Cold Open
Donald Trump holds a press conference outside near a noisy helicopter.
• Blah. Please give this impression a rest.
1/5
Monologue
Will Ferrell’s monologue is interrupted when he notices Ryan Reynolds in the audience.
• This actually started off on a somewhat heartwarming note with Will reminiscing about his time on the show, but everything came to a screeching halt when they cut to Reynolds in the audience. Yet another celebrity wankfest, ladies and gentlemen.
• Tracy Morgan also shows up, muttering some shit about “the prophecy” or whatever. Who cares, this monologue sucks.
1/5
Fake Commercial: Heinz Relax
A father (Ferrell) deals with a noisy ketchup bottle at Thanksgiving dinner.
• When the very first joke in this sketch turned out to be a fart joke, I immediately knew I was in for a rough ride. Then the fart jokes continued, and I wanted to kill myself.
• Ferrell tries his damndest, but not even he can save this one-joke garbage.
1/5
Sketch: Democratic Debate
• Looks like Season 30 has some competition for the worst political season ever.
• I haven’t given you my thoughts on most of the candidate impressions before, so, take a look below...
• The Warren stuff was McKinnon’s usual unfunny shtick, so, not much to say there.
• Ugggh, Maya Rudolph continues to get on my nerves with her awful Kamala Harris impression. The mugging and social media jokes were ramped up to a horrid degree in this one. At least she didn’t sing, though.
• I’ll be perfectly honest here. I can’t stand Larry David at all. Sure, he helped create Seinfeld, and he was great on Fridays, but he is one of the most annoying people in the whole world. I don’t care how much he looks and sounds like Bernie, the material sucks, and they’re not even poking fun at him here.
• Colin’s Buttigieg is tolerable because he isn’t trying to sound like the real thing.
• It saddens me that the only recognition Rachel Dratch gets these days are these awful Amy Klobuchar bits. She doesn’t really look or sound like the real thing, but she tries her best.
• Usually, the only good thing about these debate sketches is Joe Biden (played here for the last time by Woody Harrelson). He did not disappoint here, especially the part about Neil Patrick Harris.
• Chris Redd’s Cory Booker is kinda bland. But that may be because Booker himself is kind of a bland candidate.
• Bowen Yang’s impression of Andrew Yang (no relation) is the same as all of his other roles: gay.
• Ferrell debuts an impression of Tom Steyer. He has the voice and look down, the only problem is that they forgot to make him say anything funny.
• Fred Armisen returns as Michael Bloomberg. Back when Fred was on the show, they used to make him up to look more like the real deal. Here, he just looks like Fred Armisen in a wig. What the hell happened?
• Cecily Strong as Tulsi Gabbard is yet another impression that looks nothing like who they’re trying to portray. And what’s the deal with them portraying her as some sort of supervillain?
• TLDR: This sketch sucked. What’s next?
1.5/5
Sketch: The First Thanksgiving
John Smith comes over for dinner with Pocahontas’ family.
• Oh, no. I’ve gotta review this one now? Might as well...
• Make no mistake. I fucking hated this sketch. I hate everything about it. The writers try to say something about prejudice, but fail miserably, in one of the worst sketches I’ve ever seen.
• The worst offense it commits is trying to connect everything to the Trump administration, because ORANGE MAN BAD!!! What’s that? He didn’t exist in 1609? Fuck you, we’re doing it anyway!
• The Trump parallels are so embarrassingly obvious. As soon as Will’s character said that he hopes the chief “builds that wall”, I immediately knew where the rest of this was headed. Then it gets even more embarrassing when he reveals that he gets his news from...a fox. GET IT? ‘CAUSE TRUMP GETS ALL HIS NEWS FROM FOX NEWS!!! DUH-HUH, WE’RE SO FUNNY!!!! And in case you didn’t get it, he says that the rest of the family gets their news from a peacock. LIKE NBC!!!! GET IT??!!!???
• Oh, and the way this resolves itself is beyond atrocious. John Smith becomes friendly with them after they talk about the similarities between their poop. I am not even kidding.
• To put the capper on a truly wretched sketch, Will ends the sketch by delivering an awful, awful speech. He even takes the time to point out how they had white actors playing Indians in the sketch. Sorry, Will, but that still won’t save you from the PC Squad.
