SNL After Party (S48 E17 - Air Date 4/8/23) - "A Lil Joke. A Lil Bow. A Lil Jog"
Host: Molly Shannon
Musical Guest: Jonas Brothers
When a former cast member comes back to host, you expect - perhaps even want - them to do a greatest hits tour. It’s like with a band playing the fair circuit. You don’t mind if they try something new, but you definitely want them to play “I Want You to Want Me” as well.
So this week did 1995-2001 cast member deliver what the crowd wanted to see, or did she disappoint by ignoring the greatest hits?
Cold Open – The Last Supper
This opened like a drama about the Last Supper, with Mikey Day as Christ addressing “My friends…and Judas”. Judas here is Molly Kearney, who is surprisingly funny with limited material. Part of the reason it is limited, is that the drama is quickly interrupted by Donald Trump comparing his legal woes to Jesus’ in what seems to be a paid for commercial.
It’s a very well done bit, with James Austin Johnson as Trump promising that if it were him, Good Friday would have been Great Friday. JAJ was, of course, excellent. He seemed more relaxed than usual, and had some great meta bits such as mocking the other cast members stuck in freeze frame while he yammered.
The cold open is threatening to be monopolized by JAJ, but as he said during the bit, the others would get a chance if they just came up with a breakthrough political character on their own.
This was one of the better cold opens of late.
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Monologue
Molly Shannon seemed genuinely happy to be back in Studio 8H. I had concerns when she started singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” but my concerns were not well founded. It really was just a setup so cast members could talk about their various and funny concerns. Kenan has a bad habit of buying fake Rolexes it seems.
Oddly, Molly Kearney did the overused “I’m not in the show that much” bit, but I think they were in the show more than usual.
But, Molly Shannon got in a “Superstar!” at the end, which the crowd appreciated. (And, frankly, so did I because I knew it meant that we weren’t likely to see an actual Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch. That one came from the era of recurring characters way overstaying their welcome).
Overall, this was a fun monologue that set a light tone for the show.
Valets
Andrew Dismukes is teaching a group of new valets (JAJ, Molly Shannon, and Kenan Thompson) how to do their job following three simple rules. Give a lil joke, a lil bow, and a lil jog. And of course, the new valets don’t do a great job. JAJ insults the customer and runs away. Molly Shannon, somewhat inexplicably, channels Kristin Wiig’s “I’m just joking character”, and Kenan just chews up the scenery.
This one was mildly amusing, but felt like a second stringer sketch. Not the one that should have been so high in the batting order.
Jeannie Darcy
For the second week in a row, the second sketch (not counting the cold open) of the night is a pretaped Netflix promo. This time it is for one of Molly Shannon’s old recurring characters, comedian Jeannie Darcy.
The whole thing with Darcy is that she’s a parody of bad comics from the 90’s who complained about their husbands and other mundane things. Her catch-phrase of “Don’t get me started. Don’t even get me started” is now and has always been the entire joke.
The Netflix format at least gave the element of showing audiences being entirely indifferent to her act and gave the opportunity for an Arsenio Hall impression (?) by Ego Nwodim, a fun Wanda Sykes impression by Punkie Johnson and a convincing Sarah Silverman by Chloe Fineman.
But, even with this packaging, the whole Jeannie Darcy character is a one note bit that probably shouldn’t have been a recurring character n the 90’s, much less one that needed reviving decades later.
Baby Shower
If the valet sketch seemed like a relief pitcher, then this one felt like a minor league player who finally got called up to the show. I’m not sure why I am stuck on a sports metaphor this week. It’s late when I write these, so cut me some slack.
Molly Shannon is being thrown a baby shower by her office before it is ultimately revealed via a loud bit of flatulence that she was not pregnant and that she just had gas for the past eight months.
It’s every bit as stupid as it sounds. And it feels like a sketch that had been gathering dust in a filing cabinet in some writer’s office since Molly’s first season on SNL. Apparently, though, the ending was missing, so they just scribbled in an explosion to wrap it up.
But, that said, there’s no denying this juvenile sketch is funny and absurd. Sometimes you just need an extended fart joke, I suppose.
Please Don’t Destroy Video: The Molly Shannon Video Game
The lads return to their basic setup this week. Molly Shannon visits the writers’ office to discovery the gang playing the latest installment of the Molly Shannon video game (Molly Shannon 2k23), a series she didn’t even know existed.
The absurd premise starts out showing us what is basically a Sims type game, before it devolves into a Mortal Kombat style fighter and a Tony Hawkish game in which the virtual Molly insults her competitors. The real Molly gets hooked and plays for several days leveling up her rapping sim character.
