SNL After Party (S49 E20Air Date 05/18/24) - "Don't Worry About It"

 Host: Jake Gyllenhaal
Musical Guest: Sabrina Carpenter

The end has come for SNL Season 49. And to crib from T.S. Eliot, did it go out with a bang or a whimper? And should we care what the guy who wrote a book of cat-based poems thinks?

Anyway, lets roll into the final After Party for Season 49.

Cold Open

After a notable absence in light of current events, James Austin Johnson brings his Trump back to the center, giving a statement outside the New York courthouse where his hush money trial is underway.

JAJ does his usual spot-on impression making comments about the trial “They say mean things about me while I’m trying to sleep”, the jurors, “They call her juror 9, but to me she’s just a 6”. and introducing his potential VP candidates (Devon Walker’s Tim Scott, Kristi Noel (Heidi Gardner) holding a gun to a dog’s head. (“It’s a fake dog, but it’s a real gun”) and finally the “late, great Hannibal Lector” (a real thing Trump said about a fictional murderer this week).

JAJ gets a laugh when he sings about Trumpespresso. I didn’t get it.

The cold open is funny enough, but JAJ just seemed…tired? And maybe he is, and indeed, maybe so are we. But let’s all hang in there, it’s a long time til November and a much longer time to 2028.

Monologue

Roadhouse (really? Why did that happen?) actor Jake Gyllenhaal takes to the stage to host the final episode of Season 49, all the while lamenting it is not a Season 50 show.

Wearing what can only be described as a half tucked in blouse, Gyllenhaal also jokes about other “notable” season ending hosts before a landmark season. (Ed Koch hosted the Season 9 finale!). This all segues into a Boys II Men number. Is this Jake’s only musical number for the episode.

No. It is not.

Dad Has A Cookie

Andrew Dismukes and girlfriend Chloe Troast visit her parents (Gyllenhaal and Gardner). Dismukes wants to ask dad for permission to marry Troast after the ladies leave the room. But, as the women are leaving, Heidi lightly tells Gyllenhaal not to eat any cookies.

He of course does, and the whole sketch revolves around Gyllenhaal trying to hide the cookie incident.

It’s funnier than it sounds, mainly to Gyllenhaal’s manic devouring of the cookies, and his menacing efforts to cover it up.
A pretty solid opening sketch, but something about it gave me an I Think You Should Leave vibe.

Scooby Doo

With Gyllenhaal as Fred, Sarah Sherman as Velma, Mikey Day as Shaggy, and musical guest Sabrina Carpenter as Daphne, the Mystery Machine gang tackle a typical Scooby mystery that takes a series of over the top and gruesome terms.

Maybe this was Quentin Tarantino’s final film?

Very bloody, and shockingly funny. And a great button at the end proving (as these pre-taped bits often do) to be an unexpected ad for an unexpected product.

Beautiful Girls

Gyllenhaal is the singing (here we go again!) host of a “beautiful girl” review at a supper club. The beautiful girl intro is what you would expect. But when he introduces the “beautiful boys” it gets very silly.

This sketch feels very similar to last week’s landscaping service sketch which featured employees guaranteed not to seduce customer’s wives. Maybe in the SNLverse those guys got discovered on that ad and got booked at the Tick Tack Club?

Anywho, the sketch is amusing even if it ends abruptly.

Bike Trail

Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman try to have a serious conversation on a trail as a loud and slow moving bike rider (Gyllenhaal) interrupts them.

Is he channelling Jim Carrey here?

This was more of an annoyance than an amusement.

Xiemu

A pre-taped ad parody that is surprisingly sharp social commentary. The advertisement for a Chinese marketplace with shockingly cheap prices, essentially asks if people would stop buying these items if they knew they were created with forced labor and had unsafe lead content.

The answer is no.

This was well done and pointed, if not a laff riot.

Weekend Update

Solid jokes ranging from Trump and Biden, the Trump trial (Michael Cohen wearing cologne “I can smell through this picture), Matt Gaetz posting a picture referring to the Proud Boys “Standing back and standing by” then using “the same post standing outside a quinceanera”) to a floor fight between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jasmine Crockett (making the body the “Waffle House of Representatives.”)

There was a silly desk spot by two cicadas that (Kenan Thompson and Marcello Hernandez), but the highlight came as Che and Jost swapped jokes they wrote for each other. It’s a season closing tradition whereby the two anchors allegedly don’t see the very inappropriate jokes before they are live. Like a 9 year old at Christmas, I am just choosing to believe this bit is real.

Last year, Che had a (fake) civil rights activist sit by Jost while Jost read some jokes he should not have. This year he Che brought in areal rabbi. (And yes, she was legit. Rabbi Jill Hausman is with the Actor’s Temple in New York). Jost’s discomfort at having to tell some jokes by the rabbi was great, particularly when a puppet got involved. Rabbi Jill’s disapproving looks throughout the bit are priceless.

But Jost won this year by having Che take Drake’s side and challenge Kendrick Lamar to a fight. Che lost it. And so did we.

Southwest Airlines

Gyllenhaal is an upset Southwest Airlines customer who is sent through a series of unhelpful customer service agents, until he ultimately gets Bowen Yang as a god or something.

What was that sketch all about? Beats me.

NYPD Police Conference

Gyllenhaal gives a press conference in the wake of the recent street attack on Steve Buscemi. Gyllenhaal announces efforts to stop assaults on character actors.

He points out that Stephen Root and others are under protection, and that Paul Giamatti has been asked to shelter in place.

Jon Hamm pops in to ask if he has anything to worry about. And, despite not being “Brad Pitt”, he is assured he is safe.

This is more in the clever than hilarious camp, it’s still a strong enough sketch for this stage in the show.

Snake Eyes

Well, this one felt like the cast just screwing around. Gyllenhaal hits on a woman in a bar (Sarah Sherman) only to learn that she is Snake Eye’s girl, and that he’s very dangerous.
Enter JAJ as Snake Eyes, who has a very high pitched voice who gives Gyllenhaal to the count of ten to “quit being a butt” before he introduces him to his two friends (his fists) named “cool it” and “knock it off”. It just gets sillier from there until it just hurriedly ends.

Nonetheless, this is a perfectly fine 11:55 sketch.

The Goodbye Wave

Best Sketch: Weekend Update. The joke exchange is always an episode, or even a season, highlight.

Worst Sketch: This was a tough call. I’m going with the Bike Trail sketch because it really was just irritating. But, a case could be made for the Southwest piece as well.

Random Notes:

- I did not get the Trumppresso joke until Sabrina Carpenter’s first number. Oh! She sings about espressos! Well, case closed and mystery solved!

-I was shocked that Jon Hamm had the sole cameo this week. Often the season finale is full of these. Always glad to see Hamm on the show, and wouldn’t normally miss the cavalcade of other celebrities. But, maybe more of that would have actually been good this week?

- Dabney Coleman got an in memoriam title card this week. The 1980’s character actor hosted SNL on Halloween, 1987. It’s kind of odd that this overlapped with the NYPD sketch where it mentioned that character actors are anyone who appeared on Boardwalk Empire, which Coleman did.

This was a somewhat disappointing finale. There were some high points, and the lows weren’t terrible.
But, something about the episode as a whole felt a little flat.

We got a fond enough farewell to the season, but not a particularly memorable one. But, as T. S. Eliot said “The naming of cats is a difficult matter…."

So, what are you gonna do?

Grade: C+

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

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