There are few SNL hosts funnier than the super-intense goof. Josh Brolin can do comedy—I maintain that his turn as Detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice is a scream, even if Brolin is undeniably terrifying at the same time. But it has to be said that a scan of the Dune star’s IMDb page doesn’t exactly scream laugh riot. No, Brolin’s more of a steely, intimidating, chiseled-out-of-especially-unforgiving-granite guy onscreen, which makes his obvious delight in hosting Saturday Night Live so infectious.
In the goodnight’s, Brolin, here hosting for the third time, thanks Lorne Michaels for making SNL “the best show on television,” which, okay, isn’t a thing. But then Brolin turns to the clearly adoring cast and does a little leap in the air with his heels kicked up to his rump and you can’t help but admire how into the whole live comedy thing the dude is. Bookend that with the monologue, where Brolin takes the air out of his super-intense image by not only mocking his penchant for passionately sincere co-star poetry (I, too, have often admired Kenan’s ageless “sugar cookie cheeks”) but stripping down to his skivvies to dunk himself in a waiting tub of ice water. You know, just because he looks damn good for 56, and because it’s a weird, goofball way to kick things off.
Brolin’s energy was sorely needed on the night. As SNL wheezes into the back half of Season 49, all the rumors of top-down shakeups in the run-up to the big five-oh are welcome news, frankly. Lorne, with his increasingly obvious center-right drift (and hidebound comedy ossification) needs to sail off to St. Barts, and take some of Studio 8H’s stale air with him. The sketches Brolin was given were the sort of just-okay to need a host with Brolin’s evident enthusiasm to goose them to life. And goose Brolin did, even on a night when some very old and tired habits worked overtime to deaden the pacing, surprise, and verve. Here’s to you, you secret, scary goofball.
The Best and the Rest
The Best: The sketch everyone’s waiting for is in the Political Comedy Report below, so skip ahead if that’s why you’re here. For the rest of the show, I’ll stick to the running order, as the bank robbery sketch kicked things off by showing just how far Brolin was into the idea of going for broke. The premise is allowed to unfold at its own loony pace without too much over-explaining for a change (looking at you, next entry), with marrieds Brolin and Heidi Gardner taking the opportunity provided by an armed bank holdup to let fly with their recently role-played repressed sexual fantasies. Pacing has been an issue most of this season, and the transitions here could have been snappier, as the revelations of the couple having preemptively tied themselves up and stripped should land harder. Still, Gardner and Brolin are all-in, Heidi especially channeling some sort of inner porno scenario as she decries the lust of the bewildered bank robbers, all while contorting her body their way with a desperate silliness. Brolin’s right there with her, his obviously (at least) bisexual hubby getting in on the sweaty shenanigans. Brolin’s affected lisp might be a bit queasy, if he and Gardner weren’t both channeling the vibe of a long-married couple who have just finally had “the talk” about their sex life and decided that opening up all possibilities was the way forward. Bowen gets laughs as the bank manager, unwillingly roped into the couple’s far-reaching fantasy (“I am not filming you!”), and I liked how Heidi’s supple imagination immediately slots late-arriving robber Marcello Hernandez into one of her ready PornHub-style categories. (“Oh no, a barely-legal Latino!” “I’m 31.”)
The Worst: While the support group sketch wasn’t awful (the performances were actually pretty great), I’m hijacking this spot to rant, once more, against Saturday Night Live’s crippling need to over-explain every single sketch. There’s a premise that is set up by therapist Heidi Gardner’s introduction of this as a “people pleaser’s support group.” Boom, done. We’ve got it. The concept isn’t alien to us, nor is the terminology. People pleasers. Boom. That this sketch then spends a solid 30 seconds of precious airtime having several characters explain to us, repeatedly, what a people pleaser is and sounds like is just deadening. A sketch is short, it needs to be taken on its own terms and the audience is prepared to meet a premise half way. Dumbing down a sketch in the fear that someone, somewhere might not immediately twig to the bit does the sketch a massive disservice.
