Saturday Night Live: Kristen Stewart hosts but writers are all-in for Warren
We kick off in Iowa, at a rally for “the next president of the United States maybe”, Senator Elizabeth Warren (Kate McKinnon). She fields questions from audience members, including a volunteer for Kamala
Harris who’s still undecided and an “aspiring billionaire and current stay-athome step dad”, about her newly released healthcare plan.
She runs it down thusly: cut military spending (“So immediately, dead in the water”), “Jeff Bezos is gonna go from paying no tax, to paying a tax”, and tax banks: “All we gotta do is convince JP Morgan to operate like a non-profit.”
As cold opens go it’s a slight improvement, if only because it keeps the mugging to a minimum and contains a handful of decent jokes at the expense of fickle liberals. The show’s satire over the last couple years is always sharpest when aimed at its own target demographic. The writers, as well as McKinnon, are clearly in the bag for Warren, which is all well and good, though they should take care not to get too smug. I think I speak for a lot of viewers when I say none of us want another post-election groaner like we got in 2016.
Charlie’s Angels star Kristen Stewart hosts for the second time. Worried she’ll come off as insincere if she only talks about herself and her latest movie, she opts instead for an audience Q&A – which in this case means she’s the one asking the questions. Promising a premise as this is, it wraps up after barely a minute. Beck Bennett and Kyle Moonie show up dressed and styled like Stewart for another oddly short bit.
America at War! finds a second world war general touring a weapons factory in search of a new poster model for the war effort. He meets Rosie the Riveter but gets distracted by the “slug thumpers”, tough-talking broads Aidy
Bryant, McKinnon and Stewart who bust their superior’s chops, volunteer to pose nude and talk about what they’d do to Hitler if they got their hands on him. It’s consistently funny, although it goes on a bit too long.
Duolingo for Children is an app for people who have “no idea how to talk to children”. It’s a clever enough idea but there’s not much to it. Farrow & Ball is another commercial, this time for a high-end house paint, that sees a family gathering devolve into chaos when questions about the ridiculously expensive and unusable product lead to unsettled issues between siblings. It’s all a bit scattered but Bryant keeps the laughs coming with a hysterical performance, especially in her pronunciation of words like “colour”, making sure the “u”is as audible as possible.
At the first formal White House press briefing in months, Kellyanne Conway introduces Conan, the K9 commando from the raid on Isis leader al-Baghdadi. Conan (a real German Shepherd) fields questions from the press with the help of his translator, Cecily Strong. It’s an overlong vehicle for easy canine jokes and puns – asked about rumors of a new White House whistleblower, Conan answers: “I think we need to find out who the whistleblower is, because that sound is driving me crazy.” But hey, the dog is cute.
Corporate Nightmare, an anti-conformist anthem from pop punk group Kickflip, gets derailed after all the band members get promotions in their boring office jobs. Soon they’re extolling the virtues of financial security, solid managerial vision and a good healthcare plan. It’s a perfect send-up of early late 90s, early 2000s acts like Blink 182 and Sum 41, although it’s about 20 years too late.
Coldplay are the musical guests. Roaming the stage, joined by dozens of jumping dancers, they perform their new single Orphans.
Weekend Update starts with Colin Jost and Michael Che talking about
Donald Trump’s announcement that he is going to move to Florida: “You know what they say – if you can’t drain the swamp, move to it.” They move on to the forensic report which said Jeffery Epstein’s death was likely a homicide. Che is not convinced: “Everybody has a crazy conspiracy for this fellow’s death – Clinton had him killed, Trump had him killed, the Russians did it. Anything but the boring, likely story that he broke his own neck trying to masturbate with a belt.”
Smokery Farms owners Wylene and
Vaneta Starkie (McKinnon and Bryant, bringing back popular characters) show up to discuss the popularity of impossible meat. They attempt to assuage customers’ guilt about eating real meat by only using animals that are “stupid, bad, rude and talent-free”. They then show off their “beautiful bounty” of stinking meat baskets, earning palpable disgust from the hosts as well as the audience.
Hungry Jury sees a tense deliberation morph into a rendition of Ginuwine’s Pony by way of the jurors’ rumbling stomachs. It takes far too long to get to the point and neither the pun nor the random pay-off are worth it.
In A Proposition, a seemingly square middle-aged couple (Ego Nwodim and Keenan Thompson) are enjoying their anniversary in a Baltimore nightclub when they are approached by young pansexual woman with designs on taking them home. Her attentions are continually rebuffed by the pair, who seem completely oblivious to modern sexuality – of pansexuality, Thompson asks: “What’s that, you like having sex around pans?” Then we meet the third member of their party, a leather-clad “pig boy” (Bowen Yang), who they promise to take home and “filthy up”. It’s another sketch that goes on too long, but at least the payoff is worth it.
Coldplay return and perform Everyday Life. Then the final sketch, Stargazing, sees an astronomy tour interrupted by a new-agey older couple who point out that the most popular constellations, such as the Big and Little Dippers, are actually part of larger, lesser-known constellations, all resembling acts of oral sex. The animated constellations are impressively risqué but the jokes never earn more than a chuckle.
It’s a fitting end to a disappointingly muted episode, one that seemed to want to push the envelope but only managed to nudge it. Stewart held her own and there were clever moments, but unfortunately no standouts on par with her last time as host.