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Posted in: NBC, Review, TV, YouTube | Tagged: adam driver, nbc, olivia rodrigo, Review, saturday night live, snl
SNL, Adam Driver Offer Much-Needed Dark & Twisted Anti-Holiday Effort
This weekend's Adam Driver-hosted edition of NBC's Saturday Night Live (with Olivia Rodrigo) was definitely not SNL's holiday episode...
If nothing else, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this weekend's Adam Driver-hosting, Olivia Rodrigo-performing edition of NBC's Saturday Night Live was definitely not the holiday episode. You know what? Scratch that. This weekend's SNL vibed like a holiday episode for those who are just about f***ing done with the holidays, the depressing end-of-the-year look-backs, and everything else that avalanches upon us during the final month of the year. And to that, I say – thank you. Some folks out there seem to forget that when SNL sharpens its satirical knives and twists up its perspective on things, the long-running late-night sketch comedy/music series is untouchable – and that was definitely on display Saturday night. We're talking about a dark, twisted, eyebrow-arching outing for Driver & SNL (with Rodrigo offering the perfect soundtrack to it all) that worked from beginning to end. So let's take a look at what worked and what didn't work – and the random observations along the way.
WHAT WORKED: The tone was set with the "College President" cold open because when you're choosing to take shots at college presidents being tone-deaf to the issue of antisemitism on their campuses and the hypocrisy of Republicans refusing to call out the antisemitism being spread by folks like their POTUS front-runner Donald Trump & Twitter/X owner Elon Musk. Serious props go to Chloe Troast for a great take on Rep. Elise Stefanik (not easy, which is why we're glad Troast got the honor of opening the show) and Kenan Thompson's University of Phoenix president – who will say yes to anything. Almost.
Driver's monologue was a nice mix of attempted holiday cheer and all-too-real passive-aggressiveness, as the host uses his musical message to Santa to air some serious gripes (like wishing that couples who post prank videos on TikTok die). "We're Trying" took the topic of couples attempting to get pregnant and twisted every bit of absurdity out of it that it could – while the same could be said of "Beep Beep, though Thompson flashing a "stalemate-breaker" at the end was a perfect example of going dark fast. And yeah, it worked.
"Old Friends" turned out to be a fun Facebook "cautionary tale," with Mikey Day's character learning the hard way why he should've been keeping up on his old friends from school – like the fact that they can't be within 1000 feet of a school. And if you loved Alec Baldwin's "Schweddy Balls" (like I did), then "ShopTV Christmas" was a perfect homage to the classic sketch that created a sketch duo in Day & Heidi Gardner's TV shopping hosts that we need to see more of. Gardner's "I'm a mom" line hit hard.
In fact, "Airplane Baby" (that had Sarah Sherman's name all over it), "Tiny Ass Bag" (I still don't know why Driver was there & that's what kept making it funnier), and "Elder PSA" (with another great run from Punkie Johnson) all deserve variations of the same praise that I gave the rest of the show. I'm not saying this episode was for everyone's sense of humor – but for me? It scored.
WEEKEND UPDATE: Colin Jost & Michael Che are going to win you over because they know they're funny… and you know they're funny… so it's only a matter of time until you catch up. Our WU anchors scored big this week – and there's nothing better than those moments when one of them recognizes that they might be dealing with "that" crowd. And then they just rattled off three more with a vibe that reads, "Oh yeah? Well, if you didn't like that one…" I was wondering where Chloe Fineman was going with that Save the Last Dance homage – having Julia Stiles come out to join her saved it (if not exactly explaining it much more). But the segment belonged to Marcello Hernandez, who ran with the topic of men & depression and offered us layers of insight that I know won him a lot of new fans. This was one of those segments that we'll look back on when Hernandez hits it big and know that this is where it started.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK: Nothing. In fact, I'll probably be rewatching a few of those sketches again later today.
Saturday Night Live Season 49: Adam Driver & Olivia Rodrigo
9/10
If nothing else, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this weekend's Adam Driver-hosting, Olivia Rodrigo-performing edition of NBC's Saturday Night Live was definitely not the holiday episode. You know what? Scratch that. This weekend's SNL vibed like a holiday episode for those who are just about f***ing done with the holidays, the depressing end-of-the-year look-backs, and everything else that avalanches upon us during the final month of the year. And to that, I say - thank you. Some folks out there seem to forget that when SNL sharpens its satirical knives and twists up its perspective on things, the long-running late-night sketch comedy/music series is untouchable - and that was definitely on display Saturday night. We're talking about a dark, twisted, eyebrow-arching outing for Driver & SNL (with Rodrigo offering the perfect soundtrack to it all) that worked from beginning to end. So let's take a look at what worked and what didn't work - and the random observations along the way.
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