Saturday Night Live makes Will Forte seem ordinary, somehow

“You want less? Sorry!”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [friggin’] star, [you friggin’ turds]!!”

The only sketch that really captured the Will Forte-in-a-bottle magic was his monologue. Running down all the former cast mates who’ve hosted SNL before him, Forte channeled his manic energy into a very funny and Forte-like blank-eyed staredown of barely repressed resentment. Noting how, of the ridiculously stacked in retrospect stars of Forte’s eight seasons, his first call to host came after everyone from Andy Samberg, to Jason Sudeikis, to Fred Armisen, to Kristen Wiig (twice), to Bill Hader (also twice), to Seth Meyers (just an Update guy!), and even John Mulaney (four times—for a writer?!) got their turn, Forte was the portrait of thwarted glory.

That Wiig came out to steal his thunder (and roles from an even more underused cast than usual) was only exacerbated by Lorne showing up in the audience to claim that autocorrect was responsible for Forte being booked in the first place. (“You think I would book someone named Will and then someone named Willem?,” Michaels asked incredulously, next week’s host Willem Dafoe looming ominously beside him.)

Forte is singular in a way a lot of his illustrious former cast standouts are. For Forte, it’s all about desperately tamped-down mania and laser-focused, disquieting excess. But, man, does Saturday Night Live squander what they’ve got here, shoving Forte into a series of awfully generic roles that could have been filled by almost anybody. The threesome sketch is most illustrative, as Forte’s Cialis-chugging professional third is merely mildly grotesque as he preps married couple Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner for their big, very sweaty night. Repeatedly referring to Day’s Tate as “Taint” and unbuttoning his loud swinger’s blouse over his tummy is all comic sleazeball 101, with only the joke of Forte’s Gannon testing out the hotel bed’s durability allowing a glimpse of Forte being Forte.

Will Forte shakes that bed for 20 long seconds, and it was hardest I laughed all sketch (if not all night), even though nothing ever built upon that single-minded, rewardingly indulgent laugh. Forte is one of those comic performers who will go to any length for a joke, committing to a bit long after any other sane performer would have bailed, and then committing some more until we find it funny again, dammit. Forte has proven himself a strong and versatile actor since SNL, but his métier is beamingly unearned self-confidence (with a healthy side of inventive weirdness), and this episode sagged under the weight of missed opportunity.

Still, he’s Will-friggin’-Forte, dammit, and that’s good for some singular laughs.

Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night

The Best: I cannot, in good conscience, make this call.

The Worst: Meh. I suppose the Gaslight edition of Cinema Classics was the most forgettable, even if I chuckled at Kate McKinnon’s increasingly skeptical responses to Forte’s klutzy attempts to drive her batty. (“Dude, I don’t care how crazy I am, this is a pineapple.”) Neither Kate nor Will do especially committed versions of Ingrid Bergman or Charles Boyer, though, which is a personal bummer, since Boyer’s condescending “Paula!” is something I hear in my head whenever I see anybody actually trying to gaslight someone. (The key is replacing the “p” with a soft “b.”)

What’s puzzling about SNL goofing on a 78-year-old film is that, while the term “gaslighting” has only become more relevant (if questionably overused) in our Trump-era GOP nightmare world, this is just an excuse for some obvious jokes and a couple of mediocre impressions. (Chloe Fineman does a creditable Angela Lansbury, I guess, although Kenan’s Reese De’What introducing her as “18-year-old Angela Lansbury” suggests a joke that never comes.) Meh.

The threesome sketch could also go here, but that bed-shaking thing was too emblematically Forte.

The Rest: The Double Dare-esque Kid Klash showed another glimpse of what Will Forte can bring to an otherwise routine sketch—while being a very routine sketch. Expensively constructed giant tub of whipped cream aside, the sketch’s only energy comes from Forte’s host Mark Zazz (lot of flailingly funny names tonight), with Forte suggesting an entire inner life of intense madness to the supposedly kid-friendly figure.

