Lord have mercy for what I’m about to review….
Cold Open: Biden Victory
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gloat about their victory to the audience.
• Already off to a bad start with the worst Wolf Blitzer impression ever. Why is this cast so bad at impressions?
• Blitzer’s announcement that Biden has won the election is followed by extremely loud applause. That certainly proves who this show’s intended audience is.
• Thankfully, this is the final appearance of Jim Carrey’s awful Joe Biden impression. I’m not going to miss it at all.
• More cliched old people jokes about Biden follow afterwards. I wish they’d just admit that they have no interest in mocking Biden and they just want to suck his dick.
• Maya as Kamala Harris gets more and more annoying with each appearance she makes.
• As if this cold open wasn’t painful enough, Trump shows up next. Ugggghhhh!!!!!
• It’s the same usual unfunny business with this impression. Baldwin could clearly give less of a fuck about wanting to be there. And he still hasn’t stopped doing those dumb faces after he finishes speaking.
• Then, we get something horrifying. Trump sits in front of a piano and starts singing “Macho Man” by The Village People. UGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
• As much as it pains me to say it, this actually makes the “Hallelujah” cold open look good, because at least that had some…genuine heart put into it.
• And, with that, Baldwin’s Trump makes his final physical appearance. He has a voice-only appearance in another sketch later in this episode, though.
• Because of the “Macho Man” scene, this cold open isn’t even available on YouTube or on the show’s website.
Note: This episode aired nearly an hour later than scheduled, due to a football game running too long.
Monologue
Dave Chappelle talks about Trump, COVID, and the election.
• Hoo boy. I’m not kidding when I tell you guys this, but this monologue goes on for sixteen and a half minutes. This is only the beginning of what I have to deal with in this episode.
• I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’ve never seen an episode of Chappelle’s Show. If I had, then I might be more of a fan of this long-ass monologue.
• More sickening clapter when his statement that Trump is gone gets followed up by mass applause.
• Sick joke when he compares Trump getting the virus to Freddie Mercury getting AIDS. What an awful thing to say! No offense to Freddie, but at least Trump didn’t die!
Sketch: Fired Mascots
Aunt Jemima (Rudolph), Uncle Ben (Kenan Thompson), and the Allstate Guy (Chappelle) try to keep their jobs.
• Rather unusual intro to this sketch, where Chappelle stands on home base and tells us what the sketch is going to be about. This is apparently a thing that they do on Chappelle’s Show.
• As soon as I saw that Maya was playing Aunt Jemima, I could tell exactly where this sketch was headed.
• Rather uncomfortably long silence from Maya after she says her first line. Couldn’t she have spoken over the audience laughter?
• The “joke” that she uses her own breast milk to make her pancakes was embarrassingly childish. It doesn’t help that she literally winks at the camera after she says this.
• Then Kenan appears as Uncle Ben. Once again, he uses the same “sassy black guy” voice that I’ve grown so tired of by this point.
• The “humor” in this sketch is so broad and stereotypical that I was surprised to find out it was written by at least three black men. I’m sure it’s supposed to be making fun of these stereotypes, but they’re playing it too straight. If you want to see a good sketch mocking the use of African-American mascots, look for that commercial Tracy Morgan did for “Uncle Jemima’s Mash Liquor”.
• Chappelle appears as the Allstate Guy, who I’m pretty sure is actually white. Couldn’t they have made him Jake from State Farm? I did like the artificially-deepened voice he had, though.
• Pete Davidson’s random appearance as Count Chocula fell flat, as did Chappelle calling him a “chocolatey ni***”, his second n-word of the episode (the first was in the monologue). You can actually hear some people in the audience gasp after he says that.
• Overall, a really poor attempt at satire.
Sketch: Mario Moments
Gamers talk about their favorite memories of playing Mario games.
• I already talked about this sketch in my Worst Sketches of Season 46 list, but it’s so horrible that I need to talk about it again.
• I could tell that this sketch was going to be bad before it even started, seeing as it’s a blatant promotion for Universal’s upcoming Mario movie.
• Mikey and Kyle’s game reviewer characters show up, and it’s there where this sketch goes from boring to downright terrible. Season 46’s trend of lame testicle jokes continues when they won’t stop talking about Kyle’s balls “popping”. Exactly what that has to do with Mario, I have no idea.
• And then they just keep dragging the joke on when all of the other people being interviewed are more concerned about his balls. When it seems like it’s going to focus on something else, they just keep going back to the ball talk.
• Really bad ending tagline: “The fun never pops. I mean, stops”. Fucking horrible.
Film: Take Me Back
A man (Beck Bennett) tries to convince his ex (Ego Nwodim) to get back together with him.
• I paid very little attention to this when it first aired, mostly because I was still trying to wrap my head around the awful Mario sketch.
• Rewatching it for this review, I see that I didn’t miss much. Another bland short film with very little jokes. And, continuing the Season 46 trend, there’s another dick joke.
Musical Performance: “Shame Shame”
Weekend Update (feat. Rudy Giuliani)
• Yet another long round of applause when someone mentions Biden’s victory. Then they follow up by showing cringeworthy video clips of protesters mocking Trump for losing. I’ve never wanted to punch the TV more in my life.
• Jost then compares the celebrations to the end of World War II. Um, that’s a very odd comparison to make.
• The biggest laugh I got from this Update was the clip they showed of some asshole interrupting a live report on News 12 Long Island. So you know things are bad when my biggest laugh comes from a video that they didn’t even create.
• Then….to complete the pure horror that is this Weekend Update, Kate McKinnon shows up as Giuliani for the one millionth time. When watching this episode for the first time, I turned my TV off as soon as that happened. It had been a bad week for me, and I just wasn’t in the mood for any Giuliani nonsense to make me feel worse.
Sketch: News Center 5 Albany
News reporters can’t keep an interview about a hailstorm on track.
• I missed these next two sketches the first time I watched the episode, due to reasons I mentioned above.
• The fact that this sketch takes place in my area of New York caught my interest at first, but then I got disappointed when I saw that they made up a town instead of using a real one.
• As soon as I saw Kenan’s character, I knew exactly what the joke with him was going to be. And then it became the main joke of the sketch.
• I’m getting so sick of these constant “news reporters can’t keep a story on track” sketches. Every time they do a sketch about a news report these days, they always follow this same formula.
• I feel really sorry for poor Ego Nwodim having to be in this sketch. She tries her hardest, though.
Sketch: DC Morning
Donald Trump is involved in a car chase.
• Well, here we are, folks. The final (vocal) appearance of Alec Baldwin as Trump…and it’s just one line about him wanting a hamburger. Get it?!?? He’s fat!!!!
• When I saw that this sketch involved a car chase, I knew that there was going to be an OJ reference somewhere. I was right, because the footage they use to represent this car chase is taken from the OJ chase. So, is the point they’re trying to make here that Donald Trump is a murderer? Or something? I don’t know, these writers are clearly not healthy.
Musical Performance: “Times Like These”
Final Thoughts: Good God, this is one of the worst episodes I’ve ever had to review. Every single joke fell flat for me. Every single sketch idea was awful. And, of course, there was that unbearably long monologue at the beginning. Overall, a terrible mess of an episode.
Best sketches: NONE
Worst sketches: They all sucked, but I really hated Fired Mascots, Mario Moments, and DC Morning the most.
Next review: Kristen Wiig/Dua Lipa
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