Kumail Nanjiani deserved better, ‘Saturday Night Live.’

Saturday Night Live
“Kumail Nanjiani & Pink”
October 14, 2017

Oh, I wanted this episode to be better. I love Kumail Nanjiani as an actor and comedian and was hoping that his input on the show would lift what has been a lackluster season so far. For the most part, Kumail Nanjiani’s debut as Saturday Night Live host was fine, it was OK. Nanjiani himself was quite good and seemed perfectly comfortable working in a live format. But the writing left so much to be desired. Aside from a couple of sketches that were unexpectedly sweet and compassionate, the writing last night was all over the place — sometimes mediocre, other times just plain bad. And one bit left me very angry with everyone involved.

Very. Angry.

Also? Saturday Night Live? Maybe it’s time to hire more women on your writing staff. 8 women out of 32 writers seems embarrassingly low for 2017. (And 6 out of 16 players isn’t too hot, either.)

Another week, another middling, not-punching-nearly-hard-enough Trump cold open. The recurring joke is that Trump keeps making Mike Pence bail out of different situations. Which, OK. I get it. What I don’t get is the last situation from which Pence bails — a wedding which Pence discovers to his horror is a gay wedding. This just begets a number of questions: Why did Mike Pence go to some random wedding where he didn’t know the groom and groom? Does the Vice President customarily crash weddings? Does the Mrs. Vice President usually wear jeans to weddings? So many dumb questions, no good answers.

But I also want to highlight the second element to this sketch: the Trump-as-a-standup-comedian riff. Alec Baldwin recently worried that Saturday Night Live was making Trump “too cuddly,” and this sketch is a perfect example of why he should be concerned. This bit makes Trump’s attacks on a member of his own party into a joke — which is what Trump intends, he wants to be the Insult-Comedian-in-Chief, he campaigned and won on such behavior. A more deft writing staff would have turned this into a point about how wildly gross and inappropriate this behavior is for a sitting President (or a President of any description, frankly). Instead, they’re laughing along with Trump and his crass insults, giving him oxygen. This is normalizing this behavior.

(By the by, here is just a great piece by Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic at the New Yorker, and a personal hero, about Trump as a stand-up comedian and how it got him elected. You should read it.)

Grade: C-

Kumail Nanjiani’s monologue was charming, insightful and funny — the result of his stand-up experience. Look, comedians are always going to be better at opening monologues than actors or, worse, sports figures. It’s just the way it works.

Grade: A 

In this kinda dark sketch, Nanjiani plays a contestant on a game show who has a crisis of conscience once he begins learning a little about his opponent. It’s surprisingly compassionate, although not the most compassionate bit of the night.

Grade: A 

Kellyanne Conway is Pennywise to Anderson Cooper’s Georgie.

Grade: A- 

I have no idea what is going on in this Halloween Party sketch. The boss gave them all Hepatitis A via cake? That’s the whole joke? Ha?

Grade: C 

Saturday Night Live was roundly (and rightly) criticized for not just not addressing the Harvey Weinstein controversy, but actively removing two jokes about it from last week’s episode. SNL made up for it (a little) last night, using Kate McKinnon’s sassy old actress to take Weinstein head on. So to speak.

Grade: A- (Points deducted for lateness)

“Weekend Update” finally took up Weinstein, too, and while Jost and Che’s jokes at his expense were vicious, I would have actually appreciated one of the female comedians’ personal voices about this mess. They regularly bring Pete Davidson out to talk about his penis — how about a little time for a female cast member to talk about her own experience with sexual harassment?

Grade: B+

I ADORE Cecily Strong’s Ivana. This clearly wasn’t landing with the audience but she is my new favorite. More, please.

Grade: A 

This sketch in which a recently freed hostage from North Korea goes up against a pushy hotel employee is … something. It starts off funny enough in that annoying kind of way, but the punching in the face seems … too much.

Grade: B- 

Oof, this nursing home sketch. The idea here is that two grandchildren visit their grandmother at a nursing home and discover that she’s been having all of the sex with other residents and the staff — so much so, she’s contracted gonorrhea several times. I get that they are trying to suggest that Grandma still has agency over her sexuality (but they fail, more on that later) and it points out a real fact: that STDs among the elderly have skyrocketed in recent years. They seem to intend the joke to be “ew, gross, Grandma is having sex,” because old people having sex is inconceivable to anyone under 30. And while I have a problem with that, that is not what is wrong with this bit.

No, the problem with this sketch is that having Grandma be a virtual vegetable aside from the occasional smirk here and there suggests that she is not able to consent and that she’s more likely a victim of sexual assault. This sketch could have been saved and worked on an “ew, gross, Grandma is having sex” angle if Grandma herself was telling her grandchildren about her peccadillos. But instead, they chose to use a male staff member to tell Grandma’s story — including the fact that she is having sex with staff members, possibly himself. That’s not just tone deaf — especially during a week when sexual assault has dominated  the headlines — it’s irresponsible and bad. It’s very, very bad.

Grade: F 

The final sketch of the night was easily the best, and certainly the most compassionate (possibly to a fault). Clearly the work of SNL writer Julio Torres who has long imagined Melania Trump as a prisoner, the sketch details an unlikely friendship between the First Lady and a Pakistani call center employee. While I have some problems with making Melania out to be a victim — she knew what she was doing when she married him — it still is a lovely rumination on bullying and hopelessness and human connection.

Grade: A+ 

Final Grade: B- (Although I am still really mad at that Nursing Home sketch)

Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC.