Saturday Night Live: Season 50, Episode 4 recap

I don't know if you've heard of this, but Saturday Night Livethe popular late-night comedy-variety series, is actually turning 50 – this season, the 50th on NBC, and next year, when it will actually have been on the air for half a century. (If only this could be expressed by some sort of one-note recurring character with a catchphrase to match! Oh, I just remembered one: Simma down now!) In terms of its hosts, the show's sheer longevity puts it in potential jeopardy strange situation for those who are neither veterans (or candidates) of the five-player club nor newcomers, who are either now too famous, not nearly famous enough, or are not eligible for a repeat for some other reason (death, prison, etc.). are available. I doubt Michael Keaton has considered a casual relationship with him at any point in the last five decades Saturday Night Live Something like a look at his long career in the style of an Up documentary series, but you can also read it that way. He hosted in 1982 as an aspiring comedian; In 1992, shortly after his second (and best!) Batman film won the summer box office; in 2015, following which he probably should have won the Oscar for Best Actor Birdman; and now, nine years later, actually its shortest hosting gap ever. Most assume he's taking a victory lap for the successful sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuicealthough he also has a film with the title Goodrich will be in semi-wide release this weekend. (If releasing a legacy sequel hit followed by a barely promoted adult dramedy isn't a career snapshot for 2024, what is?)

In other words, Keaton checked in SNL about once a decade since his film career began; Skipping the 2000s fits perfectly with his relatively reserved presence in films of the era. His regular appearances underscore the feeling that he might actually have joined the cast at some point in the early '80s seasons; As a young man he did stand-up performances and later SNL The performances suggest that he may prefer playing character roles and second weirdo rather than longing to star in ketches based on an idea of ​​his movie star persona. Hell, Betelgeuse is never really the main character Beetlejuice Films, no matter how much different actors want to show their affinity for the role. (Mikey Day and Andy Samberg essentially wrote a different version of the monologue the show put together for Keaton's previous appearance; in 2015, Bobby Moynihan and Taran Killam wrote a song begging him to join them in “Batman” and ” In his time as a leading man, Keaton specialized in playing guys who seemed sharp and cunning. Although he still plays the lead roles today, he's also a great supporting actor because he can seem like a guy whose mercurial thoughts take him to a completely different level.

Although Keaton's presence in this episode was a bit of a sideshow, which inevitably leads some viewers to say he was barely there or disappeared for long periods of time, I have to assume that this was partly voluntary. (I admit, I also tend to assume that anyone who talks about a host disappearing for any length of time is usually just talking about how the host rarely shows up on Weekend Update or during songs. Those segments actually make up about one In any case, he was spotlighted in the final sketch as a customer at a Mexican restaurant when he briefly shared a memory and connection with the waitress played by Heidi Gardner, who reminded him of his long-lost love, Beth ideal showcase for that Keaton thing where his mind seems to be heading for distraction. It's just an odd little appearance for him and Gardner, who so often plays women whose barely buried feelings bubble to the surface at the slightest provocation.

Before that, it wasn't a standout comedy night. Despite three or four decent sketches and two Billie Eilish songs, the whole thing somehow felt like a prop to big moments that never materialized.

What was going on?

If one of these skits had been just a little more cleverly surprising, rather than immediately revealing their game and then executing it well, this episode probably could have been half a notch higher in the ratings department. It's very funny that Andrew Dismukes sets interracial marriage back several decades by magically writing and performing “Hey Soul Sister” several decades earlier. (Just ask Ego Nwodim, who almost went bankrupt several times.) Nwodim playing a taxi driver who portrays a conspiracy theorist, whose game show may or may not be streamed on WhatsApp Live, is also very funny, with satisfyingly interlocking parts: Nwodim plays a character , Keaton offers a crackpot of support, Yang with the normal reaction, and Sherman adding something extra by genuinely engaging with the ridiculous questions asked of him.

Really, though perhaps the most imaginative part was a recurring feature: the TikTok scroll; It's also competing for best recurring series SNL Sketch of the last five years, and I say this as someone who doesn't even have a Lurker TikTok account. There's just something so joyfully format-breaking about the fast-paced style that still maintains an old-fashioned show by involving all or part of the cast…it's the rare recurring piece that they could do twice as often and I Am still excited about it, but maybe the fact that it works about once a year on average is why it works so well. Chloe Fineman constantly acts as an anchor to the scroll – I get the impression that she and Bowen Yang are the whisperers of the show's digital culture – but she's also flexible enough to accommodate guest stars, political trivia, impressions, genre parodies, and nonsense can shout out memes and random nonsense. If real TikTok were like this (by which I mean populated almost entirely by SNL Guys), maybe I'd be as addicted as the unseen POV characters in these sketches.

What was going on?

I appreciate the characterization work put into Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner, who play a pair of endlessly enthusiastic shop TV hosts trying to channel their growing horror at the visual reference to what their guest is selling into the show ; They set the accents, they have to deliver their dialogue back and forth, they add a little intro with their over-the-top cameraman dressed as a minion… but it's all just in service of such a stupid joke for Keaton, and one of them I've had with others made by hosts. Similarly, Day jumped to the other side of the “Hey, stop it, man!” The formula was to play a move-savvy Michael Myers in Halloween Rises, and he fully committed to it. But it's still just a movie set sketch where someone does it wrong and the guy shouts “cut” and blah blah blah, you know? Maybe it was the prominent placement of both sketches, one as an opener and one as the de facto anchor of the final half hour, or the time they took up, but they felt like a drag on the whole show.

Most Valuable Player (who may or may not be ready for prime time)

Take a bow, Sarah Sherman! She returned to Update to post a funny Victoria's Secret comment that managed to stay on topic, still praise Jost, and also get super gross. Then she jumped into “Think About It” with perfect normal zeal.

The next time

John Mulaney and Chappell Roan are giving everyone on the internet ample opportunity to be super cool and normal!

Crazy observations

• • Without much fuss and still perhaps one or two too many cutaways, this Kamala Harris interview parody could have quietly been the season's best political cold offensive so far. A low-stakes contest, sure, but at least it felt like a sketch and not a walk-on parade.
• • Please Don't Destroy is back! They never went anywhere either, but they're back on camera with a video that takes them out of their office. I generally prefer their live sketches to their video pieces, and in fact their skydiving part seems to have been a live sketch at a different tempo. That said, if the idea is to make four or five PDD videos this season and send them to locations further afield than “screaming in the office,” that's fine!
• • It's the '90s, Colin. If Michael Che says that two or three more times per update, maybe it'll be really, really funny because, you know, it's not the '90s. While Jost has become a fake, disgruntled corporate boss, Che has alternated over the past year or two between an employee gathering the energy to finally quit and a smug lifer. Maybe letting the same people do the update for a decade isn't a good idea?!
• • Emil Wakim had the usual introductory piece, “Crack up a bit at the desk, but he was funny and getting into a good laugh when one of his jokes fell silent.”
• • This is a stray observation Goodricha movie I saw: Single Season SNL Player Chloe Troast has a single scene with a girl who sells Keaton a ticket to a live show at a jazz club. I was happy to see her.
• • The last time Keaton hosted, Carly Rae Jepsen was the musical guest in an attempt to create some sort of Jesse hypnosis. (The paper is one of my favorite films.)
• • Where the hell was…? This is the part of the recap where I ask where the hell a particular cast member was. The TikTok feature kind of invalidates that since it almost always includes everyone. But it's a little strange that TikToker Jane Wickline was in an episode like this with a TikTok skit.