It feels like we’ve been living in a different world since the last Saturday Night Live episode in December. It’s a new year, a new U.S. president, a new insurrection at the Capitol building, a new Weezer album – overall, a pretty mixed bag. Under the guidance of host John Krasinski, who was initially booked on the show to promote the as of now unreleased A Quiet Place 2, SNL returned with a generically bad episode. In a time where everything is falling apart, the show’s writers could have done better than simply stating that everything is falling apart over and over again, opposed to writing an actual punchline or two.
Nowhere was this more present than on the show’s cold open where Kate McKinnon (playing herself) hosted a talk show entitled What Still Works. McKinnon listed through several contentious topics, from the government to the stock market (or as Pete Davidson says, “the stonk market”) to Tom Brady. By using such a broad canvas to poke fun at the past month since SNL has aired, they seemingly found an opportunity to highlight the absurdism of the world. What ended up happening is, once again, McKinnon just listed the terrible things around us. Starting the segment with the U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who espouses conspiracy theories about the Parkland shooting and 9/11 being a hoax, constantly reminds us of the disarray around us – without actually coming up with a punchline. You know, the reason this program exists as a sketch comedy show.
The Pandemic Game Night sketch was about as soggy, although it had more moments of cutting humor. When three couples get together for a suburban wine evening, things fall apart when they each individually get arrested for participating at the January 6th insurrection at the capitol building. “You have to have a pod you can trust,” explains Aidy Bryant’s character all before an FBI agent shows up and takes her away. The best moment was surely Kyle Mooney’s line about how he shouldn’t be taken to jail because he’s a state senator. Another sketch, Blue Georgia, overplayed its hand pretty quickly, as it featured a small town café in Georgia discussing liberal culture because they have two Democratic senators now and voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. While something could have been done with this concept, just repeating supposedly liberal things (stating your pronouns, gender neutral bathrooms, reading Michelle Obama’s book) doesn’t provide for a lot of laughs.
The musical guest of Saturday night was Machine Gun Kelly, who’s had quite a 2020 and seems intent on stretching it into 2021. His September album Tickets to my Downfall featured a reintroduction to the rapper-turned-rock-guy to somewhat good results. While there’s always been a meat-headedness to MGK’s persona, it works with the over-compressed, whiny pop punk image he’s started to perform under. Playing “My Ex’s Best Friend” and “Lonely,” he made a solid claim to the pop rock styling he’s been trying on. While SNL never has great audio technicians, the performances seemed mixed a little oddly, as they lose the macho stupidity of the album versions.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned Krasinski’s hosting job yet, it’s because he pretty solidly blended into the background of this week’s episode. There wasn’t much for him to do, so he sort of picked up average background roles that any member of SNL could do, from Blue Georgia’s small town sheriff to a gameshow host on the sketch Supermarket Sweep. Despite Krasinski’s underperformance, it wasn’t quite his fault. This episode sort of wandered from sketch to sketch without leaning into any of his strengths or weaknesses – it just sort of existed.
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