Welcome back, folks! It’s time to move forward and start reviewing Season 47. I already did the premiere, so here’s the next episode…
Cold Open: Facebook Hearings
“Funny” stuff happens during the Facebook hearings on Capitol Hill.
• I don’t buy Cecily as Dianne Feinstein. She has the look down, but the voice needs more work.
• An unwelcome return from Aidy as Ted Cruz. I guess a side effect of Kate not being here is giving all of her usual drag roles to other people.
• Speaking of Kate, her Lindsey Graham impression is taken over here by the new guy, James Austin Johnson. I’m sure she’ll go back to playing him once she comes back, but this change up is nice.
• Unfortunately, JAJ’s impression isn’t much better. I don’t remember him talking like a chipmunk.
Monologue
Our first-time host talks about her very public life, and her divorce from Kanye.
• What the hell is she wearing?!?
• These “jabs” at Kanye are kind of pathetic.
• Not too much else to say here, except for the random OJ Simpson joke. Why, in 2021, are we still making jokes about him? The trial was almost 30 years ago! Get over it!!!
Sketch: Aladdin
Aladdin (Pete Davidson) has some concerns about his relationship with Jasmine (Kardashian).
• I knew this was gonna be bad as soon as I saw the Disney Channel intro, followed by the lame joke about this being back when Aladdin was still white.
• Strike #2 against this: they cast Pete Davidson in the lead role. This is yet another case of SNL just shoving him into sketches for the hell of it, even if it makes no sense for him to be there. As much as I grew to like his self-indulgent raps in the second half of Season 46, this season sadly sees him going back to his usual annoying ways.
• On the other hand, I definitely buy Kim as Jasmine, at least in the visual department. The acting department? Eeehhhh…not so much.
• Like all of the Disney-bashing sketches they do these days, they can’t think of anything to do except make lame sex jokes.
• Just in case you forgot who was hosting, Cecily shows up as Jasmine’s sister “Jourtney”. Gee, I wonder who that’s a reference to?
• Kenan plays her boyfriend, Dallas Cowboys player Ezekiel Elliott, who I’ve never heard of. But I don’t need to know what he looks or sounds like to know that Kenan’s impression is terrible.
• Pointless appearance from Asian Terry Sweeney as the Genie.
• Aladdin asks the Genie to make him like Pinocchio, but “down there”, pointing to his crotch. Why do all of these Disney parodies have to have dick jokes?
• I did like it at the end when we zoomed out to see how this was set up. It’s always nice when SNL does that.
Film: Grown Ass Women In The Club
A group of women go out for a night on the town.
• After the surprising upturn in quality they had late last season, we’re back to the music videos being boring and occasionally frustrating.
• It was nice to see Punkie Johnson get a lead role here. Without Kate hogging up all the screentime, some of the less featured women have been getting their chances to shine.
Sketch: The Dream Guy
A dating show attempts to pair up a woman (Kardashian) with the man of her dreams.
• One thing I praised the season premiere for was the lack of gratuitous celebrity cameos. I guess that was just a fluke, unfortunately, because this sketch has not one, not two, but SEVEN gratuitous cameos! Ugh.
• The audience applause when the celebrities are first shown feels like it goes on forever.
• Kim first talks to some guy from Gossip Girl that I’ve never heard of. Then she talks to some other guy who I’ve never heard of. Geez, if you’re gonna book celebrities, at least make them people that general audiences are going to be familiar with!
• I should be happy at a Chris Rock cameo, but it feels like he’s been showing up a lot lately, and the novelty has worn off by this point. But I did slightly chuckle at Kim’s line about watching all of his HBO and Netflix specials with him, until she got annoyed by him mouthing all of their words.
• Random out of nowhere appearance from alleged “comedienne” Amy Schumer. No further comment needed.
• The only good thing about this sketch is Kyle Mooney’s character. Apparently he has a character named “Sherlock the Cat”, whose catchphrase he then proceeds to recite. It’s always funny when Kyle Mooney plays a loser.
Film: The Switch
With the help of a magic clock, Aidy and Kim switch places for a day.
• Interesting concept.
• Some amusing visuals of our two leading ladies acting like each other. Aidy-as-Kim does a dance and exposes her bush, while a nearby man questions whether “Kim” has always had one.
• Another laugh when Kim-as-Aidy groans at the sight of her new husband (played by Streeter Seidell).
• One thing I didn’t like was when Kim-as-Aidy is told that she’s going to be in a sketch where Paula Deen is racist. What year is this?!?
• Random cameos from Khloé and Kris. It’s rather obvious that they are not acting professionals.
• For some reason, I find it really funny that they keep bringing up the clock that they used to make the switch happen, especially when Aidy randomly brings up to the other Kardashians that she doesn’t want anything to do with clocks now that she’s famous.
• This is a lot better than I remembered it being. It helps that it didn’t play out the joke too long and had a surprisingly good performance from Kim.
Sketch: Lotto Drawing
Trouble occurs when two anchors try to read the lotto numbers.
• The first thirty seconds or so of this are somewhat promising. I liked Aidy’s new slogan for the TV station (“News: It’s What Happened Recently”), and Chris Redd as the sportscaster saying, in a somewhat sleazy voice, that he has all the scores, but not football or baseball. Something about his delivery there was well timed.
• Then the sketch falls apart when the whole lottery aspect is introduced. There’s lots of jokes you can make about the lottery, like the fact that it’s a big scam, but instead they focus on dumb prop comedy with the lottery balls, such as letters and sports team logos appearing on them instead of numbers.
