at “fish and cream of fish” cuisine for good measure. Wickline scores again with some energetic accent work, and everybody (thanks to some crafty editing) throws themselves into the sweat-inducing jigging with all they’ve got. (Seriously, you should have seen my mom do her thing.)
The other pre-tape tossed buzzworthy medical series The Pitt and RFK Jr’s anti-science quackery into an on-the-nose but well-produced parody of both. Well, mainly the RFK Jr. conspiracy kook stuff, as the hard-boiled, constantly rushing doctors (and various wellness influencers and taint-tanning gurus) treat their desperate patients with horse-dewormer, crystals, red meat, raw milk, and basically anything but vaccines.
Produced by right-wing haven for disgraced former A-listers, never-was D-listers, and white supremacist manbabies The Daily Wire, the Kennedy-cameoing MAHAspital isn’t subtle (and doesn’t touch on the creepy eugenicist bent of all this yahoo-ism), but it, unlike Ivermectin, gets the job done.
‘Weekend Update’ Update
The other highlight of this week’s “Update” was about emojis, impossibly enough. (I mean, if the movie taught us nothing else…) Smacking of the sort of overnight writing bull session the weirdest sketch ideas stem from, the observation that there have to be both a most- and least-popular emoji set the stage for costumed Hernandez (❤️) and Mikey Day (🚡) to go at it.
As bad as my emoji game is (I’m old), I wasn’t aware that wire-based enclosed-car transport got its own dedicated pictograph, but old pro Day takes the cable car and runs with it. As Hernandez’s heart smugly boasts about his ubiquity and his cool friends (😢, 👍, 😒, and 💯), Day’s aerial tramway counters that his own posse (🟧, ➗, 🤿, 🏤) is where the real action’s at.
When a silly observational idea hits the right pitch, a seasoned performer like Day spots an opening. Day successfully breaks Hernandez with his last-place bravado, shouting his own name/catchphrase until he gets what he wants. (Hernandez tried to do this to Styles in the courtroom sketch, but not nearly as amusingly.) Day settles so often into straight man roles that it’s great to see him sink his teeth into something—it reminds us why he’s stealthily been climbing the all-timers list.
As for “Update” proper, I feel like I articulated my long-standing dissatisfactions last week, and this edition did nothing to rebut. SNL continues to do politics like things are normal. I mean, “normal” was occasionally horrifying pre-Trump, but it was at least easier to pawn off a funny political impression as satire when America wasn’t goose-stepping its way into the abyss.
Colin Jost and Michael Che are having fun. They always have, their playful mutual jabs clearly engaging them more than the nerdy topical stuff. Comedians who give a crap can do their thing on Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show, two series that, ironically, only exist thanks to “Weekend Update”‘s cultural footprint. The jokes in a week where [checks notes] America is at undeclared, illegal war thanks to a doddering sex criminal grifter’s attempts to fend off revelations that he raped children (allegedly) and do the bidding of thr Russian dictator holding damning kompromat (certainly) were the usual slate of zingers.
Che joked that a school’s plan to rename itself after Trump meant its mascot would be “The Fightin’ Allegations.” (Solid.) He also mocked Trump’s new, Iran-based acronym by noting, “That MIGA’s crazy.” (Hold for gasps.) Jost meandered around all those dead Iranian schoolgirls with jokes about replacing one hardliner Iranian leader with a younger version now out for John Wick-style revenge, but both he and Che were clearly more at home zinging each other than fashioning a focused fake news segment. (Che mocking Jost for being the less-successful show biz partner in his marriage is always the sweet spot.)
Funny guys, a little pleased with their cleverness, doing less with more material than any anchor team has ever had to work with while government censorship of late-night comedy plinks away all around them.
Recurring Sketch Report
Jean K. Jean! Sebastian Maniscalco?
Political Comedy Report
James Austin Johnson’s Trump did a sneak attack Cold Open tonight, interrupting a worried’s family’s terror at the gas pump. (Hi, the only entity getting rich off of Trump’s illegal Iran war is Valdimir Putin. Hope that clears things up.)
Poor JAJ. I mean it—the Trump impression is what scored him the SNL gig, and he’s pretty much guaranteed at least one never-cut showcase a week, a luxury almost nobody gets. But the man himself has expressed dissatisfaction with his Trump’s role on Saturday Night Live, and watching another by-the-numbers opener only makes me wonder if he’s going to get out of those prosthetics in time to be in something more interesting later.
There are retread ideas all over this one. The “Trump freezes everyone so he can ramble” conceit was startling the first time, a long time ago. Watching JAJ’s Trump break the fourth wall to riff on the helpless cast behind him is cute, but that’s not what these sketches are here to do, allegedly. (Calling Marcello the show’s “little Chihuahua” before adding, “That sounds racist, but it is” had Hernandez’s professionalism stretched to the breaking point.)
