Ramy Youssef approached his first Saturday Night Live hosting stint with all the dedication of a guy looking to make a good impression. Studied, prepared, and on-point, the Ramy star slotted right into the requisite sketches with confidence. All good things. That none of his sketches were especially gut-busting can be laid at the writers’ feet, with Youssef himself a distant second—there was just so little to get excited about.
Which is a shame. I like Ramy Youssef—as a stand-up the New Jersey native’s puppyish demeanor chafes interestingly with the inevitably weighty and touchy matters he finds himself representing as a Muslim-American Millennial in an America, with decidedly mixed feelings about both. His well-reviewed new HBO special, More Feelings, has seen Youssef mining his outwardly inoffensive persona for thoughtful veins of personal, political and social comedy. Youssef’s monologue was pulled mainly from that special (the immediate call for the handheld mic was a sign), which is fine, if a little unexciting for those already familiar with the material.
Said material is solid stuff, though. The perennially boyish comic goggles at his unwanted position as a famous Muslim getting calls for political support from the Biden campaign. “Is this up to me?,” Youssef recalls himself momentarily thinking when presumably the one Muslim guy in the Biden office was tasked with helping him deliver Michigan for the Democrats. The joke Youssef makes repeatedly is that he’s not the right guy to carry the weight of Muslim-American issues, even as he, on his show, approaches those issues with a thorny thoughtfulness. If there’s an issue, it’s that Youssef himself tips the scales too far into the “charming, harmless guy” camp, even as he makes potentially potent jokes about “the south” always being 45 minutes away from wherever he is, and closes with a heartfelt plea to free both “the people of Palestine” and “all the hostages.” Like his deflating stance that he doesn’t “like either option” when it comes to the 2024 election, there’s a Millennial remove that takes some of the sting out of Youssef’s stabs at political comedy.
Still, it’s bracing enough (and this is an old white guy’s opinion, so feel free to disregard) to hear a plea for the people of Palestine emerging from a Muslim actor on the stage of Saturday Night Live, which has historically—and tonight continues to—basically treat any Gaza material as radioactive. And Ramy Youssef’s matter-of-fact material about his personal relationship with his religion is, in itself, revolutionary for this show in its very existence. When Youssef, booked for “the Easter show,” embraces the “spiritual” nature of the season while nonetheless asserting, “I’m doing the Ramadan one,” the mild joke is refreshing in its ordinariness. (Which isn’t to say NBC won’t receive hate mail—I’m just guessing.)
The Best and the Rest
The Best: In his way, Ramy Youssef was the perfect embodiment of this SNL season in a single host. Eager to please, professional, competent, and sadly a little dull. Which is to say that Youssef was right at home—honestly, Youssef felt like yet another youthful featured player whose earnest striving for laughs marked him as a cast member looking to make his mark. When he and Marcello Hernandez teamed up for a talk show sketch about immigrant dads (see below) their energy was so in synch that it might have well been a show reel for the Saturday Night Live B-team. No offense to the B-team (essentially, this is an almost all B-team cast), but too many of this season’s performers act like they’re waiting for their big shot instead of making each show that big shot.
Which is to say that there wasn’t a single sketch tonight that provoked much enthusiasm. Or ire. Provoking is not really what this iteration of Saturday Night Live can muster, as a rule. The one performer who feels like a star who can lift a sketch (or an entire show) on his back is Kenan, so I’ll begrudgingly hand the basketball sketch the top slot tonight. It’s fine—Youssef’s frustrated high school team captain’s halftime speech gradually reveals that the struggling team needs to get over the disturbing sexy cat roleplay videos Kenan’s coach accidentally sent to the team group chat—if bereft of much surprise or originality. (Outside of the mental picture of Kenan Thompson in full furry cat getup, pooping in a litter box.) But Kenan has a way of mugging without making audiences irritated, his coach’s enthusiastic chiming-in on Youssef’s every revealing story turn reminding us once more that some people are just born for this. (“It’s just something that my wife and I do, gentlemen!”)
Youssef is solid as hell here, his dedicated hooper dropping one mortifying revelation after another without ever betraying anything but sincerity. (“Not hilarious, but well-performed” might be the takeaway for his whole night.) And I liked the reveal that a smiling James Austin Johnson is on hand as the state social worker assigned to shepherd the team through this, along with the joke that a silent Devon Walker is Kenan’s shellshocked son. Without Kenan, it’d be nothing much, but that’s something that’s been true to a greater or lesser degree for sketches over more than two decades.
