Saturday Night Live
Kristen Stewart & Coldplay
November 2, 2019
Kristen Stewart returned to host Saturday Night Live for the second time this week and it was not great. It’s not Stewart’s fault. Despite her stand-offish, awkward persona, she has good comic timing and a willingness to be silly. Unfortunately, the material they gave her to work with didn’t allow any of that to really shine through, and so the night felt like more like a Kristen Stewart wig showcase than an actually funny episode of Saturday Night Live. Better luck next time, Stewart.
This week’s cold open is very cut and dry: Elizabeth Warren is at an Iowa town hall, talking about Medicare for All, and comparing private insurance to that bad boyfriend you need to break up with. All in all, it’s a warm tribute to Warren, but, like many cold opens, it goes on way too long.
Grade: B
Kristen Stewart’s opening monologue is that old standby, “audience questions,” but instead of the audience asking her questions, she asks the audience questions. IT’S A TWIST! (That doesn’t work.)
Grade: B-
In this bit, a military public relations officer searches for the perfect model for their “We Can Do It!” campaign and has to choose between Rosie the Riveter, some other blonde, and three aggressively coarse women played by Stewart, Bryant, and McKinnon. They spend the majority of the sketch screaming at the men for being cowards and imagining the poster they would make which involves Hitler and heavy equipment.
I’m really not sure how this wasn’t the last sketch of the night, y’all.
Grade: C
The first commercial spoof of the night is for “Duolingo for Children,” helping adults who have no idea how to talk to children. I have kids, I’ve been around kids every single day for the past 18 years, and I still find myself unsure how to talk to some kids, so I feel this.
Grade: A
The second “commercial” of the night is for “Farrow & Ball” paints — an actual British paint company that according to Wikipedia is “a British manufacturer of paints and wallpapers largely based upon historic colour palettes and archives. Their colour names, such as Elephant’s Breath, have become talking points in themselves.” Anyway, the discussion of the expensive paint turns into fight between two siblings and a family melodrama ensues. Not as funny as it could have been, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say every time an errant “u” was pronounced, I didn’t snicker.
Grade: B
Someone got the note from a couple of weeks ago that Cecily Strong + dogs = sure, that works, so they made her the translator for the hero dog form the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is no Dog Court, is all I’m going to say.
Grade: C+
Stewart, Davidson, Mooney and Mikey Day are a Blink 182-style band singing about how they’ll never be corporate shills until through promotions and other encouragements, they become corporate shills. It’s not terrible, but it does feel a little dated.
Grade: B
“Weekend Update” was not nearly as good as it should have been especially considering that the Trump administration is all but writing the jokes for them every week. Also, Michael Che? Are you just TRYING to make people mad? I refuse to be outraged, it’s what he wants and it’s just not worth it. But considering his history with misogynistic jokes, I understand why people are pissed.
Grade: B-
The first guest to the “Weekend Update” desk is Sontamayor as a kid genius who flubs her lines, infuriating her stage mother.
Grade: B
Kate and Aidy return as the Smokery Farms ladies, with unpleasant stories about where their meats and fish come from, but mostly it seems like an excuse to bring out a basket of smelly oysters to see how long it will take to gross out Jost.
Grade: B+
A jury room is disrupted when some hungry jurors’ stomachs start growling and it begins to sound like Ginuwine’s “Pony.” That’s it. That’s the sketch.
My feelings during this sketch:
Grade: B
Kristen Stewart plays a pansexual woman who tries and fails to proposition a middle-aged couple in a club. It ends EXACTLY how you think it would end.
Grade: C+
An older couple on a stargazing expedition suggests that the constellations are completely perverted. The reason the “Rosie the Riveter” sketch wasn’t the final sketch of the night is because this one had to be.
Grade: D
Finally, this open mic sketch was cut for time — and I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t have been, just that it was unquestionably better than the “Rosie the Riveter” and “Stargazing” bits.
Final Grade: C.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC.
I watched the whole show, hoping it would get better. It didn’t.
Man that cut for time sketch was…rough