Today’s Retro Decimator Quote is…
“Before any of the candidates show up, we get a gratuitous cameo from some guy named Billy Porter. I had no idea who he was when I first saw this, but then I found out that he’s a guy who likes wearing dresses. Yeah....” (from David Harbour/Camila Cabello, 2019)
Cold Open: Mother’s Day
A heartwarming Mother’s Day message from the cast…or is it???
• I love when they do these Mother’s Day messages. It’s fun seeing the cast’s parents.
• What the fuck???? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Why did they have to have Trump interrupt this?!!???? Fuck you, SNL! I was actually enjoying where this was going!!!!! But you just had to throw him in for the hell of it!!!! I hate it! I HATE IT!!! I HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• And, just to mock me even more, they throw in Cecily as Jeanine Pirro for no apparent reason other than “look, member Cecily???? Ooooooh, I member!!!!”
• TLDR: SNL sucks and I’m glad there’s only one more cold open left for me to review.
Monologue
Goggins talks about Mother’s Day and his being a sex symbol.
• Who the fuck names their kid “Walton”? That sound like an old prospector’s name or something.
• I kinda liked his blunt admission that his character in The White Lotus dies.
• I really hope that Cosmopolitan article (“Are We All Horny for Walton Goggins’ Receding Hairline?”) is fake, because I can’t imagine anybody genuinely finding this guy hot. He looks like the creepy guy you see at the back of the subway.
• Oh, okay, that Yahoo! headline is definitely fake, so I’m assuming the Cosmopolitan one is as well.
• I like the soft-shoe number he performs with his mom.
Sketch: Second Amendment
A look back at the writing of the Second Amendment.
• Uh-oh, a historical sketch. I have no idea why these are so popular with everyone else.
• JAJ is perfectly cast as a Founding Father.
• Looks like we’re in for some anti-gun commentary here…
• No, we don’t get that, but we do get a lot of really dumb shit, along with portraying the Founding Fathers as dudebros.
• It’s hard for me to pin down exactly why I’m not a fan of this sketch. Nothing about the performances is particularly bad (in fact, Walton’s doing a great job), but I find it all…boring. Surely the next sketch can’t be any worse…
Film: Tiny Baby Shoe
I love nepotism!
• This should be titled “Please like Jane Wickline, you guys!!!!”
• WTF even is this song so far??? Singing about a tiny shoe in a heavily Auto-Tuned voice, with “wacky” props and all that? Who comes up with this shit?!?
• This feels like a rip off of the classic “Wishin’ Boot” song with Blake Shelton. The difference is that Shelton can actually sing, and the song was actually…you know, heartwarming.
• Goggins appears as a man with tiny Dooneese-esque feet…which is honestly kind of disturbing.
• Now we’re getting into jokes about tiny penises.
• I kinda liked Sam Rockwell’s random appearance as a balloon vendor with even tinier feet.
• I’m sure Jane Wickline is a nice person behind the scenes and all that, but she just doesn’t fit on SNL at all. Send her back to TikTok or wherever the Hell she originally came from, because she’s clearly not working, and this lame Wishin’ Boot knockoff is further proof of that.
Sketch: Mother’s Day Brunch
A waiter gets flirty during brunch.
• Kind of ironic how both this sketch and the preceding film take place in Central Park.
• There’s a dude in the background who kinda looks like Beetlejuice from The Howard Stern Show.
• Are most of the sketches just going to be people fawning over Walton? I hate these kinds of episodes.
• Throw in some Mikey Reacts, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for blandness.
Sketch: Service Dogs
Canines are bored by a dramatic play.
• NOOOOO!!!! Not another dog sketch!!!! Why do they keep doing this?!???
• The Southern accents are a dead giveaway that Kent Sublette wrote this.
• Walton: “Sorry to break character, but I do notice that the dogs keep leaving.” No fucking shit!!!! We can see that with our eyes!!!
• What a criminal waste of Longfellow’s talents.
• Bowen certainly isn’t helping matters with his usual shtick.
• You gotta be kidding me with the dog checking his watch. This feels like a rejected Carol Burnett sketch.
• No comment on the ending where Walton’s character kisses his own sister (which Jane “helpfully” points out in case we’re blind).
• How did this even make it on the air? Was this a slow week in the writer’s room?
