Before last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, there was a nice amount of chatter about why British pop superstar Adele was hosting but wasn’t performing. It’s been five years since her excellent last record, 25, and a SNL appearance seemed like the perfect way to announce the inevitably titled 30. Adele’s opening monologue was a brief explanation: the album isn’t done yet, but she’s here and she’s going to try to have fun tonight. It acted as a solid introduction to this episode, one that was pretty average and felt a little unfinished.
Like most SNL episodes so far this season, a handful of sketches were rooted in COVID-based or political humor, but last night was actually at its strongest when it got weirder. Pete Davidson’s best sketch so far this season was towards the beginning of the show, entitled Chad in a Haunted Mansion. It featured Davidson bringing back his recurring character , the clueless dudebro Chad, who stumbles upon a haunted mansion and finds a ghost played by Adele. The greenscreen-heavy Africa Tourism came later in the evening, but featured Adele and Kate McKinnon cracking up as much as possible in huge wigs. The Ass Angel Jeans sketch also featured Beck Bennett playing a long-haired 80s pop star. It was a pretty funny spot during a mostly boring evening.
Still, the COVID humor came crashing in with an early sketch when a group of friends get a psychic reading in 2019 that predicts the virus. They keep getting increasingly bad fortunes, until it’s revealed that one of them is Jeffrey Toobin’s daughter, a punchline that’s significantly better than the sketch it is in. A later sketch about a family visiting their grandma in a nursing home, but features them yelling up to her on a balcony. The grandma, played by Maya Rudolph, just repeatedly shouts back “what?” until her visitors explain things at their absolute most simple. “I’m unemployed!,” Pete Davidson humorously shouted midway through. Musical guest H.E.R delivered two solid tunes with an excellent backing band. While she seemed a bit nervous during the atmospheric “Damage,” she picked it up for the soulful “Hold On.” The latter also featured an excellent guitar solo.
Weekend Update was business as usual, with casual jokes about Thursday’s presidential debate and COVID flying decently well. Jokes about Rudy Giuliani’s appearance in Borat 2 popped up, as did a third peak of COVID. “Are we actually bracing thought?,” asked Michael Che, before spiralling and getting sad at the fact that Donald Trump didn’t die. Melissa Villaseñor’s appearance talking about how to quarantine alone didn’t do much (aside give us her Sia impression), but at least Colin Jost made some jokes about Mitch McConnell someday dying. The best joke of the evening came when Jost took a few jokes at Che’s expense.
Most of the evening felt close to working, but it didn’t often come together. The cold open, based on the last presidential debate, was average. Somehow, Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression looked good in comparison to Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden. By the time the debate’s moderator made jokes about a “Biden drinking game,” you could tell what kind of SNL it would be.
Nevertheless, next week’s episode looks promising with returning host John Mulaney alongside musical guest The Strokes. See you then.
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