As of late, it’s seemed like Saturday Night Live has had good luck with bringing back old cast members and writers. Last season saw Eddie Murphy and John Mulaney host some of the best episodes in recent memory. Murphy succeeded by reprising beloved characters and bringing genuine personality, while Mulaney understood that the best SNL sketches follow a solid mantra: the weirder, the better. Now who better than alum Chris Rock to open Season 46? That’s may sound great under normal circumstances but we’re now eight months into a pandemic.
For some odd reason, the season opener tried to distract from the insanity around us. Sure, there were lines about social distancing and a sketch about a COVID-19 superspreader event but everything felt like business as usual over at 30 Rock. No masks to be seen on stage. A masked audience sitting close together. Kind of odd, but the show must go on, I guess.
One of the ways SNL has carried on like usual is with its political sketches. This episode opened with a fourteen minute sketch based on last Tuesday’s presidential debate that elicited a few chuckles though featured the same issues as SNL’s post-2016 political comedy. Returning this year was Alec Baldwin’s exhausted Donald Trump impression with Jim Carrey taking up the mantle of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Complete with aviator shades and a creepy impersonation of Biden’s grin, Carrey huffed and puffed but couldn’t compete with Woody Harrelson’s Biden caricature from last year. Aside from Trump referring to the Supreme Court nominee as Amy Christina Barcelona, all the cold opening had to offer were obvious lines and Baldwin’s grating performance. By the time Maya Rudolph showed up as Kamala Harris, the problem with the material was crystalized. SNL is so focused on catchphrases and applause lines (“We need a W.A.P! Woman as president,” remarked Rudolf’s Harris) that they forgot to write actual jokes.
Thankfully, the sort of comedian and host that could quell that sort of satirical hegemony is someone like Rock, a reliably talented and funny performer. His appearance was to promote the new season of Fargo, but all anyone could focus on was the issues at hand. Rock delivered his opening monologue with a sense of nervous energy while it was appealing to hear him deliver some moderately funny standup about living in COVID-19. “We need to renegotiate our relationship to the government,” added Rock, before advocating for term limits, a policy idea that leads to inexperience and the empowerment of special interests and lobbyists. His heart was in the right place and he stretched some pretty solid punchlines out of it (“Like if you hired a cook, and he was making people vomit everyday, do you sit there and go ‘well, he’s got a four year deal,” said Rock), but it wasn’t a great note to start on.
Most of the other sketches didn’t leave much of a mark. The aforementioned superspreader event had oddly shaky direction (mobile camera work, disorganized moving parts) but was improved by some Pete Davidson ad-libs and a brief Keenan Thompson appearance. A later sketch centered around Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant as elderly stunt performers fell aggressively flat. Midway through, McKinnon and Bryant hit each other with frying pans and it only gets worse from there. Luckily, Chris Redd’s rap sketch “Bottom of Your Face” works perfectly by singing about the absurdity of pandemic dating. Musical guest Megan Thee Stallion popped up to reject Redd’s quandary about a mask covering the lower half of her face, despite them having dated for a month. “It’s sick how your mask matches your fit, but do you got your teeth or teeny tiny lips?” raps Thompson, still unsure of what his date looks like. It was the best sketch of the night, made with the surprising quality that all SNL sketch rap songs are.
As the musical guest, Megan Thee Stallion charged through a fiery performance of her recent number one hit, “Savage,” aided by a live instrumental-arrangement. By the end, where she called out Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron over his handling of the murder of Breonna Taylor and called to protect our Black women, she had the audience in the cradle of her hand. A closing production of her new single “Don’t Stop” was the cherry on top, an industrial rap cut that plays to all of her strengths as a performer. It was the ideal choice of a musical guest, an artist that is right at the peak of her popularity and abilities.
Weekend Update was more of the usual. Trump having COVID led to some solid lines, like a rare, self-mocking moment for Michael Chea, where he said “Politics aside, this is awful news for us, because Trump was actually supposed to host SNL next weekend,” before laughing. The controversy over the president’s last appearance on the show was pretty fair, so the joke felt like a solid moment of self-awareness from the SNL, America’s least self-aware institution. Bowen Yang appeared as Chinese trade representative Chen Biao talking about TikTok, a solid continuation of his onscreen persona and set of skills, while Bryant appeared as a seventh grade travel enthusiast, which awkwardly closed the first Update segment of the year.
In the end, the season premiere was defined by awkwardness. It was the sort of fine, harmless, and vaguely entertaining episode that informed us that SNL can thrive in any environment. It was easy to wish for more from Rock as a host, as his biggest appearance was the underwhelming “NBA Bubble” sketch, but at least it wasn’t the worst episode in recent memory. Megan Thee Stallion brought her wonderful persona to each sketch she was in, and it easily improved some of the show’s worst moments.
Despite all of this, the series is worth rooting for. As Vulture nicely outlined, Saturday Night Live is like a baseball team that you love, just because they’re the team you grew up with. It’s easy to roll your eyes at stupid decisions, awful sketches, and terrible performers, but it’s still something to watch. In that sense, the series succeeded at trying to pretend everything was normal. It’s something to do while at home on a Saturday night. If the world is on fire, at least there’s mediocre SNL to watch.
Find me on Twitter at @selfseriousness.
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