Musical Performance: “Pink Elephant”
Weekend Update (featuring The Movie Guy, A Guy Who Just Walked Into A Spiderweb, and Dianne)
• Since this was the first episode after the election of the new Pope, we’ve got a lot of anti-Catholic jokes here.
• I laughed at the Harry and Meghan joke.
• Oh, fuck you, Che! You just had to sneak in a pedophile priest joke, didn’t you?!??? I hate you so much!!!
• Fuck, not “The Movie Guy” again!!!
• He’s going through the same jokes as before, and his accent is even more cartoonishly offensive.
• This part about “Carly Sohandsome” (Scarlett Johansson) is hacky as fuck, but I did get a genuine laugh from Marcello joking that he’s married to Rihanna.
• Ugh, they even recycle his obsession with cartoon characters, except this time he’s talking about “Gary Fields” (Garfield).
• Marcello hasn’t been doing too bad these last few episodes, but this is a huge step back for him.
• The Rosa Parks joke was actually pretty great.
• There’s not one, not two, but THREE jokes about airplanes in this!!!!
• Mikey’s brief spiderweb commentary is so stupid, but really funny and committed. You can tell this is something he’s been trying to get on for a while.
• This Heidi commentary was cut from last week’s show, and after seeing it, I can understand why. It’s more of the same bootleg Kristen Wiig garbage she’s been doing on Update for the past three seasons.
Sketch: The Deathly Diner
A couple takes their kids to a horror-themed restaurant.
• Well, here’s yet another restaurant sketch for this season!!!
• Some nice set design here.
• I like that Ashley has another big role!
• It seems like they’re trying to recreate the success of that Friendly’s sketch from the Lady Gaga episode.
• Unlike the Friendly’s sketch, this is NOT the right way to use Bowen. He’s gone back to his unfunny camp antics.
• Something about this sketch felt off to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I saw someone in the comments claim that this sketch might have been meant to promote some “spooky” restaurant at Universal’s new Epic Universe park in Florida.
• We end on a pointless appearance from Kenan’s overused old man shtick.
• This was just a sorry attempt at replicating the Friendly’s sketch. Not only was it not disturbing at all, they forgot to add actual jokes to it. When am I going to find a sketch in this episode that’s actually good???
Musical Performance: “Year of the Snake”
Saturday Night Live Midnight Matinee: Boss’s Bathroom
A man makes an uncomfortable discovery in his boss’s bathroom.
• Please save this episode, Dan Bulla!!!!!!
• Great to see Andrew as a lead in this one.
• Not sure if it’s intentional, but I love the Shining vibe of the scene where Andrew enters the bathroom.
• I love the random closeups of the foot stool.
• Things are gradually getting more disturbing each time we cut to the bathroom. That shot of Sarah screaming on the toilet is honestly pretty creepy.
• The random caveman part was great, especially Sarah pleasuring her private areas with water.
• I like how they kind of keep it ambiguous at first as to whether or not Andrew is hallucinating all of this, but then he finds a creepy worm that we saw in the caveman scene and he jumps out of the window!
• It’s great to see that Dan Bulla has still got it! I’m sad that this is the last one of these I’ll be covering (assuming they keep doing these in Season 51).
• The card at the end has been changed again, with Pip being added.
Cut for Time: Amazing Anna
Toy company employees come up with ideas for a talking doll.
• This sketch was apparently written for the Travis Kelce episode. I’m guessing that the line about tariffs was not in that version.
• Chloe has barely been on lately. It’s safe to say that her time on the show is up…to which I say, YAY!
• The premise and general “zoomer” vibe I’m getting from this makes me think that Jimmy Fowlie has something to do with it.
• Walton is getting some laughs from his voice for the doll, but this sketch is just so damn repetitive.
• Oh, and we randomly end on a joke about some gay kid being a fan of the doll. Now I know for sure that Jimmy Fowlie wrote this!
Final thoughts: *sigh* That episode was brutal as fuck. I didn’t like a single thing in the first half of the episode. While we had Mikey’s commentary on Update, and Dan Bulla shined as usual, most of this was completely forgettable and occasionally frustrating. What a poor waste of Walton Goggins, who was trying his best to save this episode. But, do you know what the best thing is??? I have only one more episode to review!!!!
Best sketches: Spiderweb commentary, Boss’s Bathroom
Worst sketches: Cold Open, Tiny Baby Shoe, Service Dogs, The Movie Guy commentary, Deathly Diner
Next review: Scarlett Johansson/Bad Bunny. Just one more to go!!!!
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