Farewell to SNL (Part 2)

 So, now that I’ve gotten my history with the show out of the way, let’s talk about the highs and lows of my reviews.

Worst Episodes I’ve Ever Reviewed

Martin Short/Hozier (Season 50): Ugh, talk about a major disappointment. I was looking forward to this one because Martin Short is one of my idols and every other time he’s hosted has been awesome. Instead, what I got was a never ending parade of memberberries, rehashed sketches, and, worst of all, Melissa McCarthy’s fat ugly face.

Chris Rock/Megan Thee Stallion (Season 46): The first episode back in the studio after the pandemic hit…and it’s a giant load of ass. You know it’s bad when the only thing that raised so much as a smile from me was when Kate McKinnon got hit in the face in one sketch.

Will Ferrell/King Princess (Season 45): 2019 will forever be marked as the death of Will Ferrell’s career. Not only did his awful film Holmes and Watson win four Razzies, but he also starred in this Godawful piece of shit episode. It could have been just the thing people needed to wash the taste of Holmes and Watson out of our mouths, but instead, Will played second fiddle to a bunch of unnecessary cameos, cameos which actively took up too much time from the show, forcing them to cut out the best sketch of the night. As for the stuff that remained…well, I never want to see that Thanksgiving sketch ever again.

Ariana DeBose/Bleachers (Season 47): The only reason I’m putting this one here is because of one single moment that almost made me want to break the TV. I’m talking about that hideous Elmo commentary that Chloe Fineman did on Update. To this day, it remains the single worst thing I have ever seen at the desk. Yep, even worse than Baby Yoda and The Movie Guy.

Ryan Gosling/Chris Stapleton (Season 49): They should have called this one “Gigglefest 2024”, because that’s all everyone did for 75% of the episode. It all culminated with that stupid, unfunny, overrated Beavis and Butt-head sketch which lasted way longer than it needed to because of all the laughing and caused the highly-anticipated Papyrus II sketch to get cut. 

Amy Schumer/Steve Lacey (Season 48): Nepotism sure is fun, isn’t it? Without it, there’s no way this unfunny, plagiaristic fatass would ever have a career. Normally, the episodes she’s hosted have been fairly unremarkable. But this one reaches a whole new level of crap. In particular, there’s a “joke” she does in her monologue where she insults people with Asperger’s syndrome like myself. That moment right there set a bad tone for the rest of the episode, which was full of some atrocious material.

What’s the worst episode I’ve ever reviewed, you ask? You probably knew this was coming…

Elon Musk/Miley Cyrus (Season 46): Without a doubt, this remains one of the lowest points in SNL history. When you’re making the Paul Reiser episode from Season 20 look like a masterpiece, you know it’s bad. Musk himself was a bland, uncharismatic host, but it didn’t help that he had to star in shit like “Gen Z Hospital”, or…*sigh*…that downright hideous Wario sketch…which is one of the worst things I have ever seen on television.

Now let’s look at some of the worst sketches I’ve ever reviewed. I’ll be going through these in seasonal order…

Season 43

Aer Lingus (from Saiorse Ronan): Five minutes of bad Irish stereotypes.

Season 44

Kavanaugh Hearings (from Adam Driver): Taking up airtime with pointless celebrity cameos sure is fun!!!

Bayou Benny’s Liberal Lagniappe (from Seth Meyers): Did you know that people from Louisiana talk funny? That’s the joke! 

Cuban Vacation (from Seth Meyers): Heidi and Seth keep saying “Cooba” over and over and that’s pretty much it.

Season 45

Stargazing (from Kristin Stewart): The only joke here is “durr, the constellations look like they’re having sex!!!” NBC must have thought this sketch was awful too, because it isn’t on YouTube.

The First Thanksgiving (from Will Ferrell): I already briefly mentioned this one earlier, but this has to be one of SNL’s worst attempts at satire ever. I’m still baffled by it all these years later.