• Now things get even worse when food shows up in the tube as well.
• If you’re not laughing yet, don’t worry! They make sure to point everything out and explain it in hopes that maybe that will make you laugh!
• Random gory ending where the repairman who comes to fix the lottery tubes somehow gets sucked into it, which once again proves my theory that if you can’t come up with a punchline, just resort to random violence so people won’t notice how shitty your writing is.
Musical Performance: “I Am Not A Woman, I’m A God”
Weekend Update (featuring Terry Fink and Kelly Party)
• I don’t know whether or not the line about Colin going to school with Mark Zuckerberg is a joke or not. It feels like it is.
• I’m sure you guys can guess what the joke they make here about Mitch McConnell is.
• Alex Moffat brings back Terry Funk, a character he last played in Season 44. The joke with him is that he reviews movies while tripping acid. Not a very funny concept, but at least I can say it’s original.
• The only joke I laughed at here was when they showed a picture of an old Nazi lady and said it was Colin’s grandma.
• Heidi Gardner debuts a new Update character, Life Coach Kelly Party, a lady who’s here to promote positive thinking during the pandemic.
• This commentary was cut from the previous episode, and after seeing it here, I can definitely see why that is. It’s just the same joke repeated over and over. They better not bring her back.
Sketch: The People’s Kourt
Kourtney Kardashian hosts a court show with her partner Travis Barker (Mikey Day).
• Another lame intro: “Hulu: It’s That Thing You Steal”
• Rather interesting to see Kim playing one of her sisters.
• Speaking of her family, they make another pointless cameo in this.
• I wanted to laugh at the intentionally lame “Order in the Kourtney” pun, but I don’t think Kim’s poor delivery of that line was bad on purpose.
• Kris’s acting is even worse here than it was in the short earlier. She sounds like she doesn’t want to be there.
• Some brief amusement from Mikey’s cameo as Travis Barker. I have no idea if the voice is accurate, but I love those faces he makes.
• I liked the return of Chris Redd’s Kanye, who has grown on me the more he’s returned.
• Chloe Fineman introduces her latest bad impression, this one of Megan Fox. Also with her is the return of Pete as his buddy Machine Gun Kelly, an impression that actually isn’t that bad.
• We end on a pointless appearance from Kenan as OJ. Like I said earlier, the well of OJ jokes already dried up a long time ago, so it’s shocking that SNL continues to keep doing them. Oh, and they have OJ say who he is, just in case you were too dumb to read the text that appears on screen. You know it’s a bad impression when they have to say who they are.
Please Don’t Destroy: Hard Seltzers
Three SNL writers discovery a variety of hard seltzers.
• If I may borrow a quote from Stooge here, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major recurring sketch debut!”
• One of the highlights of Season 47 for me has been the presence of Please Don’t Destroy. Consisting of writers Martin Herlihy (the son of former SNL writer Tim Herlihy), John Higgins (the son of Jimmy Fallon’s longtime sidekick Steve Higgins), and Ben Marshall, these guys are SNL’s latest attempt to recapture the success that TV Funhouse and The Lonely Island had in years past.
• This has a nice low key feel to it. It’s not in your face and shouting all the time, and I like that.
• The grossout humor is also coming off fresher than usual here. Unlike the lotto sketch earlier where the only joke was “ha ha the man lost his finger”, it actually has a purpose, namely, the various disgusting seltzer flavors.
• The flavors start out only slightly disgusting, with a J.C. Penney seltzer that tastes like a man’s jacket, but they quickly escalate from there once the other guy comes in with a Jiffy Lube seltzer. Do I even want to know what that one tastes like?
• I like how one of the flavors comes from a dentist’s office, complete with a picture of the dentist on the label. I wonder who that actually is portraying him in the picture.
• Another “so gross it’s funny” moment when Herlihy spits out a belt buckle. Rather than getting grossed out by this, he goes on to explain that this always happens when you drink the J.C. Penney flavor.
• Higgins is the only one of the three who refuses to try the seltzers at first. But we end with a nice twist where he finds one inside his desk (it’s a desk flavor) and likes it.
• While I didn’t think too much of this when it first aired, probably because I was caught off guard by their sudden presence, I had a much higher opinion of it this time now that I’ve gotten used to them. Unfortunately, a lot of their stuff gets cut out before the live show, including the very next episode.
Musical Performance: “Darling”
• Lindsey Buckingham makes a special appearance here!
Sketch: Skims For Thick Dogs
Kim introduces a new line of Skims shapewear for dogs.
• Our first “cute animal” sketch in a while. I don’t think they had any in Season 46.
• While the humor is typical for this type of sketch, it was worth it just to see how the dogs react. The one that Heidi’s holding starts licking her face as she’s delivering her line.
• Aristotle Athari is wasted again with a single line in this. The joke itself is pretty lame (LOL HE DIDN’T KNOW THE CLOTHES WERE FOR DOGS!!!), which doesn’t help.
Final thoughts: Surprisingly, this wasn’t as bad as I was fearing a Kim Kardashian-hosted episode would be. While still nothing special, there were still a couple of good sketches, and the season continues to have a refreshing feel without McKinnon being there.
Best sketches: The Switch, Hard Seltzers
Worst sketches: Cold Open, Aladdin, Grown Ass Women In The Club, Lotto Drawing
Next review: Rami Malek/Young Thug
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