Despite booking a very good variety of hosts, this has not been the best season of Saturday Night Live so far, one understandably dominated and sadly hobbled by the run-up to the election. Guest stars like Maya Rudolph and Jim Carrey have been ubiquitous for better and worse, some of the best longtime castmembers have been absent (Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong are both off filming sitcoms), and lots of new and returning castmembers have barely gotten any airtime. The urgency and strange comfort of the At Home pandemic episodes last spring—when the writers, cast and crew were able to capture the mood of the nation through a handful of strange, surreal sketches—has given way to something less compelling this fall.
Thankfully, John Mulaney is very, very good at sketch comedy. He stopped by to host the show for the fourth time this weekend, along with musical guest The Strokes, and it ended up being the best episode of the season so far. Mulaney, who previously wrote for SNL for four seasons, seems to have an innate understanding of what kind of material works best on the show, whether it's Broadway parodies or hyper-specific observations on NYC; his own sense of humor skews close enough to what I think of as the "SNL house style" that he is able to seemingly set the tone for the material every time he hosts and also seamlessly gel with whatever the writers already came up with.
His episodes over the last three years have been as good as SNL gets these days, and this one was no different: everything seemed to be clicking, and I really liked almost every segment this week. If you don't enjoy anything from this episode, you maybe have to come to terms with the fact you just don't like SNL.
My favorite thing about this episode was how much amazing NYC-centric material served as the basis for sketches, starting with New York Musical, another instant classic Mulaney-helmed Broadway pastiche about buying underwear from a Times Square souvenir shop. As with Diner Lobster, Bodega Bathroom and Airport Sushi, this was chock-full of hilarious moments for tons of castmembers, from Kenan Thompson's Minion to Maya Rudolph singing "I'm Still Here" from Follies to Beck Bennett's peeping tom and Chloe Fineman's Westchester superspreader.
Then there was New York PSA, a great, sincere sketch which gave Kate McKinnon the chance to let loose as a kooky old lady who should be NYC's new mascot.
I have always really enjoyed the recurring Cinema Classics sketches, always hosted by Thompson as the delightfully-named Reese De'What, and Cinema Classics: The Birds about the Hitchcock classic–and featuring birds tossing sandwiches and turtles—was one of the best ever.
Uncle Meme was a standout sketch from Mulaney's last time hosting in February, so I was very pleased to see it get a deserved sequel here with Another Uncle Meme, even if this one wasn't quite as hilarious the second time around.
Look at this: another sketch to recommend! Headless Horseman was the best Halloween-themed sketch of the night, a very silly, NSFW take on the classic "Sleepy Hollow" story.
Strollin' was a pretty good pre-taped segment with a very catchy song about the difficulties of voting (the voters were played by Thompson, Chris Redd, Ego Nwodim, and Punkie Johnson) that went from breezy to depressing in record time.
Hey, you know what Mulaney is really, really good at? Stand-up comedy! If SNL wanted to let him do a Monologue for the entire episode, I wouldn't have complained. The bits about the Cuomo press conferences and Mulaney's grandmother were just perfect. Considering he's the guy who previously came up with the brilliant "horse in the hospital" analogy for Trump, the bits about the election weren't his strongest jokes. Besides that, pretty, pretty great!
It was another good week for Weekend Update, the highlight being the return of Baby Yoda. Kyle Mooney donned tons of makeup to play an shit-talking, influencer version of everyone's favorite new Star Wars character, who has a bone to pick with Baby Groot. I also laughed pretty hard at the description of Jared Kushner as someone "who always looks like a child dressed up for a funeral."
Clearly most of this episode was really good, and dare I say even the Biden Halloween Cold Open wasn't bad. Carrey still doesn't seem to be playing a Biden that anyone recognizes, but this was much better than the debate regurgitations in previous weeks. All cold opens should be under eight minutes!
There was also one cut-for-time sketch: Democracy PSA, in which the cast's election anxieties were given some room to breathe and/or yell into a pillow.
And to top things off, The Strokes performed two of the best songs from their shockingly good recent album The New Abnormal: "The Adults Are Talking" and "Bad Decisions."
Dave Chappelle will host next week's post-election episode; you may recall that Chappelle hosted the post-election episode back in 2016, and said during the monologue that people should "give [Trump] a chance." No musical guest has been announced as of yet, but maybe Chappelle is going to pull double duty and use the musical spots to performatively smoke onstage.
