It almost makes too much sense for Wiig to be the final host for Saturday Night Live in 2020. The ex-SNL cast member is the sort of versatile performer that ideally works as a guest for the show. She’s also a comedian that gets what makes SNL work: giving into weirdness of strange topics allows the fun of a live broadcasted variety show to flourish. While the 46th season of the NYC institution has been less than consistently stellar, the final episode of the year brought some much needed stupidity and levity to a show that had been stumbling for a bit. Paired with pop star Dua Lipa, Wiig did a great job reveling in the inherent madness that should sit at the core of any SNL episode.
Kicking the show off was a cold open about vice president Mike Pence getting the COVID-19 vaccine, filled with a cameo from president-elect and vice president-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Pence was played with stability by Beck Bennett and Maya Rudolph did her version of Harris, but the real surprise here was Alex Moffat who stepped into Jim Carrey’s shoes to play Biden. He did a respectable job but it’s still no Woody Harrelson. By the time the sketch culminated with an appearance of Kate McKinnon reprising her role as Rudy Giuliani, you could tell the SNL staff writers were unequivocally over the Trump presidency.
Of course, with Christmas so rapidly approaching, the sketches focused heavily on the impending holiday. Wiig did consistently good work throughout these, from the Home Alone 2 sketch where she played the pigeon lady to the Christmas Morning sketch where she played a mom who got a single present, an on sale robe. There was also the Home for Christmas sketch, which didn’t really have much of a plot but included Wiig playing Sue, one of her old characters who can’t contain her excitement and eventually ends up reentering her home via the chimney. Wiig’s manic energy helped the latter sketch maintain a few laughs despite lazy writing.
Still, the best sketches of the evening consisted of weird concepts stretched to their absolute max. There was the USO Performance sketch, where Wiig and Bowen Yang sang a steamy, electro-pop tune to a military unit in WWII. There was a certain chaotic energy to the sketch which worked wonderfully, especially by the time that Dua Lipa appeared and started spanking Yang. A solid parody of the FX show A Teacher featured underrated new cast member Andrew Dismukes playing a high school student flirting with his teacher (a perfect Ego Nwodim), who then rejects him outright, all before the principal (Wiig) admits to having an affair with the student. Somehow, the best sketch of the evening was cut for time. An animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles parody called Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles which concludes with the realization that the Turtles are somewhat racist, middle-aged Trump supporters.
Speaking of musical guest, she didn’t appear in any other sketches aside from the USO one, but her performances of songs from her latest album Future Nostalgia were excellent. She’s an inherently commanding performer but it was great to finally hear these lively pop songs in a live setting. “Don’t Start Now,” with its thumping live drums and slap bass, sounded lovely, while “Levitating” brought some sugary joy that was just so appealing on the SNL stage. Lipa’s rise to pop stardom has been one of the few good things to happen this year, so it was a pleasure to see her perform some of her best songs.
Considering this was the last SNL of the Trump presidency – “barring a reverse Christmas miracle,” noted host Colin Jost – this episode’s Weekend Update opened with a recap of the outgoing president’s greatest hits with Semisonic’s “Closing Time” as the backing music. It’s a good summary of the show’s humor when it came to Trump: just point and gawk but don’t offer anything else. Still, this was one of the best Updates in recent memory, with solid appearances from host Michael Che’s neighbor Willie (Keenan Thompson, playing a demented Mr. Rogers type) and Smokey Robinson (Chris Redd). To cap the Update segment off, the two hosts traded jokes that the other had never seen before, which culminated in a great joke about Jost’s finance Scarlett Johansson.
Much like the episode in full, this week’s Update had a sense of levity and mobility to it; it’s something I’d like to see more of from SNL in the future.
Find me on Twitter at @selfseriousness.
If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.
