8.7

Jenna Ortega Leaves Wednesday Behind on a Funny, Confident Saturday Night Live

Comedy Reviews Saturday Night Live
Jenna Ortega Leaves Wednesday Behind on a Funny, Confident Saturday Night Live

And Your Host…

Wednesday and Scream VI star Jenna Ortega (who also threw some love toward 2022’s Ti West horror flick X), some 28 years younger than Saturday Night Live itself, came off a bit jittery in her brief monologue, highlighted as it was by clips of her 9-years-old commercial debut. Assuring everyone in attendance that she’s not just the deadpan horror heroine she’s become best known for (“I think there’s just something about my face where people see it and they’re like, ‘Hey, let’s throw blood on that’”), and the young actor overcame the thinness of her intro bit by throwing herself gamely into a healthy number of lead roles. That her designated Uncle Fester Fred Armisen popped in to steal focus in both her monologue and a later sketch was a miscalculation on the show’s part—I love Fred, but let the new kid have her moment, huh?

That second sketch, a Parent Trap remake where Fred’s gruff teamster stands in for Ortega’s absent twin double, is mid-tier Fred, with little left over for the host. Again, love Fred. But there was nothing pressing or unique enough in the conceit for the 11-season alum to swipe a role from an underserved cast member, so I’m dinging it for that. It’s been deeply refreshing to watch this season parcel out roles to nearly everybody each week, and we don’t need the celebrity guest creep to take over as it has done in previous years. (And, no, that’s not me calling Fred Armisen a “celebrity guest creep.” You get me.) I did like the twist that it’s Fred’s brusque, ad-libbing, 56-year-old twin who eventually edges Ortega’s star out of her own picture, according to the eventual poster.


The Best And The Rest

The Best: I was pretty charmed by this show all around, I have to say. Not knocked out, but carried along on a pleasantly funny wave of decent writing and amusing character performances. So I’ll give the top spot to a game show sketch, of all things, in the School Vs. School sketch. With stalwart Kenan Thompson riding herd on the teachers and their top students quiz show faceoff, the turn is that one team is clearly the X-Men, led my Mikey Day’s wheelchair-bound “Professor Xander,” flanked by Ortega’s Rogue-looking Zena Neutrino and Molly Kearney’s muscle-suited Knockout. I am a dork, sure, but the performances were inhabited enough to be funny even despite any geeky references, with Day, finally getting a chance to cut loose a little, channeling Professor X’s constant worry about his super-powered charges into red-faced, stentorian outbursts. “If my gifts are so incredible, then why won’t you let me use them?,” Ortega’s super teen yells in an approximation of the comics series’ occasional angsty overwrought prose, with Day’s Prof overtopping his student with a roaring, “Because you cannot yet control them, child!!” Kenan manages to keep it together, even when the question-thwarted Zena unleashes her powers across the studio in a rage of what Kenan’s host terms, “What I can only describe as electric wind.” (The blast short-circuits the brain of Punkie Johnson’s competing teacher, in a jarringly funny cutaway.) Day and Ortega’s battle of overacted wills just keeps being funny, what can I say? And, again, I am a dork.

The Worst: While this season has been an exercise in a young cast finding themselves, I’ve been overall impressed by a baseline of at least energetic competence. Which is to say that there have been few outright stinkers. Same goes for tonight’s show, but since I’m enslaved by my own format, I’ll peg the Parent Trap sketch here, on general principles. Let’s keep the alumni appearances confined to guest hosting duties.

