SNL After Party (S49 E17 Air Date 4/13/24 - "Now There's a Gentleman Behind You Dressed as Butthead")
Host: Ryan Gosling
Musical Guest: Chris Stapleton
Last week’s Kristen Wiig-helmed episode set a pretty high bar.
Could this week’s host Ryan Gosling meet the challenge?
Here’s a hint. Based on the amount of laughing he did, there’s at least one guy who thought the show was hysterical. And that is Ryan Gosling.
Let’s find out if the rest of us share his opinion at this week’s After Party
Cold Open
The alien abduction debrief sketch returns, as does Kate McKinnon. Gosling - in a rare use of the guest host in the cold open - also returns, and Sarah Sherman fills in for the Cecily Strong role. (Was she not available? That would have been great).
The sketch follows the usual format of Gosling and Sherman explaining their wonderful experience with aliens to government official (Bowen Yang and Mikey Day).
Meanwhile, McKinnon’s character had a much rougher time. The bit was reliably funny, particularly when McKinnon does some great phyiscal comedy that triggers one of Gosling’s many giggle-fests of the night.
This was a welcome sketch return, but one could argue that it was so well retired on McKinnon’s last show that maybe it shouldn’t have come back (particularly without Strong). But, I enjoyed it and man did it set the tone for the crack-up filled night.
Monologue
Gosling is here to promote his new film The Fall Guy (What! Why?), and to get away from his Ken character from Barbie. Unfortunately, he just can’t quite shake the guy, so he begins singing a parody of Taylor Swift’s breakup hit “All Too Well”.
He is interrupted by Fall Guy co-star Emily Blunt who reminds him the monologue was supposed to include her hitting him to show off his stunt work to promote the film. Gosling ignores her entreaties, so Blunt hits him with a bottle and then a chair.
However, it is then revealed that Blunt misses her role as Kitty in Oppenheimer. This leads to a full blown Barbenheimer musical number (with dancing Barbies and Oppenheimers!). This was actually quite a lovely and sweet number, and started the show off with a ban….No. I won’t do that. Bang. Sorry, not sorry.
The Engagement
Gosling and Chloe Fineman announce their engagement to Ego Nwodim and Andrew Dismukes. When Chloe and Ego leave the room, Gosling whispers (hilariously) to Dismukes that he doesn’t want to go through with it and only asked Chloe to marry him because their dog died and he “wanted to fix it”.
Over time, Gosling hatches an insane plan to get out of the wedding (including facial construction from a guy he found on Groupon and fleeing to Istanbul) while also acting shocked when Dismukes exposes his doubts.
Gosling cracks himself up here multiple times, but we all get it.
It’s a silly, but funny sketch, giving Dismukes some good straight man time.
Get That Boy Back
Chloe Troast is given a chance to shine in this pre-taped country music video in the subgenre of women seeking revenge on their exes.
While Ego and Chloe Fineman have normal revenge plots, Troast hatches an elaborate scheme to get back at her ex - musical guest Chris Stapleton. This includes replacing his shoes a little bigger, camouflaging herself to match her ex’s mother’s (Heidi) wall while whispering “Get out” and it gets more bizarre from there.
It’s genuinely funny, and Troast is terrific. And Stapleton gamely plays along in both acting and performing. It’s one of the better music videos we’ve seen.
Can’t Tonight
Three friends with accents discuss their evening plans. When the waitress (Sarah Sherman) asks them about their accents (“I like countries”), Kenan Thompson explains that he is Dominican, that Marcello Hernandez is Cuban, and that Gosling is from Tennessee, but is married to a Cuban woman. (Gosling is from Canada, but he is married to actress Eva Mendes, whose parents are Cuban).
The sketch revolves around Gosling and Hernandez trying to get Kenan to join them at a club where Eva Mendes (!) will be, along with Margot Robbie, and the original dog from Beethoven.
Kenan reveals he can’t attend because he is meeting his would be girlfriend at her job so he can “smoke a bunch of cigarettes with the love of my life.”
Really, this is just an excuse for an accent-palooza, which may or may not still be an okay thing to do. In any case, it is not one of the show’s brighter spots, though it does get some points for absurdity.
News Nation
I really don’t think describing this one will do it justice.
Heidi hosts a news show and interviews Kenan as an expert on A.I. Kenan, however, is distracted by an audience member (Gosling) who “looks strikingly similar to Beavis from the cartoon Beavis and Butthead.” When Heidi turns to ask him to move, she chuckles as if she has never seen Gosling in costume before. She asks him to move and, in a completely normal voice, he agrees to move.
The next time we see the seat, it is filled by Mikey Day looking like Butthead. Once again, the distracted guest asks if he can be moved, Heidi turns around and, I say this without exaggeration, has the single greatest break in character in SNL history. She makes Jimmy Fallon look like an amateur, and cannot stop laughing for a significant time.
Later the two audience members are seen sitting together, and neither Gosling nor Day can remain in character. Then Chloe Fineman as another audience member loses it.
There’s a great little tack on at the end.
