SNL After Party (S49 E18 Air Date 05/04/24) - "I Wouldn't Worry About That. That's Just Sauce"

 Host: Dua Lipa
Musical Guest: Dua Lipa

The salad days had to come to an end.

This week’s episode with host and musical guest Dua Lipa (along with an alarming number of returning sketches) took a tumble from the recent Ryan Gosling and Kristen Wiig highs. But how precipitous a fall did we witness?

Let’s find out at this week’s After Party

Cold Open

The current event driving this week’s cold open was the ongoing protests at colleges over the Gaza situation. In this sketch, Michael Longfellow interviews Columbia University parents (Heidi Gardner, Mikey Day, and Kenan Thompson) about the protests.

The joke…and the only joke…is that Kenan supports the protests, but adamantly insists his daughter not do so. “Brother man, I’m in support of your kids protesting!”

There’s just not a lot to this, other than some mild laughs. Is that a portent of things to come?

Monologue

It is generous to call Dua Lipa’s appearance on stage a monologue. The London born singer (with Albanian parents) makes a joke about her name and makes a reference to the “Go Girl, Give Us Nothing” meme as well as her penchant for vacations. She also introduces her parents who are in the audience and tells a story about running into them in a nightclub.

Dua Lipa is on to promote her new album, “Radical Optimism,” so she uses that as a topic to answer audience questions on how to find optimism in any situation.

Bowen Yang gets a laugh with his question on his doctor telling him to stop drinking, and Gardener stumps Lipa appearing as South Dakota Governor (and contender for a spot to run as VP with Trump) Kristi Noem who recently made headlines for a book she wrote in which she says she shot her dog for being untrainable.

Not a lot of laughs, but Lipa seems pleasant enough. Maybe it’ll be okay…

Young Spicy

Look, SNL has always repeated sketches from day 1. Where would we be without the Coneheads, “Cheeburger, Cheeburger”, “Wayne’s World”, “Celebrity Jeopardy” or that horrible thing with Rob Schneider sitting by the copy machine (that, I admit I thought was funny at the time…and possibly annoyed many, many people by quoting it. I am that guy. And I hereby offer up a plea for forgiveness). So it’s not necessarily a bad thing when the show brings back sketch concepts.

What doesn’t work is when the sketch is a one joke concept. And this week’s episode brings back a few.

First repeat this week is the Young Spicy sketch. In it, Devon Walker is the titular rapper in a recording studio with his engineer Kenan. They are trying to get backup singers (Ego Nwodim and Lipa) to lay down some tracks praising Spicy. Instead, they record more and more unintentionally insulting tracks, leading to Spicy’s fruststration. Ultimately, the sketch basically ends with Kenan giving appropriate examples.

This was funny once.

The Anomalous Man

This filmed piece is - not quite - a parody of “The Elephant Man” in which Lipa meets and falls in love with a mysterious writer with many physical issues (Sarah Sherman). This one is odd and funny and fresh.
And, it bears mentioning that in this sketch (and throughout the show) Lipa proves herself to be pretty good as an actress.

The ending is very silly and anachronistic, but it’s a great, weird Sarah sketch that has a couple of laugh out loud moments. Particularly one message from Sherman’s character that I won’t repeat, as this is a family-friendly review. Unless you watch the videos. Then you are on your own.

Good Morning Greenville

Another repeat sketch, but in fairness this one is more of a framing concept than substantive, so it’s not a problem.

Gardner and Day host the local morning show and explore the dis track battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
Lipa is a reporter who gives explanations of the lyrics in the latest tracks (her only contribution is that a reference to Drake being Canadian is that he is, in fact, Canadian).

Walker is the weatherman who wants nothing to do with this discussion.

The sketch gets uncomfortable when Gardner and Day hold up paper masks of the feuding rappers and pretend to be them talking through their beef.

The show is forced to cut to commercial when they try to say….well…you can figure it out.

Overall a clever enough piece where the borderline racist comedy was used to punch up (well, at least not down). It may not have been particularly funny, but you almost have to admire the nerve on this one. And it gave airtime to a pop culture current event that has people buzzing.

Sonny Angel

Shining from the repeat sketches this week are some really entertaining oddball pieces.

This one, which is Bowen-weird instead of Sarah-weird, feature Marcello Hernandez on a date with Lipa and visiting her apartment. He notices a wall full of little dolls that are naked except for tiny hats.

Lipa says these are collectible Sunny Angel dolls, but she thinks of them as her “Little Boy Friends”. Hernandez thinks that’s funny, until one of the dolls (Bowen Yang) starts talking to him.

This turns the sketch into an extended homage to the current Zendaya movie, “Challengers,” and she has Hernandez and Yang talk and vie for her affections.

It’s a supremely odd sketch that certainly has its moments. But the ending is very sudden, though appropriately odd.

