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Videos: Saturday Night Live Ends Surreal Season With Surreal At Home Finale
By
Ben Yakas
Published May 11, 2020
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NBC
By
Ben Yakas
Published May 11, 2020
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The third "At Home" episode of Saturday Night Live this weekend served as the season finale for the slightly-abbreviated 45th season of the show, with "host" Kristen Wiig and guest appearances from the likes of Martin Short, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and more. Overall, it wasn't quite as consistently hilarious as the previous episode, but was thankfully still leagues above that depressive first quarantine episode—and it contained a few of the most unexpected, best sketches of the entire season.
After a few weeks of tinkering, the writers, actors and crew have now figured out some great ways to take advantage of the limitations of social distancing (more shared screens, stranger graphics, liberal use of stock footage), which all the best sketches in this episode had in abundance. The highlight of the first half of the episode was the extremely catchy and extremely reasonable Let Kids Drink. Josh Gad and Al Roker randomly show up, a bunch of tykes pose with empty bottles, and Beck Bennett steals the sketch with his drinking shed.
The final sketch of the night, Dreams, was a fittingly emotional, melancholic way to say goodbye to this season—and one of the best sketches of the entire season as a result, one that truly captured the uneasy moment we're living in. The entire cast collectively dreams of returning to their normal lives in NYC, which includes everything from skating around Rockefeller Plaza to sitting with Spike Lee at a Knicks game to hanging out with rats in Central Park to eating a slice at Ben's Pizza.
Aidy Bryant has cemented her status as one of the most hilarious castmembers on the show over the last three weeks, diving into her own psyche and hitting it out of the park with just about all of her quarantine material. Eleanor's House was another unforgettable sketch of hers featuring some of the most disconcerting, creepy animation styles I've ever seen on the show.
If you are a fan of weird sketches like the one above, you will not want to miss out on Kyle Mooney's grand opus, Beer Money. It feels like this is the apex of his surreal comedic style he's been building up to in recent weeks, combining his obsession with '90s sitcoms, his experimentation with playing multiple characters (who are all kinda the same), and his love of awkward, stilted comedy. It's one of the most unhinged things he's ever done on the show, and I hope he continues doing it next season.
What's Wrong With This Picture: Mother’s Day Edition was a good example of how SNL has been able to adapt some of their older sketches to the new format and the new norm: "They're not social distancing because they know their rights."
Most of the cast (and some of the writers) got to appear for the Trump Graduation Speech Cold Open, which featured Baldwin's return as the president and "valedictator." Overall, it was absolutely fine, better than most of the SNL Trump material*.* And it had one stone cold killer line: "Reach for the stars, because if you're a star, they'll let you do it."
The closest thing to a recurring sketch these past three weeks have been the Zoom-centric bits, and we got another solid one with Zoom Catch-Up, which featured Martin Short as one half of a couple who just got back from a "quarantina" trip to Italy. But the best part was Heidi Gardener, who has been excelling at playing totally nuts characters.
Mikey Day's son Brandon tormented his father in Dad Prank Video, which was almost like Jackass: Quarantine Edition.
Chloe Fineman has really gotten to shine during these quarantine episodes with her uncanny impressions, and she had two more fantastic ones in Another MasterClass Quarantine Edition as Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Britney Spears. But as good as she was, Melissa Villaseñor completely stole this sketch with her riotously funny John Mulaney impression.
SNL never really figured out how to have a "host" during these remote episodes—Tom Hanks did the "monologue" for the first one and nothing else, and they didn't even bother trying to have one for the second episode (though Brad Pitt appeared for in that cold open, and introduced musical guest Miley Cyrus). But Wiig at least showed up a couple times for this episode, including her very jazzy, very Wiig-ish At-Home Monologue, which included her throwing out some Minnelli-esque kicks, flashing the camera, and singing a lullaby from her childhood.
And then she also showed off her luscious locks in an even better sketch, Hair Vlog, which was perfectly in Wiig's wheelhouse, and included a great supporting turn from Cecily Strong.
There was not a lot of Kate McKinnon sightings this episode, which is pretty unusual, but toward the end of the night we got another one of her one-woman-sketches, Lighthouse Keeper, which was clearly an ode to the wonders of Robert Eggers' roommate horror movie, The Lighthouse.
Kenan Thompson leads the congregation at Zoom Church, but has to keep reminding everyone that what the lord really wants is for everyone to mute their Zooms during the service.
Pete Davidson continued his streak of quarantine rap songs with Danny Trejo Song, featuring Chris Redd and Trejo himself. As with his other recent rap parodies, it didn't really do much for me, and there was no Adam Sandler this time to take it to the next level.
I don't think the core of Weekend Update—Colin Jost and Michael Che telling jokes about the news—really worked during these three episodes (even though there were of course a few hilarious moments and one-liners). Part of it was that it seemed at times like they recorded their material completely separately without any interaction, part of it was that the segments seemed like they had been edited down in a weird way, and part of it was that some of the jokes that could sneak by with an audience reaction just deflated in awkward dead silence (of course, having a creep disembodied laugh track via Zoom didn't work the first week either). Having said that, guest Tina Fey was great as ever, and Cecily Strong is absolutely brilliant as Jeanine Pirro.
There were no less than three cut-for-time segments: Momming With Denise, a very good showcase for Ego Nwodim; The Last Dance, a parody of the ESPN doc on Michael Jordan featuring Bulls superfan Kim Jong-Un (Bowen Yang); and best of all, Message To The Girls, in which Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant play a pair of teen boys who had a lot of plans for prom go up in smoke because of the pandemic. It's crazy that this didn't make it to air.
And finally, Boyz II Men and Babyface performed “A Song for Mama.”
Tagged
coronavirus
comedy
saturday night live
snl
television
tv
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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