-5/5
Sketch: Party Song
Two teenagers (Cecily Strong and Mikey Day) rap about how their teacher (Ferrell) came to their house party.
•Why do all of the short films this season have to be musical? Even worse, why are they all rap?!!??
• I liked Mikey Day’s performance, but this was another complete waste of time.
1.5/5
Sketch: Bertucci’s Pizza
An ad for pizza doesn’t go as planned
• They did a sketch like this the last time Will hosted. That one was okay, but did they really need to bring it back?
• Unsurprisingly, this was nowhere near as good as the first one.
2/5
Musical Performance: “1950”
Weekend Update (featuring The Guy Who Just Bought A Boat and The Guy Who Knows The Owner)
• One of the very first jokes is a random SpongeBob reference. HOW DO YOU DO, FELLOW KIDS?
• For whatever reason, Colin Jost found that joke so funny that he started laughing. Is it sad that I miss Jimmy Fallon?
• Right after this, we get a joke about Mike Pence’s fear of “being tied to other men”. Get it? ‘Cause he hates gays!!! Yawn.
• Awful montage of Trump asking reporters to speak up, edited together to make it look like he has hearing problems. The Democrats love going after Trump for sharing “edited videos”, but it’s perfectly fine when they do it, apparently.
• I really hate this Guy Who Just Bought A Boat character. I don’t get what the joke is with him at all. This time, they make it even more tedious by bringing out Ryan Reynolds as “The Guy Who Knows The Owner”, because, you know, having one Ryan Reynolds cameo wasn’t enough! Now we gotta bring him out again to keep our audience from falling asleep!
0/5 (not a single laugh in this one)
Sketch: Cinema Classics
Reese De’What presents an alternate ending from The Wizard of Oz.
• As I explained in my second John Mulaney review, I really hate this recurring sketch. Imagine my annoyed reaction when I saw it pop up again in this episode.
• It’s shocking how bad the celebrity impersonations are in this sketch. Kate McKinnon uses her stock “Southern belle” accent for Dorothy (Judy Garland wasn’t even from the South), and Beck Bennett’s Bert Lahr is particularly horrendous. One of my biggest problems with the current cast is how awful their impressions are, and it was on full display in this sketch.
• The sketch itself was even worse than usual. It’s just a bunch of midget jokes about the Munchkins, ending with a reference to that annoying rumor about the Munchkin who hung himself.
• I will give them credit for not making any “gay people love Judy Garland” jokes, but that’s just faint praise at this point. Hopefully this is the last we’ll see of this sketch.
0/5
Musical Performance: “Hit the Back”
Sketch: Ventriloquist
Wally Culpepper (Ferrell) and his dummy Chippy perform at a club.
• I thought this sketch had a lot of potential (let’s face it, ventriloquist dummies are funny). Unfortunately for me, this sketch was nothing but a bunch of lame jokes about how the dummy has a hand up his ass, one of the HACKIEST and most overused jokes in all of comedy, and something that causes me extra infuriation as a big Muppet fan.
• I tried to find something to like here. I really did. But every time it seems like they’re going in a different direction, they keep going back to the “hand up his ass” jokes. Gag me with a fucking spoon.
-5/5
Final thoughts: Jeez, this episode was a big letdown. When not even a usually reliable host such as Will Ferrell can deliver a good episode, you know that the show has huge problems. One of the biggest disappointments was that they didn’t have him perform any of his famous recurring characters. Where’s The Culps? Bill Brasky? Harry Caray? Why didn’t they do any of that? Oh, I know why. Because they needed more time for that “hilarious” debate sketch! Speaking of which, the post-Update part of the show seemed a little rushed. I’d like to think that it was because of the debate sketch running too long, which proves that they really need to stop making those so long. The SNL website has a lot more cut sketches from the episode than usual, which proves that SOMETHING must have happened to the schedule.
Best sketches: None, but King Princess’s performances were pretty good.
Worst sketches: All of them sucked, but The First Thanksgiving and Ventriloquist were particularly horrible.
Next review: Eddie Murphy/Lizzo
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