Girls and Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Adam Driver was the host of the first Saturday Night Live of 2016 last night, although it technically should have been re-dubbed Very Very Early Sunday Morning Live, since the episode was pushed back by about an hour due to the (admittedly thrilling) Green Bay Packers/Arizona Cardinals game. Maybe this was for the best, because despite Driver's exuberant embrace of a lot of goofiness, this was not the most memorable episode.
There were of course highlights: the most memorable sketch of the night was Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base, in which Kylo Ren goes undercover as radar technician Matt to better get to know his underlings. Besides being a great parody of reality show tropes with some great design and costume work, it made me really want to watch a TV series following the everyday exploits of stormtroopers and other Star Wars universe working folks. (Surprisingly, while Star Wars came up here and in the Monologue, there were no Girls jokes.)
Also very good: the muted, earnest Kyle Mooney/Kate McKinnon performances in Golden Globes, which didn't provide too many laughs until it culminated in a hilarious cameo from an apron-wearing Liev Schreiber making breakfast and growling about having a really "cool" time with their parents. I just wish that pre-taped sketch had been pushed forward in the night ahead of NFL Playoff Game, which seemed to exist only as a very silly, one-note meta-commentary on that Packers/Cardinals game.
Cecily Strong was excellent in the otherwise predictable Aladdin sketch (they hit birds! airplane toilet refuse! she peed herself a little?); I'm pretty sure I fell asleep midway through that one, so I didn't remember much of the America's Funniest Cats, which featured a lot of existential cat commentary from French women Strong and McKinnon. I re-watched it this morning, and it was missing that spark that McKinnon usually brings to such sketches (see: the giggle fit-inducing alien abduction sketch during Ryan Gosling's episode); also, this was one sketch where Driver's natural intensity really felt jarring (or perhaps just misused).
The rest of the episode was less successful than that: the Republican Debate Cold Open was bland as ever, but at least individual performances are improving—in particular, Bobby Moynhan's blustery Chris Christie, Beck Bennett's hopeless Jeb Bush, and best of all, Jay Pharoah's masterfully cartoonish Ben Carson. At this point, I hope he stays in the race just to see how cockeyed Pharoah's Carson can get.
A lot of cast members were hard to find this episode: Sasheer Zamata was nowhere to be seen, Aidy Bryant seemed to be on the backburner until the weak 10-to-1 Porn Doctor sketch, and Jon Rudnitsky continues to struggle to find his place in the cast. Weekend Update featured another strong Pete Davidson standup bit on gun control, and Vanessa Bayer revived her child actor character Laura Parsons to read headlines on El Chapo and Bill Cosby.
Click through for all those sketches, plus performances by Chris Stapleton and a touching tribute to David Bowie by Fred Armisen. Ronda Rousey hosts next week with musical guest Selena Gomez.
