Photo: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
A couple of weeks ago, an activist accosted Alec Baldwin in a coffee shop, phone-camera first, demanding the actor speak out on behalf of Palestine — right there, on the spot. As Baldwin demurred, the activist needled and provoked him with deeply personal insults until the actor smacked the phone out of his hand. It’s only a slightly heightened microcosm of what it must feel like at this moment to be anyone with a high-profile platform as the world’s biggest, most combustible, hardest-to-civilly-argue-over news story drags on into its eighth month.
Since Saturday Night Live has provided a running commentary of topical comedy for 49 years, the show is saddled with unfair expectations of inventing the perfect thing to say about the Israel-Hamas War — or at least taking a clear position. For reasons wisely left unarticulated to the media, it has never quite done the latter. (Although Ramy Youssef did so on the show’s behalf during his recent turn as host.) As the season winds down, with the first of three final episodes, the show has gotten no better at finding neutral ways to address the war that has loomed large over the whole season. It has, however, found a clever way to say something about not saying anything.
“It’s wrong to stay silent, but it’s also wrong to say too much. I just wish there was a way to split the difference!” an unnamed Heidi Garner character laments in a sketch mocking the very expectations the show and its performers face. The solution? “Teeny, tiny statement pins” — ones so small, they make those ceasefire pins that dotted the Oscars’ red carpet look like Flava Flav’s clock necklace. Earlier on, though, the show demonstrates what it actually looks like to join the conversation and say nothing.
The cold open focuses on the wave of controversial college protests that dominated news coverage this past week from the perspective of those students’ parents. It’s like watching a circus contortionist bend her body at improbable angles, the way this scene manages to avoid offending or validating anyone whatsoever. In the context of leading with a sketch like this one, the statement pin sketch that follows felt like a nod to the difficult position the writers find themselves in — and to their awareness of how it comes across.
Elsewhere in the show, pop star and burgeoning actor Dua Lipa pulls double duty after making a splash in a sketch during her most recent appearance as a musical guest. Following a charming monologue, blessed by a cameo from her fabulous parents, Dua is too often relegated to the sidelines and given far too few punchlines. Whenever she gets the spotlight, though, her off-the-charts stage presence more than justifies the choice to have her host. Although hampered somewhat by a pair of unnecessary sequel sketches, the episode is elevated by some big swings that are as audacious in their own right as the show’s topical humor this season isn’t.
Here are the highlights:
Dua Lipa stars as a high-society lady inexplicably drawn to the freakish titular “Anomalous Man,” played by — who else? — Sarah Sherman. The sketch takes its sweet time getting to a twist that flies in the face of its 1897 London setting, with minimal audience applause along the way. However, what saves it from being a misfire is the daring to air it at all. It would have been so easy for the pre-recorded portion of this episode to lean on Dua Lipa’s hook-mastery for a jokey music video. Instead, she flexes her performance chops with some capital-A acting in a wild riff on The Elephant Man, a film her fanbase of twenty-something clubbers may not be familiar with. Also working in the sketch’s favor: the line, “I’m gonna ride your face until it’s normal.”
What starts as an awkward ode to lily-white local TV hosts forced to discuss the Kendrick-Drake rap beef eventually descends into utter delirium. Not since Dave Chappelle forced Mikey Day to talk like a cartoon pimp in a 2022 meta-sketch has SNL broadcast anything as racially uncomfortable (in a fun way!) as Day and Gardner puppeteering Drake and Kendrick Lamar face masks to dare each other into saying the n-word. It’s a rare, thrilling moment on this show where viewers might not quite believe what they’re seeing.
The episode’s standout sketch blends two current cultural obsessions: those creepily sexual Sonny Angel dolls and Zendaya’s hyper-horny tennis flick, Challengers. It’s a zany premise, brought to zanier life by inventive staging and Bowen Yang’s coquettish performance as the bottomless doll who doubles as Dua’s “little boyfriend.” (Don’t ask; just watch.)
The chameleonic Chloe Fineman has been making impressions of JoJo Siwa for at least four years, so Siwa’s new persona is a perfect occasion for a parallel Fineman revamp. Although she and Colin Jost trade barbs about Siwa’s new look (“like if Mad Max was on Broadway”), there is some affection woven into the mockery. Rather than just make fun of Siwa personally, Fineman is more sending up the way that any 20-year-old with a new look tends to act like they invented the concept of a reinvention.
And finally, we come to the most WTF sketch in a night with its fair share of them. Kenan Thompson plays a ribmaster at a BBQ joint who has made a late-career pivot into gynecology. The straight face he employs while treating a pregnant woman’s body like a brisket—inside and out—challenges Ego Nwodim’s ability to fend off a laugh attack. (Punkie Johnson then enters the scene late, cracking up immediately upon entry.) It’s gross and unhygienic, but for those craving edgy comedy, it’s just what the doctor ordered.
• Will be hard to not pronounce Dua Lipa’s name from now on the way Yang does in the monologue. (“Du-AHH.”)
• For those who enjoyed the producer tag sketch, here’s the first one from last season, with Ana de Armas. For those who enjoyed the jingle pitch sketch, here’s the first one from last season, with Jenna Ortega. It might be difficult to spot the differences between iterations of either.
• Calling ASAP Rocky “as soon as possible Rocky” is a nice touch in the Good Morning, Greenville sketch.
• Penne Alla Vodka truly is the least objectionable pasta in the world, and it took this sketch to make me realize that this is not necessarily a compliment.
• Marcello Hernandez’s desperate concentration as he presses the buttons to communicate is the peak of his performance as Kristi Noem’s other dog.
• Jerry Seinfeld may be correct in suggesting that Ryan Gosling, like Seinfeld himself, is in danger of doing too much press; the difference between the two, though, is that Gosling’s press strategy does not involve complaining in such an annoying way that it generates a secondary wave of earned media for his Pop Tarts movie.
• I’d rather see no Please Don’t Destroy than a so-so Please Don’t Destroy video, but this episode really could’ve used a Please Don’t Destroy video.
