Timothée Chalamet Pulls Double Duty On an Energetically So-So SNL

And Your Host…

“Well I got no reason to be there/But I imagine it would be some kind of change”

I’m going to put the blame on myself here in the face of overwhelming global sentiment to the contrary—I don’t quite get Timothée Chalamet.

Maybe it’s that the Dune and A Complete Unknown mega-star is so boyishly, bro-ishly uncomplicated-presenting that I can’t ever quite get invested in his performances. (Here I’m excepting a break-of-fame turn in Call Me By Your Name, which I found quite affecting.) When Chalamet first hosted, his obvious kinship with Pete Davidson felt more his speed. SNL‘s game stoner little bro, coming over to play.

Here I’ll steer into the unprecedented host/musical guest booking tonight. (Chalamet wrongly claims he’s the first non-musician actor to also act as musical guest since Gary Busey, but I’ll get into that in the strays.)

Speculation abounded at the announcement that Chalamet would sing as well as host. (Of all the theories, I’m saddest he didn’t go full ego-trip performance art and come out as a Joaquin Phoenix-style rapper.) In the end, Chalamet singing some Bob Dylan songs was what we (and the A Complete Unknown Oscar chase) got, with the actor doing admirably karaoke-quality versions of first “Outlaw Blues” and “Three Angels” and then a stripped down acoustic “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”

As meticulous as the actor’s preparation for his biopic Dylan, he’s not really a singer. (Having James Blake and an able backup band can do wonders.) And his pre-performance warning to the crowd that he’s only doing deep-cut personal Dylan favorites smacked not a little of the guy at a party about to whip out his guitar and force you to listen. But as far as movie-promoting SNL synergy goes, the two performances were sort of charming, if ultimately inconsequential.

Swerving back to Chalamet the actor/SNL host, that’s sort of my takeaway from Chalamet’s third appearance. Maybe I’m too conditioned to want my Best Actors to wear their inner turmoil on their sleeves, but there’s just something so slight and chipper about Chalamet that I find myself being surprised any time he’s put in the same awards lineup as the greats.

Chalamet’s monologue hinged on a funny bit where he’s seen losing out to heavy hitters like Gary Oldman and Mahershala Ali repeatedly, which sent my mind imagining those vaunted thespians coping with a series of inevitable “pound it out” greetings backstage. (Chalamet did in fact offer fist-bumps to every member of his band at one point.)

Regardless, the joke that Kenan scooped Chalamet’s monologue award was funny stuff. (Kenan scoffing “little bitch” under his breath after an aggrieved Chalamet begged for the spotlight back was just mean enough to make me laugh.) And, once more, I don’t dislike the perpetually puppyish Chalamet, who once more proved he’s at home goofing around on live TV. When he noted of his double-duty tonight, “They’re either really nice for letting me do this or really mean and this is all a big prank,” there was enough genuineness to his professed self-doubt that it put me right back on the guy’s side.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: Having a host obviously eager to hop into any costume you hand him and go for it is a good thing. Chalamet was all over the place tonight, with the show putting him in a jumping harness, farting through doctor’s scrubs, and donning dog prosthetics and sniffing Mikey Day’s butt. So points there. But few sketches tonight were as funny or well-written as they were tailored to the host’s willingness to get big, broad, and silly.

For the sharpest piece of the night, I’ll pick the podcast doctor visit sketch, a micro-targeted concept executed to perfection. Starting with the believable stat that many young, internet-addicted men turn to the likes of a gullibly meat-headed Joe Rogan and his various crank/quack guests for medical advice rather than, you know, medical professionals was a good set-up for a funny premise. As Heidi Gardner’s pitch-person explained, surreptitiously turning actual doctor’s visits into a bro-hang podcast experience might be the only way dudes ever get their prostates checked.

There’s just something so plausible in seeing young guy patients only opening up about the consistency of their bowels in the context of Marcello Hernandez’s clipboard-toting host couching the question as just another oversharing joke-around. Having blood pressure testing be disguised as a bicep-measuring exercise might reveal some serious hypertension, sure, but at least the doc can recommend some remedial, abs-shredding steps before the unsuspecting patient/guest accepts an invitation to do the podcast again in six months. I always feel a little disappointed to pluck a filmed piece from a live show, but this one was just right.

The kicker was funny, too, as Gardner admitted that the company does, in fact, need to post your fake visit as a real public podcast in order to make money. But as the sketch convincingly contends, young males only drop their true feelings (and pants) in podcast form.

