Saturday Night Live
Timothée Chalamet & Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
December 11, 2020
I don’t have any feelings one way or another about Timothée Chalamet. Looking over his IMDb, it seems I’ve only seen one movie where he has a big role, and though he was in Homeland, I have no memory of him, maybe because it was 8 years ago. The point being, I went into this episode of Saturday Night Live something of a blank slate at least where his performance was concerned.
And from what I can tell, the Saturday Night Live writers weren’t sure what to expect of him either. They filled the night with safe sketches, and implemented the buddy system, placing him literally shoulder-to-shoulder with Pete Davidson three separate times.
But honestly, they needn’t have worried. Chalamet was clearly enjoying himself, and though he’s not the most natural comic actor, he held his own, mostly through enthusiasm. And frankly, he did the best he could with the material he was given. I went to bed irritated with this episode, convinced it was terrible. I rewatched the episode in the cold light of morning and came away merely disappointed. It wasn’t terrible, it was just middling. Is it that the writers have already blown through whatever energy they had last week, or are they looking to be inspired by a host they know they can trust, like maybe Kristen Wiig next week? Let’s hope it’s the latter.
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