SNL After Party (S48 E18 - Air Date 4/15/23) - "Alcohol is a Sin"
Host: Ana De Armas
Musical Guest: Karol G
Hosting Saturday Night Live is No Time to Die. Critics really do have their Knives Out, and are just waiting for you to have a Blonde moment. But, things aren’t always black and white. Sometimes there are areas of Gray, Man.
Okay. Enough of that.
Ana De Armas hosted this week’s episode, which can best be described as, I don’t know, reasonably pleasant.
Cold Open – First Warm Day of the Year
Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang host a television show from Central Park where they interview a series of quirky characters one might expect to see in the park as the weather warms up. There’s a power walker with a too tight shirt! There’s perverts, a woman learning how to rollerblade, park employees who do not care, a lady trying to find someone, and a man with a microphone spouting nonsense while a woman argues with him as though it mattered.
The bits were rapid fire and amusing. This one had a feeling of a being a tad NYC centric, but I suppose Central Park is really just a stand in for any park.
Still, this break from current events in the cold open was also a bit of a let down.
Monologue
Ana De Armas opened in Spanish and noted she learned English from episodes of Friends after moving to the US from Cuba. The best actress Oscar nominee (for Blonde) told an interesting story about Robert De Niro visiting her father at work in Cuba, which didn’t really deliver much comedy. Interesting. But not that funny.
I sometimes wonder how much help the hosts get from the writers on the monologue. Because this one didn’t feel like it was punched up much.
The Dome
Can we please not have the recurring bit where every time an attractive actress shows up we have to do a sketch where the premise is “How can she be with that guy?”
It’s been done, and I even think with the exact same jokes used here.
In this setup, Ana is on a game show married to Mikey Day’s nerdy character (with bonus nipples. Don’t ask).
Kenan Thompson does the heavy lifting as the befuddled game show host, but this sketch just felt like a warmed up leftover.
American Girls: The Movie
Riffing on the upcoming Barbie movie, we got a pretaped trailer for an American Girls doll movie. The trailer pointed showed a group of girls based on the super expensive and over accessorized trendy dolls by mocking the tragic back story that apparently comes with the dolls. (“These little girls are going through too much!”)
One dies of cholera. Another dies of consumption I think. All their parents are tragically dead. It’s a clever choice for a fake trailer. And it’s about time someone took on the big doll industry.
Young Spicy Recording Session
Ana and Ego Nwodim are back up singers cutting tracks for Young Spicy’s (Devon Walker) new album as engineer Kenan Thompson works the board.
The singers are supposed to be hyping Young Spicy, but instead claim he can’t read, insult the cleanliness of his bathroom, diss his Corolla and accuse him of crimes. Ana and Ego deliver as the singers and are very funny.
Kenan’s line about laying down this track “and then we’re getting gyros” made me laugh more than it had any right to.
Spanish Class
Mikey Day makes the most out of this one note sketch. He’s a high school Spanish teacher who is good enough to teach English to American students, but can’t really cope when two Spanish (Ana and Marcello Hernandez) speaking students are suddenly deposited into his classroom in discipuli ex machine fashion.
See, the new kids speak Spanish fluently and quickly, and the teacher can’t handle it. Finally he ends the sketch by running off claiming to have diarrhea. This allows musical guest Karol G to come in and help Ana and Marcello teach Spanish themselves by singing and dancing. I am making none of this up. But hey, if you aren’t going to have an ending, it might as well be one that involves claims of diarrhea I suppose.
Please Don’t Destroy Video: Hangxiety
In the exact same slot as last week, the PDD gang voice their concerns about their drunken behavior at last week’s after party (SNL’s. Not this column). As they do so well, the ridiculousness heightens in unexpected ways. Evolving from kissing Bowen to cast members hurling things and firing weapons and other acts of general mayhem.
This entry was very funny, and even though there is a formula to what these guys do, they do it so well that I just don’t care because it almost always delivers serious laughs.
Weekend Update
This week’s episode had solid and pointed jokes, along with quality desk guests. Kenan showed up as Funky Kong - Donkey Kong’s brother who got cut out of the Super Mario Brothers Movie. He noted that Monkey Kong was also cut from the movie, and that Monkey Kong is, in fact, a donkey.
