Nate Bargatze makes his triumphant return to ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live
Nate Bargatze &
October 5, 2024

Here’s an SNL fact that will forever stay in your brain and kick out your grandmother’s birthday or the name of your first friend in elementary school: since 2010 (so 300+ episodes), Nate Bargatze is only the 9th person to be asked back within a year of their first time hosting SNL. Despite not being a household name when he hosted last season, Bargatze had an impressive debut, wowing even cynical viewers with his great timing and every-guy delivery.

That said, he’s still not familiar to most people:

 

 

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Hopefully this episode, which was a solid outing (if not quite as great as his debut) will make him a more familiar face to more of America, because he certainly deserves it.

Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg, Jim Gaffigan, and Dana Carvey are all back for this week’s cold open which features Kamala and Doug watching the Vice Presidential Debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. It’s probably the most efficient way to poke fun at the debate performances, and the writing is actually pretty strong here — they’re not trying to do too much. I just wish it had been a little more rehearsed. Rudolph flubs a line — which is fine, it’s a live show and it happens — but towards the end, it feels like Carvey begins to rely on physical humor as the laughs begin to dwindle.

Grade: B+

Nate Bargatze does a bit of stand-up for his opening monologue, mostly about not being exposed to certain foods until he was an adult, and Door Dashing. It’s fine, funny even, but I doubt I’m going to remember it tomorrow.

Grade: B+

When Nate Bargatze hosted last year, hands-down the best sketch of the night was “Washington’s Dream,” in which George Washington inspires his men with his vision of America’s future which mostly involves using a different measurement system and not necessarily granting rights to Black folks. It was maybe the most talked about sketch of the season, so it is not a surprise that they felt they had to reprise it when Bargatze returned, this time with Washington focused on spelling the name “Jeff” two different ways and calling animals one thing when they are alive versus when they are food. It’s funny, but it’s not as funny as it was the first time around, let’s be honest.

And here’s where I go on a long pedantic tangent. Because the thing is, not only do the British also call animals one thing when they are alive and another when they are dead, it’s the result of a specific bit of British history why they do so — this is not something uniquely American. When the Normans conquered England, they spoke a completely different, Latin-based language than the native Anglo-Saxons, whom they pressed into serfdom. And thus, there are two sets of words for the same thing, the Anglo-Saxon words that referred to the animals they were farming: cow, pig, lamb. And the Norman versions, in their Old French: beuf: meaning ox, cow, bull (beef), porc: swine, pig, boar (pork), moton: ram, sheep (mutton). And because the upper class Normans were the ones actually eating the very expensive animals, two words for the same thing emerged: one word for the living animal that was in Anglo-Saxon; and one for cooked animals that came from Latin/Old French roots.

And now I’ve taught you some etymology against your will! YOU ARE WELCOME.

Grade: A-

Here, a golf player in a tournament has a string of bad luck. I don’t want to give away the joke, but this feels very old-school, dark-humor SNL to me, in a good way.

Grade: A-

Here, Nate Bargatze plays a white guy who accidentally finds himself an audience member on stage in an episode of Sábado Gigante, completely confused and unsure what is going on as Sábado Gigante chaos erupts around him.

Now, I’ve seen some mild criticism of the sketch, mostly from people who have no experience with Spanish who found themselves as bewildered as Bargatze’s character — maybe even more so. Maybe it’s because I have some small amount of working Spanish, but I actually found this bit very amusing. I think your mileage will vary depending on how much Spanish or Spanglish you speak.

Grade: A-

An 80-year-old man has a heart attack after climbing 255 steps to the top of a water slide and the EMTs sent to revive or retrieve him face a decision: carry him back down 255 steps or … well … the obvious choice.

Dark, but funny.

Grade: A

“Weekend Update” is considerably shorter this week with relatively few memorable jokes. There’s a Diddy zinger, and a good one about the insane conspiracy theory Marjorie Taylor Greene is out here pushing about “them” controlling the weather, but otherwise, it feels thin.

Grade: B

New cast member Jane Wickline sings a song about staying way too long at a party. Personally, I kinda loved it? But I can see this grating on people’s nerves, honestly.

Grade: A-

A group of siblings and their spouses go to dinner to discuss their father’s creeping dementia, only to have one of the wives decide to participate in a burger-eating challenge. Again, this feels like classic SNL gross-out humor, as Heidi Gardner goes to town on a pile of food while her cast mates try to hold it together. This isn’t for me, it goes on way too long and does not maintain its internal logic; and maybe I’m a little too sensitive (or my mind goes to weird places) but it almost feels a little fetishy to me. But I can see why folks might find this very funny.

Grade: B-

Thanks to Andy Samberg being pressed back into service as Doug Emhoff, we get bonus Lonely Island material. Here, Samberg and Akiva Schaffer are two guys rap-pitching a unique business idea: a sushi glory hole. It’s a hole in a wall that shoves sushi in your face. That’s it. That’s the whole idea. Where you goin’? Hear them out …

Grade: A+

The final sketch of the night is easily the lamest: a pair of coaches is giving a pep talk to their football team during halftime, but one coach (Bargatze) is less concerned with the game than he is about getting the players to pay him back for their jerseys. Dumb, lazy, and worst of all perhaps: boring.

Grade: C

Final Grade: A-.

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