Saturday Night Live
Charli xcx
November 16, 2024
Here’s what I know about Charli xcx: She’s a pop star. She is British. She is responsible for the whole “Brat summer” thing. She’s friends with Troye Sivan who was on The Idol. She had a collaboration with Billie Eilish this summer that was kinda naughty and all over TikTok. What I didn’t know is that she’s been around for about a decade, she’s pretty funny, quite natural in sketches and in front of a live audience, and she’s very happy to make fun of herself and her entire persona.
Now, that said, she wasn’t given a lot of great material to work with this week as the host (and musical guest) of Saturday Night Live. It wasn’t a terrible episode — I can point to countless worse episodes (including last week’s) — but the writers gave her a combination of recurring sketches that are starting to feel a little worn around the edges, and mediocre bits that needed some punching up. The biggest shame, though, is one of the best sketches of the night, and the one where she best shone, was cut for time. I’ll never understand the decision-making process of Mr. Lorne Michaels.
The cold open imagines the meeting that took place this week at the White House between President Biden and Former President Ketchup on the Walls-Elect, as a means to introduce the Former Lunatic-in-Chief-Elect’s insane cabinet appointees. Alec Baldwin is back at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has a dead dolphin in his car, and Sarah Sherman is an unsettling Matt Gaetz.
There are a number of reasons for all of us to pray that Matt Gaetz does not get approved by the Senate to become the Attorney General of the United States, but I think we can all agree that Sarah Sherman’s impersonation of him should be added to that list of horrors. I simply can not, will not, be able to take four years of this:
Grade: B
For a pop star, Charli xcx’s monologue is fine — good even. She’s self-deprecating, makes a few good jokes about herself, autotune, and Martha Stewart for some reason. But then, FOR NO GOOD GOD DAMNED REASON, KYLE MOONEY SHOWS UP. Why? Why are you here, Kyle Mooney? Who asked you to be here, Kyle Mooney? GO AWAY, KYLE MOONEY.
Grade: B- (Points deducted for Kyle Mooney)
So remember all the way back to October 12 when Ariana Grande hosted (and made a joke about how the last time she hosted, we were on the verge of electing our first female president AND OH MY GOD, SHE LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA’D US, IT’S HER FAULT.
Anyway, as I was saying, they did a sketch where a group of bridesmaids at a wedding reception sing an off-key version of “Espresso,” changing all the lyrics to reveal that the bride had hooked up with some guy named Domingo during the bachelorette trip? Well, one month later, our bride is now miraculously 8 months pregnant, and her friends are back to sing another tribute to their friend, a version of Chappel Roan’s “Hot to Go” except all the lyrics are about how Domingo is the father of our mom-to-be’s baby.
Apparently, the Ariana Grande skit went pretty viral, so we have to look forward to SNL bleeding this one dry for a while.
Grade: B+
It’s been a minute since SNL has done a celebrity impersonation cattle call. This time the premise is a bunch of celebrities are auditioning for the Wicked movie, including Sydney Sweeney, Jojo Siwa, Bernie Sanders, and Martha Stewart. But really this entire sketch is an excuse to have Bowen Yang break out his Charli xcx impersonation paired with Chari xcx as her signing partner Troye Sivan. I’m sorry if you are over 45 and have no idea what these names are.
Grade: B+
And now I see why Kyle Mooney is hanging around the set: they have dug up yet another recurring bit, the Baking Competition sketch, that they have done (at least) five times now.
As I’ve pointed out before, the set-up is always the same: there are four contestants in a cake-baking contest: the first one is terrible, the second one is somehow even more terrible, and possibly offensive, the third contestant is actually competent, and the fourth contestant is Kyle Mooney who has made a penis-shaped cake. In this instance, the second contestant, Charli xcx, has made a turkey cake that looks remarkably like a woman with her legs splayed open which also shoots stuffing out of its vagina. It’s a lot.
Kyle Mooney’s cake is still a penis.
This festive turkey (or is it penis?) cake is just another salvo in the #WarOnThanksgiving pic.twitter.com/uZk2lVrkPM
— Jamie ~ Like Liberty, I was born in Philadelphia (@Twinmom0) November 27, 2019
Grade: B
The Lonely Island boys are back with a song, “Here I Go,” about rich white people calling the cops on other white people. Easily the best bit of the night.
Grade: A+
A lot of pundits are crediting Former President Grab-Em-By-the-Pussy-Elect’s win with his courting the young male vote by appearing on a number of dumb bro podcasts. Here, those dumb bro podcasters celebrate his win, and learn they have been invited to join the cabinet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really pack much punch because it’s no more preposterous or dangerous than Robert F. Kennedy as the Director of Health and Human Services or Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.
Grade: B+
“Weekend Update” is firing on all cylinders tonight, with strong jokes about the cabinet appointments, Elon Musk, the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul fight, and one classic sexist joke from Michael Che that I can’t even be mad at, because this is who we are, apparently.
Grade: A
Joe Exotic appears at the “Weekend Update” desk to ask Former President Convicted Felon-Elect for a pardon and to talk about how hot his many poor white trash husbands are.
Grade: B-
If you don’t know, Peanut the Squirrel was an Instagram star who was owned by an unlicensed wildlife rehabilitator whose social media presence drew visitors to his owner’s Only Fans porn account. Peanut was confiscated by the state of New York, euthanized and tested for rabies (he was negative), and somehow, improbably, became a MAGA cause celebre.
I don’t know, man, things are weird.
Anyway, here Sarah Sherman plays Peanut’s widow mostly to come on to Colin Jost and joke about his lack of “nuts.”
Grade: B+
Marcello Hernandez is a manic acting coach, with Charli xcx as his avid student, teaching a class on how to act in commercials. There’s a LOT of crazed Martin Short energy going on here.
Grade: B
A bunch of models and celebrities, including Marc Jacobs, Naomi Campbel, Julia Fox, the Olsen Twins, Rachel Sennott, Cher, and Law Roach celebrate Thanksgiving the only way a group like this would: with lots of cigarettes, an Ozempic turkey, strutting on the catwalk, and The Substance. I get it, but it goes off the rails.
Grade: B-
A group of friends leave Shrek the Musical only to find that they all have made out with Shrek. I don’t know.
Grade: C+
Cut for time: The Please Don’t Destroy boys each bump into Charli xcx in what appears to be a “meet cute” but which turns into a “mean cute” with Charli xcx and the boys exchanging insults. It’s a shame because this is so much funnier than 95% of what actually made it to air.
Bonus material: OOPS.
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Final Grade: B.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.