The Worst: A season as overall bland as this has been generally omits both highs and lows. So, again with a hand-wave in that direction, I’ll say that the aforementioned “Immigrant Dad Talk Show” gets the bottom spot, with regrets. Both Marcello and Youssef are off the cue cards throughout as a couple of garrulously chain-smoking fathers (one Latino, one Muslim) whose unconditional love for their daughters vies with their inherent disdain for their sons. Kenan’s Jamaican sidekick grills up burgers and chimes in in agreement, cementing the sketch’s cultural stereotype to an extent I’ll just have to accept. (See “old white guy.”) The sketch’s backyard New York environment feels lived in, and everybody’s very comfortable in performance, but the beats are all expected without being especially insightful or hilarious. Mikey Day and Andrew Dismukes guest as the new neighborhood white dad and son whose uncomplicatedly affectionate mutual love and support freaks out the hosts (they do kiss each other innocently on the lips), whose preferred method of interaction with their own sons is a belt-beating. And there’s some buried point about the comfortable permissiveness of entitled white dads contrasted with the complicated pressures of first-generation immigrant dads, but it’s super-buried in a lukewarm wash of inert competence.
The Rest: I’m starting to land on “amusingly inoffensive” when it comes to the Please Don’t Destroy guys as well. Ben, John, and Martin’s pitch to be the next in-house viral video troupe came out of the gate with, it turns out, illusory creative energy. But in their second season, the trio’s backstage losers shtick has slowed way down in both morning-after virality and creative verve. Here, Ramy Youssef makes the obligatory office visit, inviting the nerdy guys along with musical guest Travis Scott for a debauched show-week weed-and-clubs field trip, only for their initial music video cocksureness to come thudding down in an inconvenient group freakout once they realize they’re too stoned. (The piece assiduously shows them lighting blunts that aren’t held up to their lips, smacking of serious Standards and Practices compromise, as does the kicker that the guys weren’t actually smoking active weed.) The joke that these three aren’t very cool is the Please Don’t Destroy brand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that they’re not finding the most energetic or different ways to get the gag across. Here it’s cute to see a red-eyed Ben musically begging an irritated bouncer, “Do you like me?,” and for Youssef himself to be the biggest anxiety-victim of all, despite not smoking weed. (He obsesses over his shorts until he sweatily shows off the “napkin pants” he’s fashioned to rectify the problem.) It’s nice. And forgettable.
That the first two live sketches after the monologue went game show and then talk show sent up a distress flare. Risking repeating gripes (“Too late!,” disgruntled readers shout), Saturday Night Live flees to those two formats far too comfortably. Having ready-made and audience-familiar sketch templates is enticing, sure—basically, each is an exercise in filling in blanks with a new premise—but each time I see a commercial bumper with the stagehands putting together the sets, I automatically deduct points for difficulty. There are other sketch types. You know, literally an infinite variety. My ongoing pitch: Put up a “no talk shows/no game shows” sign in the writers room for a year and see what happens.
Which is all to say that “Couples Goals” is—fine. Ramy Youssef and Ego Nwodim and Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner are the couples, while James Austin Johnson continues the thankless task of trying to make the host funny. it’s 100 percent a Newlywed Game knockoff, with the couples’ smiles evaporating the more their spouses guess wrong on their flash cards, so one blank filled in there. The main “guessing wrong” gag is unfocused—Day and Gardner’s religious marrieds eventually toss off the revelation that Day might be gay, while Youssef’s schtick is a long and potentially fruitful runner that he harbors secret and very elaborate anxieties about Ego dying, himself being blamed, and him fleeing into the arms of her lawyer friend for a night of on-the-lam border town motel passion. It’s a funny idea that just refuses to gather steam, though, with Youssef left to make embarrassed faces (which he’s quite good at), Ego to play baffled and indignant, and Johnson to occasionally make jokes about how Ramy’s embarrassed and Ego’s indignant. There is a loony escalation to the husband’s spiraling fantasies, but the sketch never finds a matching craziness, so the whole thing wheezes along. Johnson at one point sums up Day and Gardner as “odd but pleasant people.” That may as well be this whole show’s epitaph.
Ramy Youssef’s presence made the targeted filmed ad for a popular injectable diabetes drug (that has been seized by the miracle cure weight loss industry) more potent than it might be. Pitched as an aid for Muslims struggling with Ramadan’s fasting requirements, Youssef’s harried dad makes a case for jabbing away his hunger pains, while Kenan’s vendor amusingly goes for emergency chest-stabs whenever the smell of his own halal cart meat gets to him. The best joke comes at the end, though, as the tetchy voice over accuses viewers of Islamophobia if they dare accuse the parent company of peddling “the exact same product rebranded for another demographic.” It’s truly a sign of cultural acceptance when your community is the target of corporate pandering.
