Saturday Night Live certainly had its work cut out this week. The cold open was obviously going to be about the disastrous spectacle that was the oval office press conference between President Donald Trump, vice president JD Vance, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy two days ago. Given what a clownshow the actual event was, it seemed an impossible task for SNL to parody.
And for the most part, that was the case. They basically recreate the scene, barely exaggerating as Trump (James Austin Johnson) welcomes Zelenskyy to “this incredible trap”, attacking him for no reason and asking him to apologize for “invading Russia”. Vance (Bowen Yang) acts like a spoiled brat, demanding thanks and compliments, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) silently and fully dissociates.
Things pick up after Trump hypocritically chides Zelenskyy for showing up at the White House “in T-shirt and jeans like a garbage person”, only to be interrupted by Elon Musk (Mike Myers), who is wearing exactly that (and also waving around a chainsaw). Musk declares himself president and brags about the mass firings of federal employees he has overseen (including air traffic controllers) all while mumbling, stuttering, flailing and continually glitching out.
Myers’s take on Musk is much better than those who played him previously (including his old Wayne’s World co-star Dana Carvey). It’s not just the annoying tics and mannerism he nails, it’s the middle schooler’s sense of entitlement and try-hardness Musk exudes, as well as the palpable sense of discomfort in his own skin. Is it an uncanny impression on the level of Johnson’s Trump? No, but it is appropriately repulsive and deservedly cruel. More of this, please.
Shane Gillis, the comedian and podcaster who was infamously hired by SNL years ago, only to be fired before the season started when racist and homophobic jokes came to light, returns to host for the second year in a row. Last time, the announcement of his hosting was met with equal measures of outrage and excitement, only for him to turn in a nothing of a performance in a nothing of an episode.
He fares the same this time, losing the live audience right away, which he blames on their liberalism, even though his jokes about Trump wanting to annex Greenland and Biden’s advanced age are hardly distinguishable from SNL’s standard political material. His next few bits – about white women dating Black men and Ken Burns’s civil war documentary – don’t land any better, with the biggest laughs coming from Gillis himself. One edgy joke about Burns’s documentary putting women to sleep faster than a Cosby roofie gets a reaction, but that’s about it. As in his previous turn on the show, he is neither funny enough to surpass his detractor’s expectations or fearless enough to live up to his fans’. I’m sure both groups will endlessly bicker online regardless.
In his first sketch, Gillis plays an annoyed boyfriend forced to indulge his vain, demanding girlfriend (Heidi Gardner) by taking endless pictures of her during a wine tour. Gardner mugs to the nth degree.
Next is a commercial a new medication for middle-aged sad sacks: CouplaBeers. It helps treat conditions such as “boredom, depression, winter, museum, hangovers, affair, and moderate-to-severe Italian wife”. It can be used in combination with aLilBump (aka cocaine). Like most SNL medication parodies these days, it’s a chuckle-worthy idea and nothing more.
A news broadcast devolves into a game of racial one-upmanship between the four anchors – two Black, two white – as the wager on the ethnic identities of the subjects of the day’s headlines. Most of said identities are obvious – meth dealers and raw-food eaters are white, barbershop brawlers and bootleg T-shirt sellers are black, but a few, including a gang of looters and a middle-school teacher sleeping with her students, don’t adhere to their stereotypes. This is a carbon copy of another sketch from five years ago, but it’s better than most of SNL’s race relations material, in that it doesn’t just take the default route of making fun of dopey white liberals.
Dad’s House is a PBS kids show hosted by Gillis’s angry, miserable divorcee. He complains about alimony (the word of the day), preps a disgusting bachelor meal of canned weenies and maple syrup, awkwardly introduces his children to his casual hookup (a puppet voiced by Gardner), and calls up his ex-wife to berate her about her new boyfriend. As with most of the sketches so far, Gillis attempts to tap into a particular brand of white male frustration, but it’s simply too watered-down, coming off as neither incisive nor cathartic.
A new Please Don’t Destroy sees Ben, John, Martin, and Ego Nwodim star as the hosts of a Voice-like singing competition. They’re blown away by the first contestant’s blind audition, only to revoke their selection when his “looks and vibes” weird them out. Gillis plays the angelic-voiced singer, a middle-aged, Jazzy-riding pervert who counts Chris Brown as his greatest influence (not musical). The best sketch of the episode so far, due mostly to Gillis’s ridiculous, Mark Davis-style hairdo. Musical guest Tate McRae makes a cameo, before taking the stage right afterwards for her first performance of the night.
On Weekend Update, Colin Jost welcomes on The Movie Guy (Hernández) to talk about tomorrow night’s Oscar nominees. The excitable theater usher hasn’t actually seen any of the movies and is more interested in cartoons such as PomBom (Spongebob) and Popejayay (Popeye). This is just an excuse for Hernández to do another of his over-the-top Latin accents, which, to be fair, the audience eats up.
Later, cast member Jane Wickline performs her latest concoction. Ostensibly a love song, it devolves into a neurotic breakdown over the disturbing moral dilemma/thought experience known as Trolley Problem. As with the previous two Wickline performances this year, the crowd is initially cold to it, but mostly come around by the end.
A wedding ceremony is interrupted by the bride’s stupid ex-boyfriend, who attempts to redeem a gag Valentine’s coupon from her for “one open-eyes hand job to completion”. One by one, every member of the wedding party – the groom, the father, the priest, the maid of honor – take his side as it’s revealed that the bride-to-be has a habit of giving fake coupons out that she never intends to redeem. Half-sketched and instantly forgettable.
In the last sketch of the night, Gillis plays a man undergoing a physical who recognizes his doctor (Emil Wakim) from middle school. He brings up an embarrassing incident where the doctor went down on himself (“beef to teeth”) at a house party years ago, which leads to an emotionally charged breakdown: “Do you think I like that I have to take someone to dinner 25 times to get a worse version of something I could do on my own? It shatters me every single day.” No great shakes, but at least it reminds people that Wakim is a cast member.
Plenty of professional comedians have hosted subpar episodes Saturday Night Live, but few have seemed as uncomfortable as Gillis. There’s nothing here that isn’t in his wheelhouse – he’s made a success of himself through standup, sketch comedy and acting, and yet he stutters and stumbles his way through every moment here. It’s a wonder how anyone on the show ever thought he would have made a good fit for it.
Following a nice tribute to the late, great David Johansen, Gillis signs off. Myers is standing next to him in a T-shirt that reads “Canada is not for sale.” Here’s hoping Trump’s deranged imperialistic pronouncements have lit a fire under him, as it we can always use more of him on the show.