After being underutilized for a few weeks, Sarah Sherman knocked it out of the park as Genesis Fry, a meditation guru whose whole purpose is to insult and make Colin uncomfortable. Sarah is so committed to the bit, and Colin’s discomfort (whether it be real or merely acted) is hilarious. Sarah’s brand of wackiness is well suited for her trips to the Update desk and her unrelenting attacks on Jost.
Finally, Molly Kearney dropped in - literally - to discuss legislation aimed at trans youth. Kearney - who is openly non-binary - delivered a message was heartfelt, serious and important. But the laughs came from Molly being lowered in from a harness and peppering her serious points with jokes about her discomfort and how the crew left her hanging from the ceiling. Kearney is a talented physical performer, and it was good to see them get some quality time on the show.
Wedding Dinner
Ego brought back her character of the Lisa from Temecula (a lawyer heading up class action against Build-A-Bear). Lisa’s whole thing is she violently deals with food such that it flies everywhere and knocks over stuff on the table. Last time we saw her she was cutting a steak. This time she vigorously tossed a giant bowl full of salad while claiming that Ana’s character was hitting on her (which she wasn’t). It’s an exceptionally silly bit, but Ego remains so deadpan as she wreaks havoc with the table that I found myself laughing against my better judgment (as did Ana De Armas). Sometimes the simple laughs when executed well are the best ones.Inquisition).
Acting School for Dogs
They’ve done the whole let’s throw dogs on stage and see what happens bit before. But it’s never not funny. Here, Ana and Chloe Fineman are acting coaches for canines. The dogs uniformly do not do what they are supposed to. For example, Chloe is going to have one pooch do a Lady and the Tramp with her, so she stuffs spaghetti in her mouth in an attempt to share it. The dog wants nothing to do with this and bolts away, leaving Chloe laughing with a mouthful of spaghetti. Then little Jellybean the tiny pug baby is supposed to menace a model of Seattle as an alien invader. But Jellybean is too kind hearted and only sniffs at the Space Needle.
This is one of those sketches where if the dogs had done what they were supposed to, it wouldn’t have been particularly funny. (Unlike, say, the Will Ferrel and Molly Shannon “Dog Show” sketches, or Kate McKinnon and Kristin Wiig “Whiskers R We” segments in which the animals were funny but so was the rest of the sketch. Animal faux pas (or fur paws!) were the garnish and not necessarily the whole meal). But, the dogs refusing to perform generated plenty of laughs.
Nail Salon
This was an 11:50 sketch that somehow got past dress rehearsal and on air. Ana and Bowen are a couple visiting a nail salon. The flimsy premise is that Bowen was just named by Guiness as holding the record for world’s longest nails, which he waves about with aplomb. Now he doesn’t want to trim those record-breaking nails.
This sketch should have been - you guessed it - trimmed for time.
The Goodbye Wave
Best Sketch: Much as I loved Sarah Sherman on Update this week, and as fun as the Please Don’t Destroy video was, I am going to go with the simple pleasure of the Wedding Dinner based on Ego’s absolute seriousness in delivering totally asinine laughs. I don’t want to see Lisa from Temecula too often. But she’s great as an occassional dinner guest.
Worst Sketch: This was going to be a tough decision until the Nail Salon sketch at the end made it for me.
Random Notes:
- My wife not thrilled by musical guest Karol G. For the first number, a backup choir in all beige (opening with a sample of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) sang while Karol G. sang in a torn outfit. My wife’s note was “The backup singers look like they are in a GAP ad, and [Karol G] looks like she’s in a Mad Max movie.” This image was reinforced in her second performance, in which Karol G wore dystopian black porcupine armor.
- There was an airy, almost low key tone to this week’s show. Everyone seemed relaxed somehow. Nothing too upsetting. Nothing that will be remembered for years to come. But a completely pleasant 90 minutes.
- Possibly related to the prior point, this feels like the least political show since sometime in 2016. One Biden joke. I didn’t catch a Trump reference. A welcome respite for some, I suppose.
Ana De Armas was a solid host. Her acting ability paid off. She seemed to be enjoying herself, and adapted to the comedy well. So, although she didn’t have a ton of great material to work with, she was a fine host. I wouldn’t expect her to get a five timer club jacket, but wouldn’t be stunned if she reappeared while promoting a movie in a couple of years.
Grade: C
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