SNL After Party (S49 E11- Air Date 2/3/24) - "You Have Hypnotized Me Without My Permission, Devil Man"
Host: Ayo Edebiri
Musical Guest: Jennifer Lopez
Recent Emmy and Golden Globe winner Ayo Edebiri made her first appearance hosting SNL this week. Would The Bear star make us say “Yes, chef!” or would we send this dish back?
Let’s roll into the After Party and dig in!
Cold Open
It seems likely that political sketches are going to start dominating the opens now that primary season is underway. In this week’s entry Gayle King (Punkie Johnson) and Charles Barkley (Kenan Thompson) - hosts of the King Charles Show (since GayBar was rejected) - host a Trump town hall.
Cue James Austin Johnson and his Trump impersonation. As always, it’s fantastic.. Trump applauds South Carolina for being the first state to secede from the Union but not the last. He adds he’d like to get the states down back to 12-13. This leads Barkley to say that is the “dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and I work with Shaq.”
JAJ does one of his great Trump connect the dots style rants listing the reasons that support how Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to get Biden re-elected.
Devon Walker pops in as Tim Scott to grovel to Trump, who isn’t having it.
Then, sadly, the real Nikki Haley shows up to ask questions. She asks Trump if he believes in mental competency tests. Trump retorts that ihe aced such a test that showed he was “100% mental”.
Then, SNL does this THING they do where they let politicians try to rehab their image by having host Edebiri ask Haley what was the cause of the civil war, and asking if it starts with “S” and ends a “lavery”. This refers to Haley’s odd (or, calculated?) decision to not admit that slavery was the main cause of the civil war.
But if you pay attention, Haley doesn’t say the words herself. She agrees, and admits she should have said it in the first place. But, “slavery” never comes out of Haley’s mouth.
This whole having politicians on who are currently running for office is really a bad look for SNL, particularly considering that whole “letting Trump host during an active presidential campaign” thing.
Monologue
Edebiri came up in the stand-up scene (which she mentions quite a bit during the monologue). And it shows. She is charming. Her timing and delivery are great, and she delivers a very funny monologue with nary a cast member or cameo drop in in sight.
She points out that she is a child of immigrants and that while her other family members were making folks proud becoming professionals, se was doing “stand-up comedy shows in the back of laundry mats.”
She mentions her open mic days, which gets positive feedback from the crowd. She thanks them for the first ever round of applause for open mics. Very funny.
The highlight comes when Edebiri reads parts of a packet she planned to submit to get on the SNL casts. It included sketches including White Jeopardy (which turns out to just be white people playing Jeopardy and another sketch to create the catch phrase “Hop on to it now!”
Edebiri scores with her monologue, and gives us a sneak peek of her energy that will permeate the show.
Why Did You Say It?
In the first (!) game show sketch of the night, Kenan hosts a show where contestants explain comments they made on Instagram. Having Edebiri as a contestant gives the opportunity to poke at the elephant in the room, since she had previously made pointed comments about musical guest Jennifer Lopez, calling her career a scam.
This was not a particularly funny sketch, unfortunately, but it was a good way to defuse and address that situation. And, again, Edebiri’s energy was strong.
“It’s Happening Tonight”
Well…this is an overproduced pre-taped musical bit making fun of, shall we say, the Georgia O’Keefe styling of the Dune 2 popcorn topper. Good for a chuckle at first, but overall, meh.
Drugs on Campus
Students gather on campus as Andrew Dismukes announces he micro-dosed on mushrooms in a chocolate bar. Edeberi and Mikey Day are “1990’s PSA” anti-drug kids who are very anti drug. “I’d rather be straight edge than be sharing mushroom needles with a junkie!,” Edebiri says.
It ends predictably enough, but everyone’s performance here is great, particularly Edebiri and Day’s over the top crusaders.
New York Morning News
Bowen Yang is on the street reporter Danny Love, interviewing couples hoping to get a good “meet cute” story. The stories are anything but. In the end, it is Danny Love himself who gets his “meet cute”.