White Male Rage commentary (from Adam Driver): Melissa’s Update commentaries were never her strong suit, but the negative reaction this one got from certain sides of the political spectrum is what I believe to be the start of her downfall on the show. She never had the best airtime before this, but in her remaining two seasons, she was lucky enough to even appear in an episode.

Season 46

Vice-Presidential Debate (from Bill Burr): This was the absolute low point of SNL’s election coverage that year. When a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head during the actual debate, there was no way SNL could have avoided talking about that. So, what did they do? They had Fire Marshal Biden inexplicably teleport himself to the debate and it turns into a parody of The Fly for no reason. That is an actual idea that someone came up with for the show. I cannot think of any other debate sketch that comes close to this one in terms of suckage.

Headless Horseman (from John Mulaney): SNL wastes an elaborate set for an extremely juvenile premise…does the Headless Horseman ever use his head to suck his own dick??? Yeah. That’s the joke.

Mario Moments (from Dave Chappelle): Ball jokes are so funny, right guys? Let’s keep doing them for an entire sketch so nobody notices how blatant our product placement is!!!

A Kamala Harris Unity Seder (from Maya Rudolph): All of the Kamala simping this show did was embarrassing as fuck. Until the cameo she made this past season, this was the worst example of the trend, in which she and her husband (Martin Short wasted yet again) host some kind of TV special at their house, and is treated in the most kiss-ass way.

Wario Trial (from Elon Musk): No comment.

Season 47

Squid Game (from Rami Malek): Hey, guys! Squid Game is getting popular, right? Let’s do a shitty song cashing in on it without bothering to understand the show’s message!

Goober the Clown commentary (from Kieran Culkin): Cecily dresses up as a clown and repeatedly dodges the subject of abortion while doing clown things.

Cruz Street (from Jonathan Majors): A right-leaning version of Sesame Street where the joke is that Republicans are KUH-RAYZEE!!!!!

Elmo commentary (from Ariana DeBose): Chloe Fineman is unfunny.

MacGruber (from Will Forte): SNL ruins MacGruber by turning him into a crazy right-wing conspiracy theorist who rejects vaccination and drinks bleach.

Roe vs Wade (from Benedict Cumberbatch): The point they’re trying to make here is that we’d be stuck in medieval times without abortion…or something.

Johnny Depp Trial (from Selena Gomez): Once again, SNL tries and fails to take on a popular news story. In this case, they spend the whole time making juvenile poopy jokes.

Season 48

Grimace (from Miles Teller): Aren’t bisexuals funny, guys???

Joker (from Jack Harlow): Five minutes of the cast constantly saying “Joker” over and over in annoying accents.

Tammy the Trucker commentary (from Amy Schumer): Cecily does a pointless sequel to the clown commentary, but this time she’s a trucker!!!!!

Avatar (from Aubrey Plaza): Boy, those lesbians sure are funny!

Garrett From Hinge (from Travis Kelce): Probably the worst character Bowen has ever done, and this is the same guy who created “Bottle Boi”.

Season 49

Wired Autocomplete Interview (from Pete Davidson): Pete is humiliated for pooping his pants on the airplane. Was this a rejected Jonah Hill sketch?

George Santos cold open (from Emma Stone): I really fucking hate Bowen Yang.

Antisemitism Hearings (from Adam Driver): SNL tries to comment on the bungled response to antisemitism on college campuses, but instead makes the sketch about how WACKY Elise Stefanik is.

ABBA Christmas (from Kate McKinnon): Four of my least favorite cast members take a dump all over classic ABBA songs.

Dune Popcorn Bucket (from Ayo Edebiri): The sketch that marked the beginning of Marcello’s downfall, a pointless meme-referencing song that literally nobody liked.

Hypnotist (from Ayo Edebiri): Some kid who dresses like Julia Sweeney is hypnotized into revealing that he is bisexual. Once again, what does this show have against bisexuals????

Moulin Rouge (from Josh Brolin): More annoying Bowen shenanigans, this time in a parody of a movie that came out 25 years ago!