I wanted to like the crime scene sketch more than I did. Largely because of how much I appreciate Andrew Dismukes as a writer and performer. Emerging from his boyish ordinariness, Dismukes’ conceits often ply the contrast for some deeply funny oddity—seeing his face fix someone with unexpected menace is enduringly funny. Here, as a David Caruso-wannabe catchphrase cop, Dismukes almost gets there, mainly because his detective doesn’t trot out a series of groaning CSI one-liners at the expense of a poor bastard bludgeoned to death outside a pizza joint, but because he keeps trying out his one joke (“I think… he should have ordered delivery”) on different, increasingly unimpressed crime scene audiences. Instead of the parade of yuks, the sketch, in Dismukes’ hands, becomes a nifty little piece of unease, with his cop eventually and unwisely working up the gumption to give his big joke one last try—on Sarah Sherman’s grieving widow. (Fans of SNL breaking: Sherman being unable to withstand the comic tension of Dismukes’ hinting buildup should tide you over.) My biggest laugh, though, came from Dismukes simply staring daggers at Ramy Youssef’s fellow cop for daring to try out his own catchphrase and getting a chuckle. Again, someone so outwardly unimposing whipping out such a dedicated intensity is Dismukes gold.
Weekend Update update
A long one tonight. Jost and Che got an authoritative (if, you know, problematic) endorsement from none other than SNL political comedy royalty Al Franken this week, so who am I to argue? So anyway, my argument has always been that Jost and Che aren’t really invested. Che’s more pointed in his stand-up, but even there, his persona is very me-first, while Jost continues to ride the wave of his own perceived white privilege for self-deprecating joshing. Update under the duo has long been reliably amusing and largely disposable, the only lasting legacy the comics’ self-satisfaction. I at least smiled and enjoyed my time watching tonight’s Update, but a scan through my notes, as usual, reveals my enjoyment was more about the tellers than the substance of the jokes told. I’m glad Al likes the new guys (who’ve been here forever) but even at his own most self-satisfied (and Al Franken knew from self-satisfaction), he was all about throwing hands.
The first of the correspondent pieces saw Chloe Fineman making fun of TikTok-ers for being wrong about trends under the guise of her apology form jumping on the internet trend of mocking a British royal who is actually battling a serious illness. Making fun of online influencers and such is always in season, but Chloe’s appearance here is strangely staged, with her reduced to cringing reaction shots while Jost introduced clips of her being wrong about everything over the years. The joke, over and over again, is that internet personalities are attention-seeking trolls with no moral compass, which, fair enough. Shame it wasn’t all that funny.
Sarah Sherman in an owl costume? Why not. After the tragic death of Flaco, this week’s New York celebrity animal, Sherman came on in beak and feathers as Mrs. Flaco, pecking and twitching as she answered Jost’s probing questions about her husband’s embarrassing autopsy. Apparently the fact of an owl riddled with “pigeon-herpes” was all it took for SNL to whip up an elaborate owl costume, with Sherman’s lady-owl lamenting her late husband’s penchant for “bang[ing] anything with a pair of wings.” (Not to be pedantic, but poor Flaco got the debilitating disease from preying on diseased pigeons for food. He was also suffused with rat poison for the same reason. Justice for Flaco.) Sherman, naturally, got in some pecks at comic foil Jost, accusing him of having “an underage mistress” while defending her husband’s supposed promiscuity and getting Mr. ScarJo to concede, “Them’s the rules” while explaining that the spouse of a more-famous partner has to accept that they’re going to get serially cheated on. It’s cute. Justice for Flaco.
Recurring Sketch Report
I am happy that this season has largely avoided going back to various wells for sketches, even if “game show” and “talk show” are essentially recurring sketches in themselves.
Political Comedy Report
The more the Trump era of American politics slogs on, the more I think Saturday Night Live is actively-plotting conservatives’ greatest gift. Sure, Jost and Che do their cheeky little Trump jokes, all while making sure to adopt the exact same “aren’t we cute” demeanor to both-sides a situation where one guy is old and the other guy (also old) is an actual, demonstrable existential threat to American democracy. And the Baldwin-to-Johnson transition might be marked by a significant upgrade in the comedic impression quadrant. (James Austin Johnson was hired on the back of his hilariously weird and precise take on the current GOP frontrunner.) But SNL continues to market Donald Trump as a buffoon, when he is in fact a chillingly plausible candidate for the country’s final plunge into kleptocratic, white supremacist, Russian-style (and backed) authoritarianism.
Yeah, I’m a [insert deeply unoriginal MAGA insult stolen from Greg Gutfield and a thousand Twitter bots] but there’s an embarrassment of treasonous, bigoted, sexually predatory, fraudulent, and outright bananas dimwit Trump-ism to pick from when crafting a political sketch. And Saturday Night Live continues to present Trump as a silly little rascal, his weekly outrages fodder for recognition chuckles from an audience seemingly all too happy to nod along with the assessment. This week, Trump is selling Lee Greenwood’s church-and-state melding Bibles, a low-rent stunt that, in an alternate world where “President Donald Trump” is the sick joke it was meant to be, also carries within it myriad satirical possibilities.