The sketch is cute, if not a gut buster.
An appearance by Martin Herlihy is the closest we get to a Please Don’t Destroy video this week.
Weekend Update
I used to get mad when Jimmy Fallon would crack up on Weekend Update (and elsewhere), but for some reason I don’t mind Che and Jost’s loosey goosey antics. This week had a lot of jokes that created those groans from the audience that really mean “This is funny, but I know I shouldn’t laugh”. And Che’s ongoing commentary on crowd reaction always makes me happy. Can’t say why, but there it is and here we are.
Groaners this week included comments on Biden’s support with minorities being so bad that he only got an endorsement from Obama’s “white half”. When this triggered the groan, Che said “Did you guys all forget that?”
The highlight of Update, and arguably the show, came from a visit to the desk by Sarah Sherman as an 18 year-old young man who won a ticket lottery to get to see the show. Sarah’s character was dressed exactly like Jost, and as the bit progresses, he has more and more similarities to him.
This is one of those amazing punching up bits where Sherman insults Jost, and Jost plays along gamely. The visit, where it becomes increasingly clear that Sherman’s character is Jost’s son, is interspersed with snippets from “Cats in the Cradle.”
This was a genuinely hilarious segment, and a real work of art.
Trivia Quest
In our second game show sketch of the week. Ego Nwodim hosts a trivia game with contests Edebiri, Sherman and Day. The joke - and the entire joke - is that Edebiri and Nwodim are both female Spelman College graduates. As are, it turns out, the judges.
So the show is fixed for Edebiri.
This was a pretty weak single joke sketch despite solid performances.
The Elevator
I don’t know what this was. In a pre-taped segment, a group of people are trapped on an elevator briefly, and then form a society.
This felt like filler.
School Hypnotist
Mr. Phantasmic (sp?) (Dismukes) visits a classroom, where student Solomon (Edebiri) vociferously points out the hypnotist does not have consent him. Nonetheless, despite not actually being hypnotized Solomon starts revealing secrets. Edeberi is absolutely brilliant in this sketch, and brings strong comic energy to Solomon’s denunciation of Mr. Phantasmic.
The sketch falls apart at the end, but Edebiri carries this one and brings a lot of laughs.
People’s Court
This sketch was made for the 11:55 slot. In this episode of The People’s Court, a hairdresser (Nwodim) is sued by her client (Edebiri) over a really bad haircut. The haircut has gone so awry that Edebiri’s brain is exposed. This sketch is designed for insane, over the top statements and reactions (see Devon Walker as the bailiff, and Kenan as the judge).
It is foolishness, but brazenly executed so it gets credit.
The Goodbye Wave
Best Sketch: Tough call here. The funniest moment was the Update desk visit by Jost’s long lost son. But, as an actual sketch, the School Hypnotist made me laugh quite a lot. That said, the Update bit was one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the show in a while, so I have to go with it..
Worst Sketch: Another tough call. But, I will go with The Elevator. That sketch did not go all the way to the top floor. See what I did there.
Random Notes:
- Despite The Beef (I know, wrong show) with host Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez appeared as the musical guest, with a little help from Redman and Latto in her first number.. Nothing too special about her two numbers this week. But, in light of Justin Timberlake last week and J-Lo this week, I can only assume some equally relevant musical guest will appear next week. Maybe the Georgia Satellites?
- I can’t imagine how hard it is to get air time with this many cast members. Molly Kearney and Chloe Troast are barely present these days. And, they are both clearly funny. I hope they can pair up with some writers who will get them on the show more.
- On the other hand, it is good to see Sarah Sherman doing cringey stuff again. She shines at that.
Ayo Edebiri was a natural on the show. She committed to her characters and infused the show with great energy. Unfortunately, the material was a bit of a mixed bag. I’d like to see her return in the not too distant future, as she made the show fun.
Grade: B-
As always, we grade SNL episodes in comparison to other SNL episodes. Not TV in general.
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