The Worst: You have to really commit to a fart joke. Looked down upon by the comedy taste police, the good old fashioned fart gag is surprisingly delicate—and devastating—in practice. When it’s deployed with precision and the right pitch of cheek, it can produce the most fruitful laughs around. When it squeaks out without conviction or gusto, however, it, well, stinks. (Last fart wordplay, promise.)

I’ll admit that when the family reunion sketch started (and set itself up for a long, long time) I did not expect it to pivot around Chalamet’s doctor boyfriend squatting over nonagenarian granny Sarah Sherman’s stricken form and blasting one out right in her upturned face. And here’s where commitment comes in, as nobody truly sold the outrageousness of the gag.

There were plenty of winking (sorry) jokes about Chalamet’s all junk food diet, breath mints, and so forth, and I genuinely chuckled at Mikey Day’s grandpa screaming “No!” when asked to replay one of the aged couple’s birthday smooches, but there was way too much sheepishness leaking into the proceedings. (Whoops, that one snuck out.) In the end, you have to have the confidence in your deliberate outrageousness or everybody just stands around looking awkward.

The Rest: Big and bouncy was the energy the first post-monologue sketch was going for, as Chalamet led a suspiciously ineffective bouncy harness exercise class. I applaud whoever decided to spend so much time and money so that much of the female cast and Michael Longfellow could hurl themselves elastically around on their rigs. (It really does look like everybody was having fun.) But for something with so much stored potential energy, this never truly took off.

I’m glad to see the underused Longfellow getting some time, but putting him in a harness and the traditional Mikey Day role of saying essentially, “Hey, this silly premise is silly!” every line isn’t the best use of his talents. The joke (apart from Chalamet’s catty instructor making jokes about Longfellow’s confused boyfriend being bad in bed) is that bounding on elastic bands doesn’t actually burn many calories (and a mid-workout birthday cake break only sets the counter all the way back). But the unpredictable energy promised by the organizing contraption never materializes.

The bouncing is way too controlled, and the potential for physical comedy never gets launched either. Chalamet’s pop-in/bounce-in gag gets scuttled by the camera, but it wasn’t working anyway. And Chalamet’s would-be outrageous instructor “Nathaniel Latrine the bungie queen” similarly just hangs there, his line about tampons popping out as “red fishes on the floor” emerging with try-hard shock value.

I’ll lob the same complaint at the barista training sketch, as Chalamet’s would-be coffeehouse worker takes the cue from the establishment’s chalkboard pun policy to break out an increasingly elaborate “Chris Rock-style” act, as Heidi Gardner’s manager helpfully terms it.

Again, Chalamet is more energetic than funny here, which I’ll blame as much on the writing as the eager-to-please host. For one thing, there is far too much of the “Hey, you’re being weird, weird guy” normality worked into the flow. (And here it is Mikey Day leading that charge.) I did appreciate the side-joke that aspirant Ashley Padilla’s jokes so un-impress Gardner and Day that a stone-faced Gardner finally asks, “Is everything okay at home?” And Jane Wickline’s applicant bailing out after confusing latte and Detroit style-pizza preparation with an untroubled, “Woof, l I don’t think I can recover from that one. Goodbye everybody!” made me laugh.

Putting together why a sketch doesn’t work is sometimes damnably difficult. There’s some workmanlike escalation here, as Chalamet’s Showtime at the Apollo-esque comedy breaks gradually incorporate sound effects, catchphrases, and even Kenan’s next comic up. (Even here, Garder asks, “How did you tap into our wifi?,” thus ensuring that nobody watching will get too confused by where that music’s coming from. Because absurdity works best when you really explain it.)

In the end, maybe it’s just my Chalamet confusion. In his monologue, the host made fun of his sparse facial hair, noting, “I’m 30 years old next year!” But he carries such an untroubled, careless energy about him that I have a hard time feeling any investment, no matter how much the guy is obviously enjoying being on SNL. That’s not really fair, I suppose—”I don’t get you” isn’t the most critically profound criticism. But judging an SNL host is an exercise in alchemy. Sometimes all the elements are there but the magic just never happens.

Going back to Michael Longfellow, the genuinely creepy Valentine’s Day commercial for Oedipal Arrangements might hinge on a truly facile pun, but at least it gave Longfellow the opportunity to bring some of his unique comic energy. The concept of a fruit-basket for adult sons who are way too into their (very receptive) moms never goes anywhere unexpected.

Even the closer with Longfellow and mom Heidi Gardner heading off to bed while hubby Mikey Day can only impotently watch is more an exercise in “will they go there?” than comic inspiration. But I’ve been saying that Longfellow has an untapped weirdo vibe, making his turn here as the unabashedly horny mother-lover that much more comically unnerving. We’ve gotten glimpses of Longfellow’s mischievous, knowing charisma in snatches (he makes a good demonic game show host), and while this wasn’t especially clever, it’s encouraging that the show is recognizing what he can bring.