It’s ridiculous and fun, as the Please Don’t Destroy videos usually are. This wasn’t the best, but it was still a lot of fun.
The Play
Heidi Gardner is a playwright who attends opening night of her autobiographical play with her boyfriend (Devon Walker).
Molly Shannon portrays Heidi in the play. The show goes awry as the lead discusses how she lost the love of her life, had a year of “a thousand men” and finally settled for a dork (Kenan playing Devon’s character on stage).
The sketch is more clever than funny, and does seem to drag on.
Weekend Update
We know and they know that they will not soon be able to top last week’s April Fools’ joke, so they played this one more or less straight (though Che did manage to break things up when he noted that the Pope calling sex a beautiful thing before adding a perfectly delivered “Not the way I do it.” Whether feigned or not, Colin’s discomfort at that was priceless . Overall, the news of the day jokes were solid, but this week the desk guests actually did shine brighter.
Leading that charge was Bowen Yang as Jafar from Aladin, issuing warnings against “the boy” Ron DeSantis based on his war with Disney. Bowen was fantastic in this role, and the whole bit was very funny.
Punkie Johnson stopped by as Angel Reese, part of LSU’s women’s basketball champions this year. She went over controversies of alleged taunting and her initial refusal to visit the White House. There was some pointed stuff on race in there, but the real comedy came from some endorsement Reese was hoping to obtain. “Degree…Y’all Stank” and “Big-Ass Eyelashes, empowering women ballers and Snuffleupagus since 1972.”
Funny stuff with a serious underlying point that was well executed.
And, finally, Heidi Gardner popped in as your co-worker who is extremely busy. Heidi delivered a mix of strong character work and great physical comedy. Her facial expressions were priceless and her salad flinging skills impressive.
Drug Commercial
I don’t know. This one was just an excuse to make a bunch of jokes about the name of a menopause drug. Ostensibly there was a little more to it. But not much.
Sally O’Malley
One of Molly Shannon’s best known characters was Sally O’Malley, the 50 year old who can kick, stretch and kick. The premise here is that Sally is brought in to choreography the next tour for Jonas Brothers.
This character was pretty funny when she first debuted, but she came back a bit too often. And now, Molly Shannon is actually older than Sally, and while she still can indeed both stretch and kick, the character seemed to lack the energy of her former incarnation. It also felt like Shannon was flat in her line reading. The whole sketch just seemed kind of off. And that’s even before Jonas Brothers do quasi-drag. (Quasi-drag is the kind of drag you can probably still perform in many Southern states without being arrested and hauled before some form of Inquisition).
CNZen
This pretaped commercial segment takes aim at people “whose whole personality is hating Trump.” CNZen is a meditation app for Trump haters who are worried that the current indictments won’t yield any results, and need help getting through the next several months before the next hearing.
It’s good for SNL to get in some shots against the left from time to time. It makes us feel like there’s some balance in the force, and this commercial parody did a good job of nailing both excessive Trump hate obsession as well as the seeming glut of meditation apps available on the market.
This was not a typical 11:50 piece, but it was a good one.
The Goodbye Wave
Best Sketch: The Cold Open wins this week. Pointed writing and a great performance by JAJ combined politics and religion to create some very funny material.
Worst Sketch: Tough call here. There are a number of contenders, but I think I have to go with The Drug Commercial. Of all the sophomoric one-joke sketches this week, this one was probably the weakest.
Random Notes:
- Martin Short showed up during the monologue and did one joke, and then we didn’t see him again until the curtain call. That was weird, I must say.
- It was a shame that Molly couldn’t bring back her best character, the dog show lady. But, that would have required three important things. Will Ferrell, Mr. Bojangles, and, perhaps most importantly, Mr. Rocky Balboa. I had hopes for a surprise visit from all of them. But, alas, it was not to be.
- I know I say this every week, but man this cast is too big. People are getting completely lost here.
Molly Shannon was always a stalwart SNL performer. She did have an inordinate number of recurring characters, some of whom I grew tired of, but others that I was always glad to see.
But, Molly was always a solid performer, and it was good to see her back on the show this week. It was an even-keeled episode with some serious lowbrow stuff. Maybe it wasn’t an episode I loved, but I’d be hard pressed to say I disliked, much less hated it. This episode was no “superstar” in the annals of SNL, but, then again, it would be a stretch (and maybe even a kick) to say it was bad.
Grade: C+