Cold Open
Mike Pence gets the COVID vaccine.
• The final appearance of Beck Bennett’s bland and unremarkable Pence impression. I am not sad to see him go.
• Not sure what the joke is with his wife not saying a word. I also don’t get the joke of him referring to her as “Mother” as she walks off. Is that supposed to be some kind of Norman Bates thing?
• Super hacky joke when he starts to pull down his pants, thinking that this is the type of vaccine that goes in your butt.
• To make this even more painful, Maya returns as Kamala Harris again. And she gets a ton of applause when she tells Pence that she won more votes.
• Even more cringeworthy clapter when she slaps Pence. That’s like something you’d see in a bad political cartoon.
• First appearance of Alex Moffat’s short-lived Joe Biden impression. He makes his entrance by walking out with a cane. Because he’s old! Get it?
• They comment on his change in appearance again, and Biden responds with a lame joke about how he’s like Colonel Sanders: “Every time you see me, I’m a different guy.”
• After Biden and Harris leave, we get, ugggghhhh, Kate McKinnon as Giuliani again. Thankfully, this is his final appearance as of November 2021.
• More of the usual Giuliani nonsense that never makes me laugh.
• Kenan returns as Ben Carson for the last time. Wow, a lot of impressions making their final appearances here. That’s all I have to say about that because nothing he says is funny.
Monologue
Kristen Wiig bids farewell to 2020, with some help from Maya and Kate.
• After a nice long break, this is the first musical monologue of Season 46. I can’t say I’ve missed them.
• This monologue is like pure torture. Three of my least favorite cast members hurting my ears with terrible lyrics.
Sketch: Secret Word
Mindy Grayson still keeps blurting out the secret word too early.
• Sorry for stealing your catchphrase, Stooge, but, *groan*.
• As usual, the annoying running gag of Grayson saying the secret word too early is overused and unfunny.
• How do you make a bad recurring sketch even worse? Add Kate McKinnon to it. Here, she plays a European actress, and uses her stock foreigner accent that she uses for all of her European characters.
• As bad as these sketches are, they always had Bill Hader to liven them up in the past. Since he’s not here now, though, we get Kenan as the host instead. He does okay, but not as good as Hader used to be.
Film: Christmas Morning
A family shows off what they got for Christmas this year.
• Blah. Another boring rap video.
Sketch: USO
The military receives a special Christmas performance from their peers.
• Yet another musical sketch in this episode. Yawn.
• Even worse, Asian Terry Sweeney is in this one. His singing voice is something I never wanted to hear.
• There’s a similar USO sketch that was in Madeline Kahn’s Season 21 episode. The only difference is that it was actually funny, and had Darrell’s great Jay Leno impression as the host. This one doesn’t have anything like that.
Film: A Teacher
A new show where a student (Andrew Dismukes) tries to get special attention from his teacher (Ego Nwodim).
• Nice to see Ego and Andrew get big roles. In fact, they’re the only cast members in this at all.
• When this first aired, I thought this was a parody of a real show on Hulu, but apparently, it’s just some bullshit they made up.
• Yet another sketch that revolves around having sex, except it’s even worse in this case, given that it revolves around a teacher discussing sex with an underage boy.
• Despite all that, Ego still manages to give a good performance here. Why isn’t she the female cast member who gets all the screentime instead of Kate?
Sketch: Home Alone 2 Alternate Ending
Kevin (Melissa Villaseñor) strikes up a friendship with the Pigeon Lady (Wiig) in this alternate ending to Home Alone 2.
• Boy, am I getting tired of all these “alternate ending” sketches the show has been shitting out lately. Given how bad the show is at parodying movies lately, you just know this one is going to be bad.
• I don’t get why Kevin had to be played by a woman in this sketch. Why not someone like Dismukes?
• Wiig surprisingly keeps her performance restrained here. It’s stuff like this where she really shines.
• Speaking of bad impressions, Kyle Mooney unveils the worst Joe Pesci voice known to man. It isn’t a patch on the one that Jim Breuer did in the 90s.