It’s There For Us

A pre-taped ode to Penne Alla Vodka, the omnipresent dish served in a big aluminum tray that is “Loved by none, but tolerated by all.”

This was well written and executed.

Weekend Update

Che and Jost had a breezy time this week with a lot of solid jokes. From Kristi Norm (“It’s the first show of Spring, so let’s start with puppy murder…That’s crazy, if a dog is uncontrollable, you just give it to Joe Biden.”) to the Trump trial, and student protests.

The material was very funny this week, with Che landing some real quality groaners and hilarious reads (his delivery of “So stop knocking on my bedroom door!” is priceless).

And then Jost reads a line about Trump wanting to tackle “anti-white racism”. This feels like Jost didn’t get a chance to read the line beforehand, and his reaction was very funny.

The desk guests this week were a mixed bag. And we got three of them.

First up is Hernandez as Gov. Noem’s other dog. The overly long bit has the dog trying to avoid execution. “I don’t know if she rescued me or if I’m going to get shot in the face.”

And then, there was Chloe FIneman as “good girl gone bad” JoJo Siwa. Fineman is very funny dressed like “Mad Max on Broadway.” My kid assured me this was a very good imitation and very funny in light of Siwa’s latest turn.
I will take his word for it, as I am too old to know anything about JoJo Siwa.

Finally, there was the man who has done too much press. And it was Jerry Seinfeld, basically complaining about how much publicity he has to do for his movie about Pop Tarts.

This was an absolute waste of Jerry Seinfeld, and it wasn’t particularly funny. It leaves me wondering if this is the edgy kind of comedy that Jerry is complaining people can no longer do? If it is, then color me woke!

Fat Daddy

Day and Nwodim are a a couple visiting the OBGYN. Their normal doctor is on vacation, so Kenan steps in as “Fat Daddy”. Turns out, he is actually a former pit master at a BBQ restaurant.

He proceeds to treat his exam as he would working a barbecue pit. The whole process devolves into the absurd and even offensive.

But I’d argue the offense and shock in this sketch are appropriate and very funny. It’s one of those times that you find yourself laughing while being mad at yourself and the show.

The sketch loses some heat as it ends with Punkie Johnson entering and already cracking up. But, honestly, once Kenan….well, did what he does, there were not many places for this to go.

This sketch, like the Good Morning sketch, felt a little dangerous. And that may well be a good thing from time to time.

Teeny Tiny Pins

A third pre-taped piece! This one was for statement pins that are really small so people can know you have something to say, but you aren’t pushing it on them.

Cute more than funny.

Jingle Pitch

Here’s a return sketch that lost its appeal halfway through its initial appearance.

Yang and Lipa (channelling Fran Drescher) are company execs who bring in a band (Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson) to come up with a jingle for the company phone number.

The duo (not Dua) just do terrible convoluted jingles. There was nothing new to this from the last time this sketch appeared in the Jenna Ortega helmed episode.

This is an almost note for note rehash (including the bit with Yang talking about getting hammered at an Italian restaurant) of the previous sketch.

The sketch ends with everyone dancing. It made me a little sad.

The Goodbye Wave

Best Sketch: I’m torn here by my love of the weird, and the show served up a healthy helping of that this week. I am going to go with Fat Daddy, but Sunny Angel or The Anamalous Man are close contenders, and my arm could be easily twisted for either of those.

Worst Sketch: Jingle Pitch. It’s just not a compelling enough bit to repeat. Dismukes and JAJ play their parts well, but the restaurant gig song stylings just aren’t funny enough to keep laughing at. Maybe if I had a few more daiquiris, I’d feel differently.

Random Notes:

- On the off chance that you don’t follow Dua Lipa’s meme footprint, here’s an explanation of what she was talking about in her monologue. Apparently the meme upset Lipa a good deal, but she appears to be owning it now. So that’s good.

-Lipa’s first musical number (which looked like an early Madonna video) was introduced by Troye Sivan. He’s an Australian singer/actor who made a big splash on YouTube. Or so I am told. Jerry Seinfeld did the second introduction.

-And what’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld? Why not put him in a sketch since he’s there. The desk piece was a thinly disguised blatant plug. Make the guy earn it by doing a walk-on as a butler or something. If it’s good enough for Paul McCartney, it’s good enough for Jerry Seinfeld.

-I hope they don’t decide that SNL is only big enough for one weird sketch writer. Yang and Sherman bring such different skews of oddity to the table. And they are both delightful.

Dua Lipa was surprisingly good as a comedic performer. She did accent work and seemed to take to sketch comedy quite well.

Unfortunately, she did not have the best material this week. While there was some very funny original material, there was some redundant dead weight that hurt the episode and her.

Still and all, this was by no means a bad episode, and far from a waste of time. In the words of Fat Daddy, maybe this one just needed to cook a little longer.

Grade: C+

As always, we grade SNL episodes in comparison to other SNL episodes. Not TV in general.

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