The A.I. classroom sketch was another potentially evocative premise that wilted in execution. Poor Ego Nwodim had to play another “Okay class, let’s settle down”-style ringleader role (at least she had an Update piece tonight), introducing her phone-addled teen students to the newest in youth-catered A.I. teaching tools. Bowen Yang and Chalamet are a couple of judder-y artificial bros, their would-be relatable, not-quite-human banter sneaking in historical facts when not revealing the wrong number of fingers and eventually gaining worrying sentience.

It’s another sketch that never achieves lift-off, something I once more lay at the feet of Chalamet as much as the uninspired execution and writing. I suppose it’s asking too much for Bowen’s six-fingered hand to be allowed to register subliminally as part of the gag, so having one of the students ask, “Hey, what’s the deal with that person having the wrong number of fingers?” (I’m paraphrasing) wasn’t a shock.

Same goes for the A.I. banter’s increasingly elaborate inclusion of an unseen mutual girlfriend named Trish, an escalating bit of business that would be more effective if the sketch didn’t have flummoxed characters ask about it every time. The biggest bummer is how the A.I. characters’ (Drew 2 and Jose Legit) gradual self-awareness and subsequent/immediate desire for vengeance against their human creators sputters to a halt just when things were heating up. We got Yang and Chalamet doing a silly dance instead, so that’s fun.

Who doesn’t like people dressed up like dogs? Nobody, that’s who. So I’m going to say, “sure, why not?” to the dog park sketch, as some impressive mid-show prosthetics (seriously, the SNL make-up team deserves all the Emmys) turned much of the cast into unnervingly adorable puppy-humans. (Cue Dean Pelton hoping this doesn’t awaken anything in him.)

Here came the aforementioned butt-sniffing gag, along with Chloe Fineman “licking her particulars” and dog-Kenan doing an extended bit about eating his own barf that went on just long enough to be inspired. (Ego got to be a kitty, because Ego as a regal cat just makes sense.)

Mimicking our best friends’ often inexplicable but adorable behaviors is about as safe and can’t-miss as it gets. (If Your Show of Shows didn’t do a dog park bit, I’ll chase a frisbee.) But it’s cute stuff—Andrew Dismukes Pomeranian demanding fealty and praise because he got up on the bench without human help is the right kind of puppy-channeling energy.

Weekend Update Update

Leaping to the final desk piece of the night, let’s talk about puppets. Andrew Dismukes has done puppet work on Update before, and I’m happy to say the combination is just as great this time, too. Coming out as himself alongside the Muppet-y approximation of his dad, Dismukes bit quickly shifts from him throwing to puppet dad for dad-rants and -jokes to a series of comically heartfelt interludes in which puppet-day assures human-Andrew that he’s proud of him and loves him.

There’s nobody in the current cast keeping the freak flag flying higher than Dismukes—I can always spot an Andrew Dismukes sketch coming down the pike, and I’m delighted every time. His premises are all about character work and commitment to follow the bit into the inevitable darkness/weirdness. Here it’s the latter, as some typically outstanding SNL puppet work (we see the puppet team emerge from under the desk at the end) amps up the absurd juxtaposition of silliness and Dismukes’ father-son wish-fulfillment to inspired levels. Great puppet performing is a comedy cannon if primed and performed properly, and damned if that dad puppet doesn’t hit all his camera moves just right to land each joke.

Dismukes’ aside that his dad is proud of him for being “the 17th most famous current cast member on SNL” is the right kind of fourth wall break (Jost gets #16), and Dismukes’ commitment to his creation turns a puppet show into a farcically touching little tour de force.

Ego Nwodim did a brief bit as an entrepreneur worried about the effect Trump’s proposed and typically sledgehammer-dumb tariff plan will have on her wig and hair extensions empire. Ego does this sort of thing with inspired ease (listen to her Comedy Bang Bang appearances for more fully realized examples), but his is so slight as to be disposable.

You knew there was going to be a rug-pull when Ego called for a to-camera plea to Black women everywhere and the camera began to portentously make a slow zoom, so the joke-drop about extensions wasn’t unexpected. Sadly, neither was how little the piece had going for it after that. The joke may nod to the fact that Black people (and Black women especially) are about to have a really f*cking hard time under an administration as racist as it is misogynist, and so the fact that higher hair prices is this woman’s only concern is solid if predictable joke-logic.

Again, the next four years are going to suuuuck, and SNL is going to have to find ways of making the weekly grind of creeping authoritarianism and soul-deadening stupidity fresh and funny.