And this sketch isn’t bad once it’s allowed to actually happen, with everyone involved finding the groove of a group of people so terrified of not being liked that their every interaction turns into a sweaty babble of apologies, self-deprecation, and instant capitulation. Molly Kearney’s attendee addresses Gardner’s accurate description of how she assented to her terrible haircut by claiming, “But can I say something in my defense? I gave them a huge tip.” And musical guest (and person who got more airtime than all but a few of the actual female cast members) Ariana Grande excuses her lateness by describing relating her response, “I’m so sorry car! I hope your’e okay.” Not bad stuff, even if the sketch’s ending serenity prayer (excusing God if he’s too bust to respond) makes no sense—why in the hell would Gardner’s therapist join enthusiastically in on the groveling after spending the session outlining why everyone should stop doing exactly that? Sounds like a support group structural problem to me.
And since I’m breaking format for my own preachy needs, let’s look at the Moulin Rouge sketch, on a couple of fronts. The fine folks at The SNL Network routinely and helpfully rank the airtime given to every cast member each week, and I’m not looking forward to seeing just how ill-served the female cast was with all the guest starring going on here. Apart from a certain superstar SNL spouse (we’ll get there) taking the most coveted cold open spot since Sarah Palin, Ariana Grande was handed two full roles that could easily have been juicy opportunities for the women who actually work at SNL. And, sure, the Moulin Rouge sketch required a lot of singing, but has anyone met Chloe Troast? I get it—ratings, plus a musical guest who’s ably hosted before is in the building. But it’s got to be a serious bummer for an overstuffed cast to watch the SNL decision makers pass them over anytime someone more famous is in town. Apart from all that, the sketch itself gave Bowen Yang a chance to really break out, taking the Ewan McGregor part opposite Grande’s Nicole Kidman as the duo belt out even more anachronistic pop songs in the deleted scenes from Baz Luhrmann’s splashy jukebox musical. Sneaking in everything from TLC to Barenaked Ladies to “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” in the extended version of the movie’s love song mashup makes for a dippy, funny, musically impressive spectacle, and both Yang and Grande are having a ball. (The breaking throughout doesn’t really interrupt the flow so much as erupt from a couple of people clearly having a blast.)
The fact that we have to sit through most frequent offender Mikey Day’s not one, not two, but three unnecessary premise exposition dumps sucks some of the life out of things, unfortunately. Maybe it’s that Day has been here so long and is so ubiquitous in the writers room that he takes this thankless and infuriatingly common role upon himself so often. Or maybe the room just looks at Day’s workmanlike ever-presence and shunts the scut work off on him. Either way, it sucks—bad enough when belaboring the premise at the outset, having Day’s PBS host come back two more times to interrupt Yang and Grande’s flow is unforgivable. Day wants us to know that Luhrmann didn’t know what songs he’d get the rights to, accounting for the excess references and public domain songs. (Yes, “Happy Birthday” has been determined to be up for grabs, so suck it, Hill sisters.) Drop the fact in passing in the intro? Okay—although maybe do it with a bit more subtlety and pizazz, Mikey. But to come back again and yet again? I grind my molars instead of letting the performances carry me along as they have been. This isn’t learning annex Sketch Writing for Amateurs.
The Rest: As a going concern, I have to give it up for the Saturday Night Live technical team when it comes to animal puppets. The show loves a good animal puppet, and they’re always spot on between verisimilitude and comic exaggeration, with uniformly funny and well-timed puppeteering. Putting a funny animal puppet in a sketch might seem hacky to some, but what are we doin’ here if not having some fun? And this was a good cat puppet, as the wine tasting party sketch saw Brolin happily cuddling a very good and silly orange tabby kitty as he happily accepts his hosts’ offhand remark that he must have “good energy” as gospel. Another time when Brolin’s mix of game silliness and lurking violence really kicks, the sketch sees him taking much-needed affirmation in the cat’s supposedly rare friendliness, his revealed profession of turning old age homes into golf courses clearly weighting on his conscience. The live audience has to endure the sight of the puppet being shifted from Brolin’s lap to Devon Walker’s, but, hey, you give away your suspension of comic disbelief when you sit in the live audience. For us, the bit is all about a guy seizing upon the one incontrovertible truth that a very good and standoffish kitty likes him as proof that he’s not a piece of garbage, a tried and true piece of short-form character building. And Brolin is super, the shattering of his illusion seeing him lash out with childish insults to all and sundry. (Flashbacks to a legendary bomb from Brolin’s SNL debut—which is actually hilarious, sue me—with this sketch’s reliance on hearing Josh Brolin make lots of fart jokes.) That he (and formerly genial host Andrew Dismukes) inexplicably whip out switchblades to end the bit should land harder (the absurdity build with the angrily reclaimed cat bloodying Brolin’s arm doesn’t quite happen), but overall this is a nice showcase for the host’s happy weirdness.
