With Election Day Looming, a Michael Keaton-led Saturday Night Live Spins Its Tires
Photo courtesy of NBC
If anything about Saturday Night Live is true, it’s that the show loves to have Michael Keaton host during an anniversary season. 10 years ago, as SNL’s 40th season was nearing its conclusion, Keaton stopped by for the 17th episode and brought the house down—delivering one of the most memorable monologues of the last decade. Back then, Keaton was in Studio 8H promoting his new (and eventual) Oscar-winning film Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance); this time, a little sequel flick called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is sweeping across theaters.
Last night marked Keaton’s fourth hosting appearance, and he’s the first “classic host” to return for the show’s 50th season. Personally, I still think “Bobby Watches Grandma” is an all-time underrated ‘90s skit in the show’s pantheon. Keaton is the kind of actor you want hosting, because he—despite not being a member of the Five Timers’ Club—goes 100% and buys into the very sentimentality that has kept the lights on at SNL for five decades. What’s special about Keaton is that he was an actor who hosted the show before he broke big in Hollywood; his first hosting stint was in Season 7, six years before he’d star in She’s Having a Baby, Beetlejuice and Batman all in a matter of 20 months. There’s something magical in that, as there is something magical in the fact that musical guest Billie Eilish made her own fourth appearance on the show last night. Keaton’s best SNL attributes have always been his ability to service the sketches without pulling the attention off the cast surrounding him. So, how good was his fourth stop at Studio 8H?
Well, as a wise cue-card says…
“Live from New York…”
We are just 16 days away from the presidential election, so it should have been no surprise that we got another helping of Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris last night—this time in the form of a Fox News interview the vice president held earlier in the week. A familiar face—Alec Baldwin—guest stars as journalist (and deplorable scumbag) Bret Baier, a “businessman made in Minecraft” and a “Legoman,” probing Harris about her penchant for viral moments and playing incorrect video clips of Trump. Baier’s attempts to goad Harris into saying something he and his cronies can use in baseless attacks is met with a stern rebuttal, and a “Ja’Biden”- and Megalopolis-quoting Harris says something that could be a good thesis statement for the show’s cold opens this season: “The pleasure is none of ours.”
The sketch pokes fun at Trump’s recent “enemy from within” attacks (and Fox News’ cut-and-paste clip manipulation that, in real life, Harris denounced swiftly), having the former president cite Big, Freaky Friday and Hannah Montana and then dance vigorously to gay anthems like “It’s Raining Men” and “YMCA.” We get some LOL-worthy bits from Trump (James Austin Johnson), like “They said I was ‘threatening’—not true. I would never threaten anything except, perhaps, violence” and “America is a terrible place full of jerks and idiots, but we love it—it’s really bad,” but we also get him shouting “Scarface!” after mentioning that he’s been investigated more times than Al Capone, only to mention that Al Pacino nearly died from the great hoax of COVID-19. Just like last week, JAJ does an incredible job capturing Trump’s non-linear, non-sensical ramblings—weaving through conspiracy theories with ease.
If you’ve been sticking with me through these reviews this season, then you already know that I despise Dana Carvey’s tiring Joe Biden impression. It’s a one-note, one-catchphrase bit that hopelessly goes nowhere each time Carvey comes onto the screen. What this week’s cold open made clear is that, no matter how annoying and exhausting Alec Baldwin was when he was an every-other-week guest star as Trump five years ago, he remains one of the best non-cast members SNL has ever made a regular—even if his presence this week meant that a cast member lost out on air time, which is still, begrudgingly, a shadow lingering over Season 50.
“You look mahvelous!”
There’s a first time for everything, and last night marked the first time all season that the best sketch of the episode was a pre-recorded bit—all thanks to Please Don’t Destroy, who finally made their first appearance of the season. The bit—John Higgins and Martin Herlihy celebrating their birthday by going skydiving—finds the troupe stepping out of their office and onto a plane 10,000 feet in the air. Ben Marshall, who plays the skydiving instructor, can’t stop talking about all the bad vibes he’s getting (“I just have a weird feeling in my stomach,” “Luck’s not on my side”). The other instructor (Keaton) just lost custody of his kids (“Maybe there’s just a small part of me that always wanted to die”), and the pilot (Emil Wakim) is watching a “how to fly” TikTok on his first day on the job.
It’s a shame that the audience didn’t seem too keen on this one in the moment, because it exemplifies exactly what Please Don’t Destory do best: absurdity unfolding across a seemingly high-stakes situation. A grandpa-shaped apparition appears in a selfie, while Herlihy declares his romantic love for a reluctant and spooked-out Higgins before kissing him on the cheek. “We’re jumping into the unknown,” Marshall says. “That’s why we do this, to figure out who we really are.” Then, as he and Higgins are about to jump, their parachute deploys prematurely and they get sucked out of the cabin and into the plane’s turbine. It’s good to have the boys back.
“Yipee! Jerry Rubin died last week.”
Well, Update was Update—a Trump-heavy first half of the segment, since the election is two weeks away and all. Wakim made his Update Desk debut, commenting on the election as a child of Lebanese immigrants and riffing on his upbringing as a Christian Arab. “We’re like Black dudes with anime backpacks,” Wakim quipped, received with a level of applause Michael Che would get after making one of his infamous anti-women jokes. Just moments later, Wakim’s final joke bombs horrendously—only for him to recover by saying Colin Jost wrote that joke for him. It was a promising moment for the new cast member, showcasing his ability to stand up straight in a high-pressure situation. Jost’s reaction to the misdirection solidified the move. Game recognizes game.
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