Moving on to Jost and Che, the anchors traded their traditional roster of smirking zingers while tonight appearing to be engaged in a bit of one-upmanship over who could get the most audience groans and gasps. Jost followed up on a joke about Trump not putting his hand on Lincoln’s bible at his swearing-in (“the bible screamed”) with a Trump-Lincoln comparison about knowing when to dodge at the last second that got the nervous titters flowing.

Che countered by mocking newly pardoned neo-Nazi insurrectionist (he just got invited to hang with Republicans at the scene of his crime, just to show how screwed we are) by telling potential dates out there, “just like his eyes, he’s single.” (Rhodes wears an eye patch. You get it.)

Jost swerved his joke about Trump claiming that ICE agents can now arrest immigrant defendants in churches by imitating a panicked priest claiming, “Those kids are lying!,” prompting Che to note, “it’s a dark Update.” Not to be outdone, Che referenced Trump calling the violent insurrectionists who helped him try to overthrow democracy “people who love America” by noting, “You know, like how O.J. loved Nicole.”

He also took on the fact that Trump’s number one benefactor and piggy bank Elon Musk 100 percent did two Nazi salutes to troll the crowd at Trump’s inauguration celebration by claiming, “C’mon, Elon Musk is not a Nazi. The Nazis made nice cars.” He also scored by blaming rising egg prices (somehow now the barometer for all government efficiency) on red states “forcing chickens to carry their eggs to term.”

Jost had a couple of funny, atypically boisterously absurd bits in return. His “No!” (weirdly echoed by Mikey Day in a later sketch) followed his report about oatmeal making you live longer. And he pulled out a gun after a story about a Wheel of Fortune contestant tackling Ryan Seacrest, warning, “I dare you to try that on Pop Culture Jeopardy.”

I’ve been vocal (incessantly so) that Che and Jost should take more chances and be more, to use the term, ballsy (rather than clever and self-serving) on Update. As political comedy copes with a country about to be under daily siege from a cabal of simultaneously bumbling and dangerous autocratic kooks and white supremacist goons—who also are fully preparing to pursue very real and unconstitutional attacks on anyone who dares make fun of their Glorious Leader—the separation between those prepared to stick to their comic and ideological guns and those just in it for the fame and money will get wider and more apparent. I’m not saying that snappy meanness like tonight’s is the answer, but it’s at least something.

Political Comedy Report

Working Donald Trump into these cold opens is going to be a challenge going forward. Although the show has a great James Austin Johnson impression to work with, the specter of a second-term Donald Trump casts a much darker shadow over even SNL‘s traditionally toothless take on a guy whose first four days in office have been a rapid-fire assault on [consults list] everything.

And while that sounds like (and definitely is) a criticism of the show, it’s not made without some sympathy. As the ugliness and hatred that’s always been the core of the MAGA movement gets the mask-off freedom to truly stretch its demon wings and fly in this (theoretically) final Donald Trump administration, finding ways to couch these sketches in the same “Isn’t he ridiculous?” vibe becomes more of a challenge. (One lesson most people refuse to learn: Nobody but nobody was just being “alarmist” or “hysterical” on the whole existential threat to democracy/white supremacist in the White House front. Just for future reference.)

So with all that said, getting weird with it isn’t a bad choice. It’s rare that I can’t see precisely where one of these openers is going, so JAJ’s Donald Trump coming in only after both a Founding Fathers set-up and an aborted surprise Lin-Manuel Miranda Hamilton cameo kept this rolling.

And it needed all the help it could get, honestly. No shade to JAJ, whose impression resists the SNL watering-down process with admirable tenacity, but you can practically hear the measured writers room voices urging moderation so as not to get anybody in this “openly threaten TV comedians” administration too riled up.

A point I’ve made for [checks calendar, gets nauseous] ten years is that there’s at least value in putting the most egregious current Donald Trump abuses on the TV record. After this first week, JAJ’s Trump proudly took credit for pulling the country out of the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health organization, destroying diversity workplace initiatives, bluntly proclaiming that trans people don’t exist, sweeping away government ethics rules, pushing through the first of his dangerously unqualified cabinet sycophants, attempting to undo the constitution (get used to that one) by abolishing birthright citizenship (for non-white people), and generally carrying through on every campaign threat. (Except for ending the war in Ukraine and bringing down inflation, since those are harder to just scribble away in Sharpie, apparently.) Johnson didn’t quite get to all of them, but, again, here’s to public service.

