Timothée Chalaleads a surprisingly strong ‘Saturday Night Live’

Therese Odell

1 year ago

Advertisements

Saturday Night Live
Timothee Chalamet
January 25, 2024

Our host Timothee Chalamet is nearly 30 years old, you guys, and it feels like he has grown up before our eyes because he has. This is his third time to host, the last two times being in 2023 and 2020. And I have to admit, the little guy is growing on me! Chalamet has always been a game host, though not always the most comfortable with comedic material. But in the past five years, Chalamet has matured a great deal and become a lot more comfortable both in his own skin and with comedy. This episode was without question his best SNL outing, both because he had fun material to work with it and he was just having such a good time with it.

Additionally, Chalamet was the musical guest last night, performing his “favorite” Bob Dylan songs in honor of his Oscar-nominated performance in the Oscar-nominated film, A Complete Unknown. It was a risky choice: while there have been a number of hosts who have also served as the musical guest (49, to be exact, including Chalamet) most of those were by performers who are best known as musicians before actors. Depending on how you count Donald Glover, the number of hosts who were not known as musicians, excluding Chalamet, are exactly three: Lily Tomlin, Deion Sanders, and one Gary Busey. It should be noted Sanders and Busey each hosted exactly one time. But it was a risk that paid out for SNL and Chalamet: his performances were remarkably strong, and well-received overall.

It’s a common trope among your left-leaning folks that the Founding Fathers would be aghast that someone like President Authoritarian was elected to the highest office in the land, that never in their worst nightmare would they want someone like him, a dangerous populist with kingly ambitions, to run this country. Here, the Founding Fathers, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and his Hamilton, sign the Declaration of Independence, except Hamilton’s rap is interrupted a few seconds in by President Never Read the Constitution who yammers about creating a new country with his dangerous and hateful executive orders. Lin-Manuel Miranda and the rest are frozen in place, allowing James Austin Johnson’s President Attention Whore to heckle Miranda, challenging him to not break. Lin-Manuel Miranda very nearly breaks.

It’s funny enough, an excellent use of a cameo, while also being fairly obvious and going on just a little too long. But you guys, leaving all that aside, I do not have the mental and emotional capacity for four more years of this.

Grade: A-

Chalamet gets off to a slightly rough start with his monologue — he seems uncomfortable with a couple of the jokes, notably the bit about Gary Busey also being an actor who was also the musical guest (true — and super weird — fact), and unsure if the audience thinks it’s funny (but again, and I can’t stress this enough, true). But once he gets into the meat of the monologue, making fun of himself at awards ceremonies where he has lost, he shines, and the whole thing comes together.

Grade: A-

Here, Chalamet is an exercise instructor for a bungee-based exercise class full of women and one boyfriend who is confused by what is even going on here. Why is it so easy? Why is everyone acting like it’s not easy? Why are they eating Cinnabon cakes? It’s not the funniest bit of the night, but it has its moments — I would tell you what my favorite gag was, but it would make me look like a bad person. Those of you who watch the bit will know it when you see it.

Grade: B

Young men are the least likely to regularly see the doctor, so introducing Medcast: a new program that tricks men into thinking they are a guest on a podcast when in reality they are seeing medical professionals for a routine checkup. It’s clever in the same way “Man Park” from a few years ago was.

Grade: B+

A group of baristas in training are tasked with coming up with punny things to put on the outdoor chalkboard, except Chalamet’s character hears “comedy” and delivers full-blown and weirdly aggressive stand-up routines. It goes on too long, it is kinda dumb, but Chalamet fully commits, and I have to admit, I was amused.

Grade: A-

One of the genres on my TikTok and Reddit algorithms are people being icked out by Boy Moms, those mothers who are WAAAAAAY too emotionally invested in their sons, which sometimes evolves into what is horrifically known as emotional incest, wherein mothers depend on their adult sons for their emotional needs, instead of turning to their partners OR LITERALLY ANYONE ELSE. I am now realizing I am going a long way out of my way to introduce this digital sketch which is mostly wordplay on “Edible Arrangements,” called Oedipal Arrangements — as a fruit bouquet adult sons can give their mothers with whom they have an inappropriate relationship. It’s a lot, and mileage will vary with this one depending on your ick tolerance.

Grade: A-

In a sketch that goes on ENTIRELY too long, a classroom replaces their textbooks with an AI-generated video podcast. Like most AI-generated content, everything is weird and a little off, it degenerates quickly, and everyone has too many fingers. Decent idea and some jokes land, they just needed to do a lot more editing.

Grade: B-

“Weekend Update” is dark this week: jokes about OJ Simpson, January 6 rioters, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, molesty priests, Jost pulls a gun … Everyone was in a mood this week, apparently.

Grade: A

Ego Nwodim is Giselle, a concerned Black businesswoman who is worried about how the incoming tariffs are going to affect the weave and wig industry.

Grade: B-

Andrew Dismukes joins the Weekend Update Desk with his “puppet Dad” to continue the night’s theme of parental issues. Here Puppet Dad tells Dismukes he’s proud of him, giving Dismukes the confirmation that is implied he does not receive from his actual father. I didn’t hate it but it goes on way too long.

Grade: B-

This sketch imagines what it would be like if dumb little dogs could talk at the dog run, along with their petty grievances, romances, and power plays.

Grade: B

So … this is one for the 11-year-olds out there. After having a heart attack at her birthday party, a grandmother is revived by a young doctor through … unconventional methods. I won’t give away the joke, because it is a single joke sketch, but it is the definition of juvenile humor. Not my thing, but I can see a lot of people thinking this is super funny.

Grade: B-

We end the episode with an animated bit, something that the show hasn’t done in a minute. Here, God invents volcanos and kangaroos and yeah, again, TikTok was doing this literally years ago.