Previously: Chris Rock’s Monologue and MUSICAL GUEST…PRINCE
Cold Open
Nothing really lands here. Not the Chris Christie running in 2016 jokes. Not the Hurricane Sandy references. Not the Ebola quarantine jokes. The cold open’s one saving grace: Kate McKinnon acting like a smart, strong woman who’s lost her mind. That could be her memoir title.
How 2 Dance With Janelle
Yup, Chris Rock is now old enough to be play Cranky Dads. I don’t like that, nor did I much care for this parody of vloggers, what with their dancing and fapping and such. It was nice to see Sasheer Zamata star in a sketch, and Kyle Mooney is a great choice to play the awkward friend with a boner, but the joke never moved beyond “old guy yelss at his daughter for showing her body to Internet strangers.” And?
How’s He Doing?
The good thing about “How’s He Doing?” which I quite enjoy, is that SNL can’t overuse it; it’s only possible when there’s a black host (the last time we saw it was the Kerry Washington episode). Kenan and Leslie can sometimes overplay their characters, but they were effectively muted here, while still allowing themselves an over-the-top reaction to Sasha and Malia telling off President Obama while they’re watching Scandal. Should Black-ish remain a hit, I look forward to seeing Anthony Anderson fill in for Rock. Hey, that show’s already done an episode about ass whooping — why not SNL?
Taylor Swift Vertigo
The idea of grown-ass adults getting vertigo when they realize they like Taylor Swift is funny, though not as hilarious as T-Swift explaining what a bodega is. That should have been an entire episode.
Shark Tank ISIS
Yikes. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an SNL audience sound more uncomfortable than when the ISIS logo is revealed. The Shark Tank framing device is fine, I guess, but considering the subject matter, the jokes here are weirdly toothless. If you’re going to do something on ISIS, go all out. Have one of the judges fund them, or something. Or better yet, don’t do it all.
The Couple
Somehow, “The Couple” was even more awkward than Chris Rock pretending to be a terrorist. There were technical mishaps, a lack of jokes, awkward timing, and the third reference to Uber this episode. It was less an SNL sketch than a really bad production of Tennessee Williams play.
Robbers
Special shoutout to Aidy Bryant, who in an otherwise subpar episode found, kept finding ways to make me laugh. Her “I’m ruined” in the ISIS whatever-that-was had me dying, and I loved her series of screams in “Bank Robbers,” which went on for too long but was still a major improvement over the last two sketches.
Women In the Workplace
At the end of the season, “Women In the Workplace” and Prince’s jam are the only two things I want to remember about this episode. It was peak 10-to-1, with Cecily and especially Kate giving it their all to make every line reading weird as hell. Plus, Vanessa and Rock’s diverse dramatizations were just the right mixture of odd and “I’ve seen a million training videos” exactly like that. And I loved it.