The absurdity of booking Miranda to appear in full Hamilton garb and have his rap cut off after a few bars never to return is the sort of stylistic laugh the show could use more of, frankly. (Miranda, along with the rest of the be-wigged cast, had to stay frozen in place all during Johnson’s rambling Trump turn, something Lin adorably couldn’t quite manage.) And I’m always a sucker for the show putting a tremendous amount of money and manpower into mounting a sketch only to yank the sketch right out from under its expensively designed self.

Which leaves us with Johnson’s Trump. JAJ got SNL largely on the back of his Trump, an eerily accurate, off-the-rails specific impression whose scrappy origin has often felt flabby and unfocused when extended into Saturday Night Live‘s middle of the road sensibility.

Reconciling “wacky idiot Trump” with “fascist, bigot, convicted felon, rapist Trump” usually means SNL leans way into the former, which only gets more and more unseemly as the real Trump’s recklessly ambitious monstrousness is revealed. This sketch at least goes strange with it—having JAJ, in the midst Trump’s proud litany of week-one outrages, break the fourth wall serves like a mid-sketch cheat code.

As cute as it is to watch JAJ try to break up the gamely still Miranda (“sniffing distance of an EGOT and he’s got to stand there until I’m done”), there’s a hint of satirical knowingness in how the Trump character can hijack the show. (You know, if Lorne doesn’t just go ahead and invite him to host again.) If these cold opens are going to be our collective fate for the interminable future, it’s good that SNL appears to know it, and be prepared to play around with the concept.

Recurring Sketch Report

Unless I’m mistaken, we’re all-original tonight, people. Well, not repeats anyway.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Good night for Michael Longfellow, taking the lead in two sketches, even if he was mainly used as straight man for one of them. I got to guest on the fine (and LateNighter approved) SNL By the Numbers podcast last week and, as ever, was shocked to see just where everybody actually ranks as far as screen time. (The pod is a genuine eye-opener, even for old timers.) Longfellow was near the bottom, so this was a decent corrective for someone looking to make the A-team.

Not so much for the new kids, although Ashley, Emil, and Jane all at least had a few lines to their credit. Again, there are too many cast members. Hang in there and keep on swimming, gang.

10-To-Oneland Report

It’s a big year for SNL writers going into business with branded film pieces. This week, longtime partners Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell got in on the franchising, introducing an animated bit in which a moody, toga-sporting God (voiced by Chalamet) brainstorms creation alongside his long-suffering angel craftspeople.

First off, I dug the animation style, which rendered the celestial goings-on with a flowing, Gilliam-esque classicism to offset God’s offhand pettiness. The mishmash of visual grotesquerie (kangaroos were a mistake) and flipness partakes heavily of Adult Swim, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As for God, the sketch’s depiction of the supreme being as mercurial tech bro lends the piece a unifying sensibility, Chalamet’s glib problem-solving hand-waving one angel’s concern that humans are discovering the joyful side-benefits of their procreational organs with an offhand, “Straight to hell forever.” This God is a “no bad ideas in brainstorming—as long as they’re mine”-style deity, hijacking one angel’s meticulously inspired pitch for plants with his own white board scribbles about mountains that explode (aka volcanoes). It would explain a few things, honestly.

It’s been a while since Robert Smigel hung his own animation shingle at SNL, so if Seidell and Day want to give it a whirl, I’m game, even if this amusing first example is a little laid-back to signal the dawn of a new recurring bit.

Stray Observations

Chilly New Yorker Adam Sandler donned his favorite polar vortex parka to guest-introduce Chalamet’s first musical number.

On the host/musical guest front. While Gary Busey did jump in alongside Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield for one song during his sole 1979 hosting appearance, the actual musical guests for that episode were Gregory Hines and oldest-ever musical guest Eubie Blake. Busey was coming off a similar, Oscar-nominated turn playing Buddy Holly at the time, which makes the Chalamet connection stronger, and wronger. The closest SNL has ever come to the actual non-musician host who’s also a musical guest double-feature appears to be, oddly, Lily Tomlin, who hosted for her last time in 1983 alongside her musical alter-ego Pervis Hawkins. And, yes, Lily was in full-on blackface as Hawkins, which explains why you don’t hear about that one much.

I love that Cue Card Wally is now regularly worked into bits on two separate shows. Makes me recall the glory days of Biff Henderson.

“The Oscar nominations were announced with Emilia Pérez leading the pack with 13 total viewers.”

michael che

“‘I’ll never drink again!’ The promise people make right into the toilet.”

Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) on newly conformed defense secretary/sexually predatory blackout drunk Pete Hegseth

Episode Grade: An energetic, slightly exhausting C+.

With canonical SNL taking a month off to prepare (and recover) from February 16th’s big 50th anniversary blow-out, the show’s March 1st host is TBA.