Saturday Night Live opens with MSNBC’s breaking news report about the downing of the Chinese spy balloon. A Pentagon official (Kenan Thompson) joins the news desk and fields questions, including how it breached US airspace (“The balloon was somehow able to get past our west coast anti-balloon defense system, the Seattle Space Needle”).
Later, the balloon itself (Bowen Yang) joins the show from the ocean, very bitter about his treatment (“I entertain you people for four days, and then get shot by Biden? I can’t believe I was Joe’s Osama!”) and Americans’ hypocrisy over surveillance (“Everyone’s being surveilled constantly, but it’s always ‘Shoot the balloon!’ and never ‘Unplug Alexa!’”). A frothy bit of silliness befitting a story that’s been blown way out of proportion (no pun intended).
Pedro Pascal hosts for the first time. The Last of Us star talks about starring in big franchise hits like Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian (“The other day, a guy stopped me on the street and said, ‘My son loves the Mandalorian,’ and the next thing I know, I’m Facetiming a six-year-old who has no idea who I am because my character wears a mask for the entire show”), his Chilean upbringing (“Every day, someone in Santiago will text me stuff like, ‘Will you come to my wedding?’, or “Will you sing my priest happy birthday?’, or ‘Is Baby Yoda mean in real life?’”), and early roles in Law & Order, including one where he played a Hasidic Jew. The actor briefly chokes up talking about how his parents fled the Pinochet government when he was just a baby. Clearly, he’s passionate about his role as host.
The Big Hollywood Quiz is a game show where contestants compete in showbiz-based trivia. Early questions about All About Eve and Mash prove easy, but once we get to the entertainment of the 2020s, such as Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia, Apple TV’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, and the Oscar-nominated Women Talking and To Leslie, everyone is completely stumped. A very clever and incisive look at the how the streaming age has left a giant, empty crater in the center of America’s popular culture.
Hoping to emulate the success of The Last of Us, HBO turns another popular video game into a prestige drama with a dour, dystopian spin on Mario Kart. Boasting some grand CGI (by SNL standards), it’s a decent piss-take on the host’s new hit series, as well as the tired trend of grim-and-gritty reboots and reimaginings, although the show did it better three years ago with the Grouch (Joker parody) trailer.
Next, Pascal plays a coma patient who’s just woken up after a miraculous recovery sporting a new, fey voice (“an LA mush-mouth thing”) and an entirely new personality. He doesn’t recognize any of his friends or family, but the doctor is convinced that he’s fine since he can answer confusing riddles and questions about Ken dolls and Bill Burr. It’s all built around Pascal’s silly voice, which, to be fair, he fully commits to, although he and the cast start breaking towards the end.
At a high school assembly, Pascal’s popular teacher, Mr Ben, gives a presentation on student technology use, begging the kids to stop making obsessive fancams dedicated to him. He’s confused by all the new lingo – “You’re in your assembly era,” “You’re father,” “mid” – means, although he comes around after his girlfriend and fellow teacher (a cameoing Sarah Paulson) shows up towards the end and embraces it. SNL never comes off more desperate than when it attempts to ape modern-day online-speak, although there have been worse offenders than this example (see: the hospital sketch from Elon Musk’s episode of two seasons past).
A commercial for Wing Pit promotes a Super Bowl Sunday deal that grows more and more extravagant, disgusting and destructive, culminating with “The Chick-nobyl: 5,000 wings, 10,000 beaks, a full palette of hot sauce, airdropped ranch, two of the sickest, saddest celery sticks you’ve ever seen, all pumped into your party via cement shoot.” By the end of it, we’re in full-blown horror movie territory. Fast, weird and funny, this is one of the best sketches they’ve done this season.
We’re then on to Weekend Update, where Michael Che invites on Punxsutawney Phil (Michael Longfellow in a full-body groundhog costume) to talk about the next six weeks of winter. Phil seems down about his place in the world these days: “A weather-predicting groundhog in the year 2023? I’m useless. I’m like a condom in Nick Cannon’s wallet.” His depression takes an existential bent, with him contemplating environmental disaster and the concept of time, in between offering Che a “bump”, vaping and defending his infidelity (“I’m not a bad groundhog,” he says, “I just like good beaver”).
Later, British rappers Milly Pounds (James Austin Johnson) and Shirty (Devon Walker) come on and drop some confusing bars about the Royal family. The audience is noticeably dead for the segment, probably because they, like most of the viewers on this side of the pond, simply aren’t familiar enough with British rap to get what the joke is (count me as one such viewer).
Then, Pascal dons drag to play a feisty Latina mother meeting her son’s (Marcello Hernandez) new girlfriend (Chloe Fineman) for the first time. She’s very possessive and disapproving, until the girl offers to say grace, at which point she completely turns around on her. The corny, culture-class humor here is indistinguishable from what you’d find in any primetime sitcom, but Pascal’s energy is infectious.
A group of female friends out for dinner at an Italian restaurant are charmed by the flirty waiters, except for Sarah Sherman’s diner, who the staff passive-aggressively puts down in increasingly cruel ways (going so far as to mistake her for The Babadook). It’s humorous throughout – especially Sherman’s offended reactions – although it loses the thread in its back-half.
Things close out on a dinner party that repurposes the set from the previous sketch. A birthday girl’s difficult sister (Ego Nwodim) mistakes a friend’s politeness for sexual interest, while making a mess of their table trying to saw through her “well, well, well done” steak. Things go off the rails almost immediately, with everyone breaking and talking over one another. Fair play to Nwodim, she is very funny, but it’s all so messy as to be impossible to follow.
This episode was all over the place, with many of the individual sketches being uneven within themselves. But it hit some high notes – the game show sketch and hot wings commercial – and Pascal proved himself a very entertaining and likeable host. He’s someone the show would do well to bring back, and with the right material, he could go on to become a returning favorite.