Saturday Night Live: Jonathan Majors and Taylor Swift can’t save ho-hum episode
After a noticeable uptick in the quality of cold opens of late, Saturday Night Live is back to whiffing them. Tonight’s episode gets off to a poor start with Cruz Street, a conservative version of Sesame Street hosted by the “Texas senator and the last one invited to Thanksgiving”, Ted Cruz (Aidy Bryant). Cruz’s talks to a gun-toting Marjorie Taylor Greene (Cecily Strong) and “resident medical expert” Joe Rogan (Pete Davidson), while also railing against vaccination mandates, CRT (Critical Race Theory, or, “Caucasian Rights Trampled”) and President Joe Biden’s social safety net bill.
A totally scattershot opener – Chloe
Fineman shows up as Britney Spears towards the end to deliver a single line – it picks at some real low hanging fruit and still comes up empty. Bryant’s interpretation of Cruz as a legitimately crazy rightwinger like Taylor Greene, as opposed to the naked opportunist that he so clearly is, continues to miss the mark, while Davidson’s Rogan bears zero resemblance to the podcasting clown.
The Harder They Fall star Jonathan Majors takes hosting duties for the first time. The former military brat and Yale alumnus runs down his experience as a struggling actor while working at Red Lobster (“Both Nicki Minaj and Chris Rock got their start there – I don’t know what they’re putting in those cheddar baked biscuits, but it’s working!”) and shares some words of wisdom from his late grandfather. The monologue is long on time and light on laughs, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of episode.
In The History Channel show Forgotten Monarchs, a bored queen ( Fineman) entertains a number of suitors, including Kyle Mooney’s friendzoned loser, Andrew Dismukes’ wellhung stable boy, and Majors’s hand
some prince – who’s actually just a conniving family man pretending to be a rich royal in order to cheat on his wife. There’s some funny stuff here – Strong does an enjoyably silly cockney accent – but on the whole it all feels too baggy and disjointed.
A new Please Don’t Destroy sketch sees Davidson pitch a music video to John, Ben and Martin. They’re super excited until they realize the song is called Three Sad Virgins and is meant to personally humiliate them. Things get even worse for the trio when musical guest Taylor Swift gets in on the act, singing about how “John looks like a sad Ron Weasley … Martin has the charm and sex appeal of a scarecrow … John has a big ass bowling ball head …” Probably the best PDD segment yet, it’s also the funniest Davidson has been all season (he should play a cruel bully often). Swift’s performance is just icing on top of the cake.
An advertising awards show hosted by Jake from State Farm (Majors) and Flo from Progressive (Fineman), celebrates the “most egregious ads of the year”, which make audiences “buy, cry and shout ‘How dare you?’” The sketch is more interested in merely referencing recognizable commercial characters, such as the Limu Emu (although credit to the effects team for their puppet work here) and defunct streaming services like Quiby and Tubi than actually sending up politically and emotionally manipulative advertising practices.
Next, Majors and Thompson play the unwilling, easily spooked hosts of the Syfy channel talk show Weird Kid Tales. They interview several pairs of parents and their creepy offspring, including a boy and girl who see ghosts and one child who remembers his past life as a slain soldier. Majors and Thompson show off some good comic chemistry and the little kids all give solid performances.
A commercial for Man Park promises “a dog park for guys in relationships”. The emotionally stunted man-boys bond over their inane love of Marvel, sports, Rick & Morty, Bo Burnham, IPA and Vin Diesel, while giving their long-suffering girlfriends a muchneeded break. This is followed by Swift performing the new, expanded version of her single All Too Well, backdropped by the accompanying short film that she wrote and directed.
On Weekend Update, Colin Jost gets a huge round of applause from the Swifties in the audience by noting “I think the lesson we all learned this week is: never breakup with Swift or she will sing about you for 10 minutes on national television. At least return the scarf.”
He then invites on new cast member Sarah Sherman give some personal feedback about her time on the show thus far. The kooky Sherman wonders why SNL has to be done live and air so late, while also twisting Jost’s casual reactions into salacious headlines, such as “Local Pervert Colin Jost Claims He’s Seen Most People’s Nipples” and “Local Wet Blanket Colin Jost Is Keeping Track of the Amount of Jews at SNL”. This is Sherman’s first real showcase so far, and she makes the most of it, bringing a zany new energy to the proceedings (although her manic quirkiness is likely to rub some viewers the wrong way). One also wonders if this wasn’t perhaps a test run for a possible Update hosting gig at some point in the future.
The next guest spot goes to fellow newcomer Aristotle Athari, who plays Laughintosh 3000 an AI-driven robot programmed to generate stand-up comedy. His jokes include impressions of Instagram (“Look at my body, look at my face, look at my vacation, look at my body”) and his ex-girlfriend, a GPS app that liked to give directions during sex (“Go left, go left. Slower, slower, slower. Calculating. Destination was not reached.”). It’s an admirably high concept performance, but one unfortunately dragged down by some awkward pauses (only some of which are intentional) and a couple of flubbed lines.
Next, a couple bring their young daughter to a Broadway revue staring sassy duo Brick and Blythe (Bowen Yang and Strong) and their special guest Tennyson (Majors), only to discover that the show is wildly inappropriate for kids, with the entire performance built around a tune called Everyone Today is Using Drugs. Yang, Strong and Majors give their all for the big musical number, but the one-note joke falls flat, especially with the studio audience, who remain uncomfortably silent throughout.
This is followed by another onenote musical sketch, in which Majors, Thompson, Chris Redd and Ego Nwodim play rap ‘90’s rap group Bone Thugs N’ Harmony, who open a store that only sells dog bones. As utterly pointless and laugh-free as it is ridiculously dated, this may be the low point of the still-young season.
Then Majors and Nwodim return to close out the show with another interminable, utterly forgettable sketch, playing a pair of married pastors who use their Sunday service to announce that they’re opening up their marriage to certain members of the congregation.
Coming off strong run, the show definitely stumbled this week, especially during the back half of the program. But this episode was also clearly meant to be a showcase for Swift, and in that regard it succeeded. Things peaked with her centerpiece performance, with everything that followed – with the exception of Sherman’s turn on Weekend Update – coming off like an afterthought.