The Rest: In solidarity with the about-to-strike SNL post-production editors, let’s appreciate the as-ever polished and funny filmed pieces tonight. The Waffle House sketch might stem from an internet sensation (that being the gawking spectacle of cell phone footage from the all-night restaurant chain’s parade of disruptive yahoo customers), but this film was put together right, with Ortega and Marcello Hernandez’s teen drama couple emoting their hearts out through their breakup in the foreground, while a late-night cascade of violence, shirtlessness, and the occasional shockingly abandoned wheelchair plays out in the background. The same dichotomy was used to great effect back in the Austin Butler It’s a Wonderful Life film from earlier in the season, and it works splendidly here, too, as the teen couple’s earnest heartbreak is upstaged by an escalating series of Waffle House-ian shenanigans, including Mikey Day’s shirtless, arm-casted patron being ineffectually tased for letting his dog loll on the counter, to a child stealing a cop’s gun, to Kenan’s appearance wielding a toilet paper torch, to a straight-up customer on employee suplex. Not to get all Norma Rae, but the reason why filmed sketches on SNL have become to well-regarded (and lucratively viral) is that the (as it turns out, underpaid) technicians who bring them to life are so astoundingly good at their jobs.

The Please Don’t Destroy guys are now firmly ensconced in the show’s first half-hour, the 66% nepo babies Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy finding a secure groove as the resident in-house video content creators. (With, of course, immeasurable help from those hard-working editors.) Here, while the guys hit the highway for a “beautiful cross-country American road trip,” with host Ortega in happy tow, Ortega’s presence maintains the whole backstage drones premise so central to the trio’s onscreen charm. (The one time they debuted a film completely devoid of that context, it was a genuine disappointment.) The PDD métier is beleaguered underdog absurdism, with the guys’ supposed position as SNL’s office-sharing bottom-rungers fueling their sweaty shenanigans. Here, that’s largely left behind along with the office, although the sweaty silliness remains as the foursome’s all-singing happy road trip montage is immediately scuppered by their always fraught interpersonal conflicts, as Martin can’t sing and navigate at the same time, Ben huffily sends a payment request to Ortega after she can’t stop sucking at her empty Slurpee, and driver Ben’s late-night reverie ultimately sees him running down a pedestrian. Martin gets the biggest laugh when, after missing yet another exit, he blames the fact that he just received a text that his dad (former SNL writer Tim Herlihy) has had a stroke. After an abashed silence, his unashamed, “I don’t know why I said that—he did not have a stroke,” is the sort of unexpectedly explosive laugh these guys know how to build to.

Ortega gets her best acting showcase in a sketch parodying an actual MTV comedy clip show that’s apparently very popular with people who aren’t old and out of touch. As the TikTok influencer guest brought in to make jokes at the expense of people with the misfortune to fall down in front of somebody’s cell camera, Ortega’s whole schtick is having a store of ready, terribly dark personal anecdotes related to every onscreen mishap. And while her cousin getting decapitated by a boat propellor does bring the room down, it’s her tale of her unfortunate cat’s litter of conjoined, mouthless, agonized kitten-babies that truly gets weird with it. Despite being slotted in once more as the character pointing out the premise of the sketch, Mikey Day has a funny runner about his slangy host (again a real guy, Rob Dyrdek) confessing to being a 50-year-old man at this point (he quickly backtracks on his come-on once Ortega reminds him she’s 17), and Kenan and Chloe have some fun abashed reactions to Ortega’s repeated bummer stories, including her horrifying impression of the internal scream-sound the “ball of cat parts” made before its mother finally mercy-murdered it.

Eschewing the political cold open in favor of a more traditional Oscars red carpet sketch, the show started out with Marcello Hernandez (good night for him) and Heidi Gardner playing the beamingly bland hosts, Mario Lopez and either Maria Menounos of Kir Hooper (depending on who the showrunners tell her to be). It’s all just okay, with Chloe Fineman debuting an energetically competent Jamie Lee Curtis—talented impressionist Chloe’s got the Uber-enthusiastic mom energy and cadence down perfectly, if not the actual voice. (That loose-limbed walkaway is choice, though.) The gag that The Banshees of Inisherin stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason’s Irishness is impossible to understand does nothing for me, and Sarah Sherman’s shtick as The Fablemans’ Michelle Williams’ “Jewish acting coach” is similarly broad yet forgettable. I’m always here for Kenan, and his Mike Tyson (as the awards ceremony’s post-slap head of security) is low-key amusing (“Thank you very much, Mario Luigi,” he tells Lopez), but the inclusion smacks of a cast not stocked with enough versatile celebrity impressions to fill out a full Oscars field. Oh, I suppose we got a little political infusion with Bowen Yang bringing back his ever-scamming GOP fraud George Santos (if that is the scandal-plagued Republican’s real name), here sneaking in by impersonating Tom Cruise. But capping things off by throwing Michael Longfellow out there in an elaborate wooden suit as Guillermo del Toro’s childhood-scarring Pinocchio only reasserts that talent’s still a little thin on the ground for this sort of thing.