The breakdowns here felt organic and appropriate. There is no way Heidi saw Gosling and Day in full costume and makeup before this sketch. The whole thing was absolutely hilarious.
Weekend Update
A solid outing with this weeks. Jost and Che discuss the Arizona Supreme Court upholding an anti-abortion law from the 1860’s when the only option with an unwanted baby “was to give it Rumplestiltskin.” Other jokes include a a newspaper article that used Trump’s name instead of O.J. Simpson’s (“even autocorrect thinks he belongs in jail.”) Then there’s a return of the Mitch McConnell jokes (“Mitch McConnell seen here being told a Black woman made a country album”). There is also a story about a new musical about Lord of the Rings. “If you love Lord of the Rings and musicals….High school must have been tough.”
Michael Longfellow visits the desk as the “resident boyfriend” talking about weaponized incompetence. It falls kind of flat, and there’s not much to it. He does, however, ask women “How do you the word duvet?,” and that was pretty funny.
Che makes a couple of his usual intentionally mysogynistic (and often, I have to admit, funny despite my knowing better) jokes. He makes one about University of Iowa retiring superstar Caitlin Clark’s jersey and noting it will be “replaced with an apron.” Even for Che, this one seemed too far. But, good news! This was just a setup to bring Clark on to attack Che’s jokes. When Che argues he doesn’t make THAT many jokes about women’s sports, Jost plays a supercut to prove him wrong.
This leads to Clark doing a segment of making Che read jokes she supposedly wrote that blast Che for his sins. It’s done in the style of the annual bit of Che and Jost writing jokes for each other, and it’s pretty funny. It’s also a clever way for SNL to appear to say the show is going to move away from easy sexist material. Will that actually be the case? Time (and probably the next episode) will tell.
Doctor Please
In the decidedly most bizarre sketch of the night Bowen Yang is the very odd Dr. Please, who gives news that a patient has died to the deceased’s family. He tells them it is on his fault. Yang leaves and returns with his associate “Jeffrey Thankyou”. He is covered in blood, and advises that he did not drop anything inside the patient. Yang and Gosling then pitch their new snack, “Cookie Crumbles”. They are not selling them yet. But soon.
Yang and Gosling are aggressively odd, and the sketch is fun for its weirdness. And, yes, Gosling cracks up. Even Yang loses it a little (a crumble, if you will).
It’s an absolutely ridiculous sketch (with a glimpse - maybe the only one? - of Punkie Johnson, Devon Walker, and Molly Kearney for the week).
Erin Brockovich
For reasons unclear, this sketch is a deleted scene from the movie Erin Brockovich….released in 2000. Chloe Fineman does a passable Julia Roberts imitation who talks to her bearded neighbor, Gosling. He asks for her number, and she proceeds to give her life numbers. He goes through letters. She goes through books, Rosling lists the characters from Friends. Kenan then shows up and make funny noises.
Gosling is, of course amused and loses it. He also starts to lose his mustache.
It’s a very odd sketch. And I don’t know who has Erin Brockovich nostalgia.
The Goodbye Wave
Best Sketch: There’s not even a question for me. It’s the New Nation sketch. Any other week, I’d have gone with Get That Boy Back (this is true of a few sketches this week…we have a wealth of good choices this week), but I have not laughed this hard at an SNL sketch in a long time.
Worst Sketch: This is a close call between Can’t Tonight and Erin Brockovich. I’m going with Can’t Tonight because it really is just a “see how funny these accents are” sketch. And I’m kind of over that.
Random Notes:
- Musical guest Christ Stapleton did two simple numbers. The second one was just him - alone- on stage with a guitar. It just goes to show that good musicianship doesn’t need the giant production number. I am not country fan, but was really impressed with his performances.
- Presumably cut for time was a seven (!) minute movie trailer for Papyrus 2. In a previous appearance, Gosling was a man obsessed with the font used by the hit film Avatar, declaring it to just be papyrus font. This time around, he is retriggered by the Avatar sequel when he realizes that although the font has changed, it is just papyrus bold. It’s a fun bit that Gosling plays as straight drama (and doesn’t crack up to), and SNL alum Kyle Mooney shows up again as the font designer. We also learn who Gosling’s character’s father is in a twist ending that is a setup to a truly groan-worthy joke. I can see why this was cut for time reasons, but it would have been a nice addition to the show.
- A lot of the cast may as well had the week off for this episode. Some were barely on camera. The goodbye shot was the most screen time a few of them got.
- I wonder if Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang duke it out to see who gets to do the weird sketch each week.
Gosling and a surprising number of other cast members broke hard and a lot this week. I got tired of it when Fallon and Sanz used to do it, but this week it somehow was delightful. Heidi Gardner’s joyous meltdown during the Beavis and Butthead sketch was wonderful, and Gosling’s crack-ups somehow made him much more likable (as if he needed that).
The writing this week seemed fresh, and the show seemed to make the decision to - outside of Update - ignore current events. It was a good choice. There was some very funny material this week, as well as great performances. This was a fun episode, I tell you what. Even Cornholio would have cracked up.
Grade: A
As always, we grade SNL episodes in comparison to other SNL episodes. Not TV in general.
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