Sometimes a dramatic actor’s chops go unused on SNL, or worse, curdle into stiff mugging in these unfamiliar circumstances. The otherwise tired talk show sketch instead saw Brolin, as the wheelchair using husband of Heidi Gardner’s complaining and unfaithful wife, bringing just the right tone of seriousness to a very silly situation. Brolin’s disabled hubby, described as a layabout by Gardner’s trashy Jasmine, turns out to have been crippled trying to satisfy his wife in bed, has been listless because she won’t feed him, and occasionally stays out all night because his chair battery dies, sending the previously irate crowd packing up and leaving the show. (“I’m gonna go pray in Spanish,” says Marcello’s formerly whooping audience member.) It’s not groundbreaking—I’m not sure how many trash TV Jerry Springer-syle sketches we need at this point—but Brolin makes his character’s plight feel bracingly real enough to be all the funnier. With a contained little drawl and a restrained sanity, Brolin’s husband makes for a necessary center.
That acting presence got sold out a bit by slack direction in the break room sketch, although Brolin still managed to make something out of the mess. As an office’s trusty sub sandwich guy, Brolin reacts to the assembled workers’ revelation that they’ve ordered pizza (with the aid of a certain chain’s app in as clunky a piece of product placement as it gets) by staring off into the distance while that Barbie song plays. It’s a half-idea that could be at least three-quarters in Brolin’s performance but for the sluggishness, missed cues, and all around meh of it all. It also should have been the 10-to-one sketch: half-realized or not, a sketch like this is always preferable over a recurring piece like we got tonight.
Neither of the two filmed pieces was top-tier. The period waltz sketch hinged on Brolin’s mustachioed nobleman and suitor to Sarah Sherman’s aristocrat obsessing over his newest party-topping invention, the shrimp tower. So far, so weird. And Brolin does hit the right notes of repressed, inexplicable mania about his champagne glass-fragile shellfish mountain, going so far as to hurl Sherman out of the window upon sensing she’s about to topple his baby. (There’s one great visual joke, where we see Sherman’s gown-clad heiress silently climbing a far off wall to return to the ball.)
The airplane film, about Andrew Dismukes’ musical tribute to the joys of watching Ad Astra over fellow passenger Brolin’ shoulder when his own devices run out of juice, features some fan-freaking-tastic wig work. Seriously, Josh Brolin crooning his objections while sporting a 1970’s blond feathered coif is a whole look. And the song has its moments (I liked Dismukes’ protesting that he can still tell what’s going on without captions, even if he’s sure that Brad Pitt’s character is named “Ad Astra”), but it never quite attains loopy liftoff. Chloe Troast’s flight attendant closes things out on a literal high note, which feels like a “screw you” for being passed over in favor of Grande in the Moulin Rouge sketch.
Weekend Update update
No correspondent pieces whatsoever tonight. Huh. That means either nobody had anything cooking, or the Update was going to be epically long and strong. In this case, it’s the former, as this was just a regular Update. Funny, slight, with some decent interplay between Jost and Che. The usual—Jost makes Biden age jokes (although even he conceded that the 81-year-old President killed it at the State of the Union), Che baits women with a joking/not joking “that time of the month” joke, and the news of the day serves mainly as fodder for the two smart-alecks to score and skate. I like this iteration of Update, but I don’t remember it much. (The runner with Che responding to audience groans from repeated jokes by asking Jost, “Should I just go home?” is the sort of thing these guys do best, honestly.)
Recurring Sketch Report
Lisa From Temecula was a lightning in a bottle kick in its first outing. The perfect storm of the right host, unexpected physical comedy, and cast breaking, it just captured the live comedy spirit with originality and go-for-broke energy. And while it suffers the same fate of all but the kyawthuite-rarest reruns of losing approximately 40 percent of its juice with each successive comeback, at least it’s got Ego Nwodim’s Lisa. Sure, the sawing away at overdone meat (or, in a new wrinkle here, her receipt with ballpoint and a handy purloined hand soap pump) that scatters drinks and prop food all over the keeping-it-together cast is still mildly amusing. (Even if, this time, Lisa’s furious scribbling and pumping can’t cause as much chaos as usual.) But Ego makes the stubborn Lisa’s unconcerned banter as she hacks away a litany of proudly clueless bullheadedness that I still enjoy. There’s no real need for this one to exist any more (and certainly it shouldn’t steal a 10-to-one slot), but it’s not quite dead yet.