The exorcism sketch was a nice little showcase for Ego Nwodim, as her no-nonsense upstairs neighbor takes charge of Ortega’s noisy possession herself so she can get some sleep. The premise (unimpressed Black person hasn’t got time for your demonic white foolishness) has certainly been done (I mean, Richard Pryor did it 47 seasons ago), but Ego’s pretty funny. Cowing Ortega’s levitating child back into bed by threatening to turn on the ceiling fan is Nwodim’s comic authority on happy display, while her tales of weathering the life of a school crossing guard on a six-lane road makes her case that the Devil has nothing on third-graders when it comes to spewing demonic insults. Kenan gets his, too, as Ego’s similarly unbothered husband, called upon to be the vessel once his wife orders the demon out of the little girl, a clunky head-spinning mannequin gag payoff the only indication that the couple’s mastery of the no-bullshit arts only extends so far. It’s fine.


Weekend Update update

“I even tried acting during that one,” Che exclaims after he puts a little more English than usual on his punchline about warning his ancestor, “Don’t get on that boat!” Loose, playful Che and Jost is a good sign for an Update, and I similarly liked Jost’s runner about “champagne after red” (a reference to the Oscars’ changing carpet choice) seeing him go “full-on bitch” when running down the spate of GOP legislatures banning drag shows with a string of RuPaul’s Drag Race-style slang. That Update usually smuggles political content inside these sort of funny but oblique bits (like Jost’s reference to Walgreens cowardly decision to stop selling legal, prescribed abortion medication in states where right-wing Republican legislatures might get mad at them turning into a Rite-Aid slam) is a quibble of mine, but I’ve got to give it up.

Both anchors were tight in their looseness, if that makes any sense, Jost and Che’s banter passing the balls efficiently between them. Jost continues to poke back at justified criticism of his occasional misogyny, here cutting off recognition of recent International Women’s Day by scolding the clapping audience, “I said it was…” Che gonna Che, as he also continued his popular game of “Jost is a secret racist” piñata, commiserating with recently outed hypocrite and Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson for being caught under oath condemning Fox poster boy Donald Trump, Che noting sadly, “It must suck to go on TV and put on a smile and make friends with some psychotic bigot just ‘cause it’s [finger quotes] good for the show. Anyway, back to you Colin.”

Molly Kearney had perhaps their most confident outing in their first-ever Update feature as Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally (again, if that is his real name), recently outed as yet another Republican hypocrite. Caught Insta-lusting after pictures of young, shirtless gay men, the staunchly conservative anti-LGBT legislator coyly dances around the issue, Kearney literally finger-dancing her way right up to confessing that their McNally is simply the latest GOP anti-gay blowhard caught in a cycle of feverish closeted repression. Kearney has always been a bit hesitant in their brief time on the show, displaying a line-fluffing discomfiture that doesn’t bode especially well for their continued employment. There are a few stumbles here, but Kearney clearly warms to the task at hand, that of very publicly mocking the whole Republican witch hunt against the LGBTQ community, and they get an easy layup of a laugh by noting that McNally’s actual clever online disguise handle was “@ltgovmcnally.” Some more Update content smuggling, too, as Jost’s introduction mentions how McNally has supported bans on in-library drag shows but not in-library open firearms carry.