Jost’s Pete Hegseth popped up again, this time scattering drink cans from the family’s back seat. (The show keeps reassuring us that Hegseth is only power-chugging non-alcoholic beverages, a hazy joke that doesn’t land.) Jost’s been getting praise for his alpha-jackass Hegseth, and it’s not undeserved—channeling a privileged white guy with a punchable face might be Jost’s wheelhouse, but he’s at least energetic.
I get that trying to stuff the same old crap into new bottles for these things isn’t easy. The show continues to at least slip a few real, relevant atrocities and absurdities into these mandatory openers, which, in JAJ’s delivery, at least carries a little weight.
Tonight we’re reminded that Trump’s biggest campaign promises (no more wars, cheap gas) are fomenting a half-hearted revolt among voters still clinging to that “deport all brown people” third priority. Trump’s line, “A promise is just a lie that hasn’t happened yet” is good enough to cut to the heart of matters with a deft little flick.
But, man, do these sketches leave mountains of possibilities on the table. Even superficial but telling stuff like fragile diaper-baby Hegseth’s recent tirade banning news outlets from his press conferences for publishing “unflattering” photos of him is so telling and yet deeply stupid that you’d think the show would jump on it with more than a passing allusion. Trump does interrupt the initial playlet by admitting the Epstein files are the real reason for his attack on Iran, but then it’s on to his meeting of the minds with internet clowns like Jake Paul as if there were nothing else to joke about.
There’s a lot more to joke about. If Saturday Night Live wants to ditch these sketches (hell, politics in general), nobody’s stopping them. It’d be deeply suspicious considering the pressure networks are under to become state media, but it’s hard to see how much what they’re actually doing matters much more than doing nothing. At least it would free up Johnson to do more on the live show.
Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings
Kenan had a larger than usual role tonight, belying his emeritus status by actually anchoring a whole sketch for a change. (Don’t get me wrong, pop-in-and-swipe-focus Kenan is always welcome, but it’s nice to see him dust off his leading man shoes.)
That said, the large electronics retailer sketch (hey, I’m not getting product integration money) relied on Kenan doing a funny little character turn and not much else. On that product integration tip, man, was this as shameless as it gets, with Mikey Day’s thankless manager not only addressing everyone wearing matching branded corporate shirts but laying out said retailer’s new rewards program in detail. Years ago, Lorne Michaels touted the freedom such plugging gave the show to ditch one whole commercial break, but this was the clunkiest iteration in years.
Anyway, Kenan did a funny voice and wore straightened hair as an employee derailing Day’s morning briefing with grinning questions tenderly probing as to whether his habit of “manipulating the nipples” of certain male customers was the actual purpose. Again, Styles was… present as the eventually revealed object of Kenan’s affections, Styles reciprocating in another playful nod toward his supposed sexual fluidity. But what laughs there are come from Kenan being Kenan. He loves nothing more than channeling a weirdo’s grinning weirdness, and while there’s nothing particularly side-splitting about the piece, it is nice to be reminded why the guy’s been here so long.
As noted, Wickline and Slowikowska made a fine team. Here’s to them staking out their territory going forward.
Kam Patterson and Tommy Brennan are no doubt scouting their next career moves.
After scoring just a literal few seconds of airtime last week, Andrew Dismukes was once more scarce. This cast is lacking in star power, and Dismukes’ sly absurdism is needed more, not less.
10-To-Oneland Report
Anyway, Styles bookended his night with another nod toward his outrageous, gender-fluid fashion sense, here pimping his off-the-rack line of Harry Styles red carpet wear for regular dudes. Almost all the guys got a chance to show off some midriff sporting Styles replica see-through blouses and baby doll dresses, to so-so effect.
Also bookending his night was JAJ, getting the only really good line where he relays how his wife, as opposed to admiring him for wearing some sheer Styles, says he “looks like a serial killer wearing the clothes of a woman he killed.” Presiding over it all is Styles himself, closing out the episode with the same oddly limp energy he displayed throughout.
Stray Observations
- Ryan Gosling was apparently still chuckling to himself in a corner as he popped up to introduce Styles’s first number. Some guy named Simon did the honors for the second.
- “It’s just like being in a hotel, but you can drown!” Yeah, I’m never going on a cruise, thanks.
- “A statue has appeared on the National Mall that depicts president Trump and Jeffrey Epstein in the famous pose from Titanic. Because as they said on the Titanic, ‘Women and children first.'”
- Episode Grade: A perfectly pleasant C-Plus.
- Up Next: A teaming apparently born of the name game, Jack Black hosts and Jack White does the music for the April 4th return.
I don’t know why you insist on spelling Veronika’s name wrong. It’s Slowikowska.
This has been corrected, thank you.