Political Comedy Report
We knew it was coming, but the show made us wait. Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s SOTU response was so tailored to be an SNL cold open that it’s probably wise of the flailing Republican Party at this point to just claim the whole overdone spectacle was a goof. Stalling on the casting for a moment, finding humor in the GOP’s only-worsening habit of fear-mongering bigotry and blatant falsehoods is a fool’s game most of the time. There’s only so far a political party can go into bottomlessly shameless authoritarian evil and duplicity before parody is rendered helpless. So thank the comedy gods for Katie Britt, a woefully not ready for prime time operative whose Stepford Wives, “women belong in the kitchen,” “Eeek-Mexicans!” schtick was delivered with such community theater reject melodrama and ineptitude that everyone (including myself) had immediate visions of the female SNL cast stampeding down the 30 Rock corridors to Lorne’s office to beg for the part while the “William Tell Overture” plays. It’s a star-making opportunity, even if Britt’s tank job is no doubt the high-low point of a doomed political back-bencher rather than the enduring gift of a Vice Presidential season like Sarah Palin’s. (Although Trump hasn’t picked a running mate yet, so stay tuned.)
In the end, however, the star-making turn went to a made star, as Black Widow herself took the part. Scarlett Johansson does a fine job as the over-her-head Britt, but then again, she would, being a massive move star and all. The last few seasons has seen Saturday Night Live veer off from a reliance on these sort of big guest spots stealing roles from the perpetually underserved cast, but I suppose when an Avenger is only a “Hey honey, wanna come to work with me this week?” away, you take the free money. (For the record, while I initially singled out Chloe Fineman as Britt, I think Heidi’s ability to channel spooky, obsessional archness would have been the right pick.) From Britt’s jarringly abrupt tone shifts, to her hilariously misjudged intensity in speaking… slowly… to… camera, to her recently debunked reliance on a manipulative and deliberately misappropriated sexual violence story to smear non-white immigrants, ScarJo nails it all. (One quibble: the fake kitchen background used here isn’t quite soullessly empty enough to replicate Britt’s art-directed lair.) That the sketch starts off with Mikey Day’s indifferent Biden delivering a throwaway snippet of the SOTU at least ratcheted up some tension—would Lorne really pass up this meatball of a political impression? When Johanssen showed up, it was a little deflating (although not to the deliriously happy audience) but even SNL truly couldn’t have screwed this one up.
Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings
I’m ranking all the female cast members in a tie for number one in solidarity with the show choosing the shiny outside draw of a ScarJo for what could have been a major in-house triumph.
On the guy side, Dismukes continues to just be good in everything, and was—wait for it—good in a pair of decent sized roles tonight. I like how Kenan’s presence livens things up even when he’s really not in very much. And Bowen got to be the star he was always meant to be and siiiing!
10-to-One Report
C’mon, to more recurring bits, no more filmed pieces. Get the timing right and let some writer’s weird little sketch come out to play. What do you have to lose at this time of the morning?
Parting Shots
Monologue Gotye slam!
Johansson’s Britt, with her dead eyes, refers to herself as “the scariest btich in the Target parking lot.”
Kenan showing up being lulled into the Sunken Place by Britt’s tea spoon was just right, even if the bit made me wish that Catherine Keener had somehow been lured to the role. Hey, if you’re going to go out and get a ringer, why not go all the way?
“We are steeped in the blood of patriots in a castle made of bones. Good night, kids!”
That same Saturday Night Network informs me that the last time there was an Update with zero correspondent pieces was the Mulaney-hosted February 26, 2022 episode. Thanks as ever for the obsessive, semi-pointless facts, gang!
“You’re watching PBS, librarian-lookin’ ass.”
Nothing Sarah Sherman likes better than doing a cross-eyed dead take right to camera.
Colin Jost introduced Trump in passing as “former president and current reverse-mortgage applicant.”
We’re off until March 30, when SNL brings us Ramy Youssef and musical guest Travis Scott.