Trump the convicted, lifelong bankrupt huckster. Trump the peddler of fraudulent colleges, blinged-out knockoff sneakers and stale frozen meats. Trump the fake Christian pandering to religious zealots. Secretly contemptuous Trump thin-edging his way into white America’s vulnerable wells of internalized bigotry under the guise of fake piety. Trump hawking holy tchotchkes while about to got on trial for cheating on his third wife with a porn star while said wife was recovering from giving birth to the fifth child he never sees. Trump overtly eroding the barriers between christo-fascism and democratic institutions. All on the table and more, all ignored in favor of Johnson being sort of funny lightly swatting the lowest-hanging fruit on the satire tree.
I’m even starting to worry about JAJ’s Trump. He’s gone more gravelly and less drift-y, increasingly abandoning the off-the-tracks thought train that helped Johnson get the job in the first place. Here, his Trump trades digressive sundowning for too-focused joke-reading. Having his Trump engage in asides like, “Sounds like a joke, and in many ways it is,” lends him self-awareness that’s both unthinkable with the actual guy and a dead end comedically. A more committed portrayal wouldn’t cop out with winking so often, as when Johnson’s Trump admits to “pandering.” The actual Trump presumably knows that’s exactly what he’s doing with this latest stunt, but he’d never say it out loud, and having Johnson say it jostles viewers in the ribs while asking for agreement. It’s not satire, it’s tiresome, toothless pandering in its own right.
When the sketch began, with a portentous voiceover setting us up for a big Easter sketch, I was already deflated. This Saturday Night Live is not going to do anything substantially edgy with religion on the eve of the big Christian holy day. When Trump turned out to be the person emerging from that tomb clutching a prop Bible, you could hear the audience click obediently into the sketch’s groove. “We’re going to take you exactly as far as you’re comfortable going and not an inch farther” is not the recipe for meaningful political comedy. That’s SNL for you.
Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings
When Bowen Yang shows up in the last sketch of the night and people think, “Oh, right, I haven’t seen Bowen tonight,” your sketch show is overstaffed. Same goes for the goodnights, when I, spotting those performers who rode the bench unseen, thought, “Oh, hi Molly. Sorry about another show with nothing for you, Punkie and Michael.” I like this cast, even if it’s clear there’s nobody here who can take an episode in their teeth and own it. There are too many people, and the ones there are aren’t front-and-center material, with precious few exceptions. I hate thinking this way, but this offseason needs to see the show making some tough decisions, firing some people, and committing to the search for performers who can steal sketches again.
Apart from Kenan (who is and shall always be Kenan), it’s hard to think of anyone who stood out. Ego played straight-woman. Heidi played straight-woman. Chloe got upstaged by her digital self. Dismukes had a moment or two. Marcello came closest—even if his sketch wasn’t my favorite, I applaud him for running away with this year’s featured player race.
10-to-One Report
Well, this was a 10-to-one sketch so I shouldn’t complain, by my own standards. Low-key to a fault, eccentrically pitched, and bereft of easy hooks, the NPR Tiny Desk concert being shushed by Bowen Yang’s overaged intern and his plan for an elaborate podcast about “AI and rural queers” called Beep-Boop, I’m Gay Now coasts along on Yang’s comic authority, and little else. (I did like the weird detail that JAJ’s drummer Goose immediately apologizes for his sheepish quack catchphrase, assuring the NPR assembled, “My species is human.”) The premise rests on Yang’s Elliott taking over the lucrative radio segment on sheer self-involvement alone, something Bowen is very good at, and the final swerve that Ramy Youssef’s alt rocker is all too happy to give up his big break to improv the podcast’s theme song is at least an ending of sorts. It’s gently strange? Which is at least part of the 10-to-one formula, so I won’t fuss.
Parting Shots
Travis Scott continues to make the case for auto-tune as viable musical instrument. I remain on the fence, sadly.
I did like seeing the robot arms contraption revealed doing its work making the stuttering images in Scott’s second number.
Ramy’s immigrant dad, mocking his son’s choice to live in Brooklyn: “I want to live in the worst place in the best place!”
I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to Jost that his joke about the truck decal (which Trump posted on social media) of a tied up Joe Biden (“You are never being pulled over by a cop”) is referencing American law enforcement’s historical affinity with violent fascism.
I think Michael Che can’t sleep if a show goes by without him making fun of women’s sports.
And speaking of scene-stealers, for better or worse next week’s host is Kristen Wiig, with musical guest Raye.