Cold Open: A Visit with Santa
A department store Santa (Kenan Thompson) receives some unusual questions.
• This was a mixed bag. While I admire the fact that they didn’t have another cold open with Baldwin’s Trump, this was only slightly better.
• When this originally aired, some of the child actors messed up their lines. Kenan was able to coach them on, which shows you how much experience he has with child actors. After all, he used to be one himself. The version of this sketch that’s online uses the dress rehearsal instead. Big surprise there.
• Sadly, one of the children here (the girl who asks about Trump) would pass away from asthma a couple years later.
• I can’t stand McKinnon’s character and the way she smugly delivers that line about Trump’s female accusers.
• I did get a chuckle out of that one kid asking about Matt Lauer’s sex toys. But, once again, this was a perfect opportunity to call out Al Franken which they brushed aside.
2.5/5
Monologue (feat. Jonah Hill, Steve Martin, and Seth Rogen)
James Franco takes questions from the audience.
• Last week we had a musical monologue, and this week, we get the other commonly overused type of monologue; a questions from the audience monologue. My brain hurts.
• This was obviously written by Colin Jost, who loves using celebrity cameos as a crutch for sketches. He thinks that by featuring a lot of celebrity cameos, it will distract the audience from the bad writing. “Hey look! It’s Steve Martin! Look! It’s Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill! Please laugh now!” (EDIT: No, this wasn’t written by Jost. I don’t know where I got that info from.)
• As forced as his appearance is, it was nice to see Steve Martin again. Hey SNL, when are you gonna let him host again?
2/5
Sketch: Sexual Harassment Charlie
Two longtime employees are fired for sexual abuse accusations, but the women of the workplace place all their hatred on Doug (Franco), rather than the front desk guy, Charlie (Thompson), and his creepier escapades.
• SNL tries to say something about the rampant sexual abuse allegations in America, but fails miserably. The show received outrage for this sketch, and rightfully so.
• Basically, the problem I have with this sketch is how the rather minor things that Doug did are blown out of proportion by the female workers, while Charlie’s extremely disturbing actions get ignored. Oh, but they have Doug point this out in the sketch, so that makes it okay, right? No, it doesn’t. It shows that they know what the problem is, but they won’t do anything about it.
• That being said, I did laugh at all of the things Charlie says he did. Too bad it doesn’t make the rest of the sketch any better.
2/5
Sketch: Gift Wrap
A gift wrapper (Franco) at Bloomingdale’s cuts his finger.
• Well, this came out of nowhere. This right here is a candidate for one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.
• SNL has done sketches like this before, most notably that one with Dan Aykroyd as Julia Child back in the 70s. That one was actually funny, because the old writers knew how to restrain the shock comedy without it being too gross. But those days are long gone, and now, all shock comedy has to be over the top and in your face.
• Leslie Jones later revealed that she almost threw up when Franco spat the fake blood in her face. She’s certainly braver than I would have been in that situation. I give major props to her.
• In the live show, Franco screwed up the effect where he cuts his leg off at the end by taking out the fake leg too early. This was also fixed in the online version by using the dress rehearsal.
1/5
Film: Scrudge
A film shows what it would be like if Scrooge (whose name they spell “Scrudge” for some reason) came to a Christmas party.
• If you needed further proof that SNL doesn’t know how to make films these days, look no further than this sketch, While it had an interesting concept, they ruined it by making this sketch as boring as possible.
1/5
Sketch: Spelling Bee
A spelling bee moderator reveals how messed up his childhood was through his definitions of words.
• This sketch was a slight rise in quality. While nowhere near classic material, it’s better than most of the other stuff we’ve seen in this show so far. Sadly, this is the high point of the night.
• Franco runs away with this sketch with his performance as the moderator. Best part: his definition of “little pig boy”.
4/5
Musical Performance: Sza - “The Weekend”
• Ehh, this wasn’t too memorable, especially compared to the U2 stuff from the last episode.
2/5
Weekend Update (feat. Cathy Anne)
• Man, this was an awful news segment. None of the headlines made me laugh at all. Not a good sign.
• The show finally references Al Franken through a guest commentary by Cathy Anne. Whoever this Cathy Anne character is, she didn’t win me over, because none of what she said was funny. This was yet another good chance to call out Al Franken, but they only threw softball jokes at the subject.
• Next, they try to spice things up by having Michael Che go “undercover” as a liberal white woman, via a short film. As if the episode couldn’t get any worse, they have the balls to copy Eddie Murphy’s classic “White Like Me” sketch, in which he goes undercover as a white man. It’s a little surprising to see SNL skewering liberals, but, of course, they do nothing with it. A total waste of time and money.
1/5
Sketch: Za
Franco gets confused about the musical guest.
• Ummmm....what was the point of this one? The only joke here is that pizza and Sza kind of sound similar. Did someone have a few too many when they wrote this?
• This sketch gives me bad memories of the Peter Saarsgard episode from Season 31, where they had no less than two sketches solely dedicated to how funny his name is. It didn’t work then, and it still doesn’t work here.
• Of course, the media ate this sketch up. Proving, once again, that they have no taste in comedy.
1/5
Film: Christmas Charity
• Booooriiiiing! This kind of saccharine bullshit doesn’t belong on SNL, it belongs in a Hallmark movie.
1/5
Unfortunately, I can’t review the rest of the episode because I turned it off after the lame Christmas Charity film.
Best Sketches: Spelling Bee, Charlie’s comments in Sexual Harassment Charlie, Steve Martin’s cameo, and the comment about Matt Lauer in A Visit with Santa
Worst Sketches: Most of Sexual Harassment Charlie, McKinnon’s comment about Trump’s accusers in A Visit with Santa, Gift Wrap, Scrudge, Za, Weekend Update, Christmas Charity
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