Beavis and Butt-Head (from Ryan Gosling): The media just went crazy for this sketch for some reason, even though it was just an inferior rewrite of a sketch from six seasons prior.

Doctors (from Ryan Gosling): Bowen and Ryan Gosling waste time by cracking each other up.

Good Morning Greenville (from Dua Lipa): SNL tries to get media attention by doing a sketch about Drake vs. Kendrick. It fails.

British Cavemen (from Maya Rudolph): In which Maya and several others make noises that sound like they have special needs.

Coffee Commercial (from Maya Rudolph): Maya keeps farting. That’s it.

Season 50

Moo Deng commentary (from Jean Smart): Bowen dresses up as a hippo and gets water squirted on him. No further comment needed.

Talk Talk (from Jean Smart): Bowen dresses up in drag and hosts a talk show. No further comment needed.

Both Sàbado Gigante sketches (from Nate Bargatze and Martin Short): Marcello parodies a long-cancelled show because his fangirls will eat up anything he does.

All three Domingo sketches (from Ariana Grande, Charli XCX, and the 50th Anniversary Special): Another annoying Marcello character, except this one randomly blew up on TikTok, to the point that he was getting harassed in real life to do the routine.

Family Bonds (from John Mulaney): A pointless sequel to one of my favorite sketches ever, made even worse when Kenan hijacks it with his overused mugging routine.

Spotify Wrapped (from Paul Mescal): Some ugly fat woman named Trisha Paytas makes an appearance in this Jimmy Fowlie “masterpiece”.

Five-Timer’s Club (from Martin Short): Nine minutes of circle-jerking over how awesome it is to take screentime away from the cast.

Parking Lot (from Martin Short): A perfectly serviceable sketch from Season 48 is rehashed, except this time we have Melissa McCarthy rubbing her fugly face against the window.

Drone commentary (from Martin Short): Bowen acts like an annoying queen while dressed up as a fucking drone.

Nosferatu commentary (from Dave Chappelle): I can’t believe I used to like Sarah Sherman. 

AI Software (from Timothee Chalamet): Timothee and Bowen do annoying things while everyone keeps explaining the “jokes”.

New York Musical (from the 50th Anniversary Special): I’ve hated every single one of these Mulaney Musical sketches, but this one is the absolute worst. It was way too long and had several extremely annoying moments, such as TWO women in drag!

Both Movie Guy commentaries (from Shane Gillis and Walter Goggins): Yet another character from Marcello where the joke is that Hispanic people talk funny.

Mother’s Day (from Walter Goggins): A heartwarming Mother’s Day message is ruined by Trump interrupting it with his unfunny rambling routine again.

Tiny Baby Shoe (from Walter Goggins): Jane Wickline attempts to recreate the success of “The Wishin’ Boot”, but fails because she is a horrible singer and the song isn’t funny.

Service Dogs (from Walter Goggins): PLEASE LAUGH AT THE CUTE DOGS!!!!!

Elevator (from Scarlett Johansson): What if Mike Myers and Kanye West had an awkward conversation with each other??? Too bad SNL already did this premise 20 years ago!!!!

Victorian Ladies At Lunch (from Scarlett Johansson): The final sketch I ever reviewed…and it’s about Victorian women eating disgusting shit.

Farewell to SNL (Part 1)

 My History with SNL

The Beginning

When I was young, the only exposure I had to sketch comedy was via children’s shows such as The Amanda Show and All That. Looking back at them, a lot of the humor has aged poorly (and is downright pedophilic in some places), but they were a great launching point.

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about Saturday Night Live, but I do remember the first episode I ever saw. From what I remember, my mom and dad were watching clips from the Taylor Swift episode a day after it aired. My brother and I noticed Kenan in some of the clips, and we marveled at the fact that someone we grew up with on Nickelodeon had made it to the big leagues. I can also remember watching clips from the Jennifer Lopez episode around that time as well, and I remember the hoopla surrounding Betty White’s hosting appearance, but that was about it.