James Austin Johnson made it on SNL largely through his quick-hit online impressions. And while his rambling Trump has found a comfortable home on the show, his appearance here is a fine lesson in how an impressionist on Saturday Night Live can thrive even if nobody has any great ideas to smelt uncannily accurate celebrity impersonation ore into solid sketch gold. With Jost framing the bit as Johnson having 60 seconds to fill out Update that week, Johnson indeed wows everyone with such orphaned premises as Adam Driver as Kylo Ren on Girls, to Batman looking for Waldo, to Jay-Z locked outside of his house. It’s an effortlessly charming and hilarious bit of the sort that equally talented impressionist Melissa Villaseñor never quite got in her underutilized time on the show, the outright confessed conceit that these represent “a stockpile of useless, two-second impressions” making the whole appearance sing. Johnson is so unassuming that it’s tempting to lose sight of what an invaluable presence he’s become, something Johnson himself expressed by explaining that he can’t even get the after-party bartender’s attention unless he orders as Trump. (“We’ve been waiting a very long time for that Negroni… it’s a three-ingredient drink.”) Toss in a somehow pitch-perfect impression of Bob Dylan’s cell phone vibrate setting, and I’ll just say it—the kid’s a star.


“You know, Norman Mailer was right, ‘You can’t go home.’”—Recurring Sketch Report

[Breathing deep the fresh air of yet another show free from old sketches with nothing new to add.]


“If you like your news rugged yet fragile, tough yet sensitive, and with icy blue eyes that say, ‘Yeah, this is gonna work out,’ you’ve come to the right place.”—Political Comedy Report

Apart from the usual lukewarm stew of Update takes, even the cold open ditched politics this week. And while the whole Oscars red carpet bit was itself on the room temperature side, I can’t say I was clamoring for a more topical kicker. Taking a week off when you don’t have much to say isn’t a bad strategy, all things considered.


Not Ready For Prime Time Power Rankings

Loving the ensemble feel this season. This week, I’m all-in on James Austin Johnson for MVNRFPTP, although Marcello stepped up, Ego and Kenan did their thing as usual, and Molly Kearney got a big showcase. I suppose Devon Walker was odd guy out this week, but hang in there.


“Dear Madeline. Um, are you breaking up with me? Well, you’re gonna feel like an ass! Because I was shot! For treason! It’s a long story.”—10-To-One Report

Any time a 10-to-one sketch gives off a Tim Robinson vibe, I’m happy. And so what if this sketch about a pair of soul-inflected lounge singers tasked with turning a law firm’s unmemorable phone number into a catchy jingle skis in“Roundball Rock”’s tracks; it’s still funny. Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson are the smooth, bewigged Soul Booth, whose sultry pitches for the new jingle are all increasingly terrible, naturally, with execs Bowen Yang and Ortega amusingly demanding they produce the same magic they heard while getting sloshed at a local eatery named Luciano’s. I loved the conceit that their winning pitch involves them crooning out the long string of random numbers as one, impossibly long single integer, and Yang finally achieving the same state of drunken bliss he’d attained, his catchphrase about wanting to “Get Luch-ed!” Gradually taking over the assembled executives. And Dismukes and Johnson are terrific, Soul Booth’s unwavering belief in their ever-smooth grooves buoying the premise enough that the triumphant office singalong at the end closes out the show with an improbable feel-good chorus. Well done.


Parting Shots

And the bad news just keeps on coming in this, Saturday Night Live’s 48th year. This week’s memorial went out to Erin Maroney Fraser, an SNL writer, aide to Lorne Michaels on the show and on several SNL-related movies, and, at the time of her sudden death from a brain hemorrhage, Executive Director for the Savannah Regional Film Commission. She was 53.

Andrew Dismukes once more sported a t-shirt supporting the SNL editors during the goodnights. Way to stick it to the man, man.

SNL will be back on April 1 with host Quinta Brunson and musical guest Lil Yachty. Maybe…


Dennis Perkins is an entertainment writer who lives in Maine with his wife, the writer Emily L. Stephens, and their cat, (Special Agent Dale) Cooper. His work has appeared in places like The A.V. Club, Ultimate Classic Rock, and the Portland (Maine) Press Herald. You can find him on Twitter, where he will anger you with opinions, and Instagram, where you will be won back over by pictures of Special Agent Dale Cooper.

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