• Mikey Day’s Marv impression isn’t much better, but I did get a kick out of him dressed like that.
• And then Wiig randomly beats the Wet Bandits to death in a brutally gory fashion. If you can’t think of a way to end a sketch, just resort to random violence, and maybe people won’t notice how bad your writing is.
Musical Performance: “Don’t Start Now”
Weekend Update (featuring Willie, Smokey Robinson, and Landis Trotter)
• The final Weekend Update during the Trump presidency. To “celebrate”, they show a montage of some of Trump’s greatest accomplishments. And, dear God, that montage is PAINFUL. They only show the most unflattering clips they could find of him.
• And they make a joke about tranquillizing him. How come the Secret Service isn’t investigating these morons?
• Yet ANOTHER joke about Mitch McConnell hating children. Please stop with these!!!
• Chris Redd does a commentary as Smokey Robinson, who had apparently gone viral that week in a video where he mispronounced “Hanukkah”. I usually like Redd’s impressions, but his Smokey sounds more like Michael Jackson.
• I did get a laugh at the joke about the Utah Jazz being the only black people in Utah.
• Kenan’s Willie character returns. This was the first time I had ever seen the character, but he didn’t leave a good impression on me.
• Heidi Gardner introduces a new character named Landis Trotter, which I refuse to say anything more about because it sucked like all of her other characters.
• Now, we get the traditional joke swap between Che and Jost. This should be good…
• You know things are really fucked up when the only jokes in this episode that got a big laugh out of me are ones that are meant to be offensive. Colin always has the best jokes in these joke swapping bits.
Sketch: The Grinch
Cindy-Lou Who (Chloe Fineman) and her family have an awkward morning with The Grinch (Pete Davidson).
• There’s some really nice set design and makeup in this sketch. Mikey looks downright hilarious with the big Who nose.
• Fineman’s Cindy-Lou voice is the same annoying high-pitched voice she uses for half of her celebrity impressions.
• Another surprisingly underplayed role from Wiig. Is this even the same woman that was in that Secret Word shit from earlier?
• Amazing makeup job on Davidson as The Grinch. His voice is dead on, too, which doesn’t surprise me, since we’ve previously heard him do it in that Chad sketch from the Saoirse Ronan episode.
• Despite all of the positive things I mentioned, I knew as soon as that “The Next Morning” subtitle appeared that this sketch was going to be yet another “lol sex is funny” sketch. Such a shame that they wasted these beautiful sets and costumes for a lame premise. I’d rather watch the scene from the movie where The Grinch makes the Mayor kiss his dog’s ass than watch this sketch again.
• Super predictable and hacky “That’s not the only thing that grew” joke regarding his heart growing three sizes. Did a twelve year old write that?
Sketch: Surprise Sue
Sue tries to contain her excitement at a holiday party.
• *groaaaaan* Not this shitty character again! And now we’re back to Wiig going over the top.
• Oh, that’s right, there’s another black woman on this show. Given how rarely they use her, I’m surprised that she’s the only black character in the sketch. And I’m even more surprised that she got a second season.
• What else is there to say about this sketch that hasn’t been said by other SNL reviewers? Actually, there is one other thing I’ll say. In Kristen’s last hosting stint, the characters she brought back were the same ones she brought back here (Secret Word and Surprise Sue). Are these her favorite characters or something?
Musical Performance: “Levitating”
Final thoughts: As I expected going in, this was a really bad episode. While Wiig certainly didn’t help, the main problem I had was with the writing. Half of the sketches were about sex, as is usual with this season. The only good thing I can say is that this is thankfully the end of the Trump era on SNL. It was a rough four years, but it can’t get any worse, right? Right???
Best sketches: Colin’s racist jokes, Pete Davidson as The Grinch
Worst sketches: Cold Open, Monologue, Secret Word, Surprise Sue
Next review: John Mulaney/The Strokes
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