Becoming a Fan

Several years passed before I ever thought about SNL again. My true first steps towards becoming a fan of the show came when we all watched the 40th anniversary special when it first aired. I also taped a rerun of the first episode that aired the night before. 

Then, in 2017, I discovered Stooge and Bronwyn Douwsma’s excellent blogs. These were the final catalyst towards my becoming a huge fan of SNL. I started watching regularly beginning with the Saiorse Ronan episode, and I’ve never looked back. By that time, the show was balls-deep in the Trumpwin era with all of the gratuitous cameos and shit. This was a very different show from what I had witnessed just a couple years earlier, but that didn’t matter. I was able to find copies of older episodes to watch.

This brings us to the matter of my own blog. When I started it back in 2016, I just posted whatever the fuck I thought was interesting. But I thought it needed something of more substance, so, after getting inspired by all of the SNL review blogs I was by now very familiar with, I decided to write my own! 

History of My Reviews

Looking back at my oldest reviews, all I can do is cringe. They were written at a time when I had just graduated from high school, and it shows. While I’ve gone back and touched up some of my reviews after posting them to fix things, I’ve mostly left those ones alone to show how far I’ve come.

As the Trump era continued to get worse, so did my sanity while watching it. A lot of my reviews from Season 45 (the first one I watched in full) are full of me getting overdramatic for little to no reason. Example: the J.J. Watt episode, where I spent a large amount of time whining about the numerous sex jokes. This was also when COVID hit, and that also put a damper on my ability to focus on the show.

I nearly contemplated ending my reviews after Season 46, because it was just so awful. I had reached my breaking point with Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, who still rank among my least favorite cast members of all time. But then, something happened to the show that made me want to stick around…

When I first read about the new additions to the cast for Season 47, I didn’t think much of it initially. We had just come off of Lauren Holt getting fired after a single season of underuse, so what was stopping the show from doing that again with these guys? And then I saw the season premiere…and a certain big-nosed impressionist from Tennessee started to win me over with his solid performances. You know who I’m talking about, right? The one, the only, James Austin Johnson. 

Thanks to him and fellow newbie Sarah Sherman, as well as the new shorts from Please Don’t Destroy, this season had a much fresher atmosphere than the previous few. I can honestly say that Season 47 was the most fun I’ve had reviewing a season.

Alas, it didn’t stay that way for long. Season 48 was looking promising with the arrival of FOUR newbies. Unfortunately, a lot of the material came off as half-assed, and formerly reliable cast members like Kenan and Heidi started getting on my nerves. We’ll never know for sure if it could have gotten better as it went along, because it ended early due to a writer’s strike.

In Season 49, things only got worse. After the Christmas break, it just…fell apart for whatever reason. We saw an increase in the amount of rehashed sketches, pointless cameos, and an odd focus on trashy Internet culture (courtesy of everyone’s “favorite” writer Jimmy Fowlie). It was during this season that I began having thoughts about ending my reviews, but I wanted to give the show another chance for its fiftieth anniversary…boy, was I stupid…

Season 50

I made the decision before starting Season 50 that it would be the end for me, but that my opinion might change if the season turned out to be good. These hopes were quickly dashed when I saw the endless parade of cameos in the first few episodes, all culminating in a pathetic, last-minute appearance from Kamala Harris in the John Mulaney episode that may have cost her the election. 

The actual sketches didn't help much, either. We've gone back to the Season 29/30 route of basing a lot of them on trashy pop culture. I'm talking about shit like the Charli XCX talk show sketch in the premiere or that one where Trisha Paytas showed up for no reason. Oh, and I can't forget about all of the pathetic simping towards the TikTok audience when they brought back Domingo only FOUR episodes after he first debuted.

The Martin Short episode was when it truly set in for me that this season was never going to get better. So many baffling decisions here, including the decision to sideline most of the cast in favor of pointless cameos. 

There was a brief rise in quality around the time of the anniversary special, but this was short lived, and we quickly went back to everything sucking. That’s when I decided once and for all that this season would be my last.