Bless Aidy Bryant for getting sloppy, but even as she gamely paddled around in the goop looking for what turns out to be a tiny, whipped cream-colored flag, its only Forte’s gimlet-eyed dedication to what turns out to be his gauntlet of child humiliation that registers. With the desperate Aidy pulling an inexplicable medallion from the mess, Forte’s Zazz maintains his singsong patter even as he asks the hopeful Bryant, “Amazing! But one question for you, Tatum—is a medallion a friggin’ flag?” “Where do you think you’re goin’,” Zazz growls menacingly as Aidy’s Tatum sheepishly attempts to leave the stage after time runs out, “You’re not goin’ anywhere.” That’s the sort of thing Forte was so great at on SNL, providing an alternative center to a sketch. Zazz creates his own gravitational pull that turns the elaborate TV parody into a one-person Crazy Town, even if this sketch can’t otherwise generate any momentum.

And that’s pretty much all we got of Forte. Look to the recurring sketch report and the ten-to-one section for more Will, although don’t look for things to pep up there either. If there’s one thing a Will Forte project hardly ever is, it’s forgettable, and I’m grading this steadfastly ordinary episode accordingly.

Weekend Update Update

Speaking of ordinary. I really appreciated last week’s Update. It felt like Jost and Che were finally feeling nasty, and I was here for it. This is not a nasty Update. This is a return to “see how naughty we are” Update, with mostly-harmless cheekiness reasserting itself as the duo’s go-to vibe.

A little peek at my process for live Update nite-taking. Since Update is more rapid-fire than the rest of the show, I tend to suss out the premise of a joke, make a note of it, then, after a colon, jot down the punchline. Tonight my notes look like this:

M&Ms:
Hamsters:
COVID infertility:
Youngkin:
Women drivers joke: ??

Not a lot of meat here, is what I’m saying. Jost’s biggest audience response was in introducing a joke about Fox News’ favorite mass killer of the moment as “Gen Z icon, Kyle Rittenhouse,” but then we got an O.J. joke and I left another blank spot where a quotable punchline should have been. Che kept up the heat under Democratic Senator and secret GOP asset Kyrsten Sinema, referencing the parade of congrats from Republicans after Sinema joined with fellow lobbyist cash drop Joe Manchin (D-WV) to help them scuttle a voting rights bill. “Ah, the Senate, keeping Black folks down with a handshake since 1787,” is a solid jab that, on a better Update, would have been the third or so best joke.

With much of the cast only seen during the goodnights tonight, Sarah Sherman got another crack at the Update desk, once more gleefully twisting Colin Jost’s innocuous confusion over her provocations into tabloid-ready, “cancel Jost” headlines. It’s a fun bit, and god knows we could use more Sarah Sherman on out TV, even if the premise is already running out of gas.

Alex Moffat is really funny as The Guy Who Just Bought A Boat, really, even if this bit ran aground a long time ago. Moffat’s trust fund bro here riffs on Jost and fellow Staten Islander Pete Davidson’s recent purchase of a retired Staten Island Ferry. (The two are planning to turn the venerable hulk into a performance venue, alongside a New York-based co-investor named Paulie Italia, a guy Davidson assured everyone was real and not, “a Mafia-themed wrestler.”) With Moffat’s aquatic douche providing his usual barrage of salaciously slippery sex puns (“No shame in paying for a tug,” etc.), the original gag that his boastful bro can’t help but let slip his own inadequacies is all but forgotten. “I have a small penis,” he repeats unashamedly to Jost, asking, “Are you new here?”

Chen Biao also returned, too, with Bowen Yang returning to his first breakout character in the run-up to the even more controversial than usual Winter Olympics, taking place as they are in Biao’s home country of China. Trade Daddy is still a funny concept, the world’s leading economic power once more leaving its U.S. outreach to a catty media addict. With Che noting how NBC is not sending correspondents to the games this time (with COVID and human rights abuses vying to be the stated reason), Yang’s Biao rolls his eyes and notes, “It’s our party and we’ll spy if we want to.” Trade Daddy keeps making me smile, even if Yang’s gone on to bigger things.

“What do you call that act?” “Dick Clark’s Receptionist!”—Recurring Sketch Report

Oh, hi, MacGruber. With Peacock co-stars Wiig and Ryan Phillippe pre-taping a trio of interspersed segments as MacGruber’s ever-imperiled sidekicks, MacGruber was first out of the gate right after Forte’s monologue. So, that was ominous. Look, I like MacGruber (although more in his longer feature film and spinoff series incarnations, weirdly enough), but of all the speculated Forte recurring bits, and as inevitable as some NBC/Peacock corporate synergy made it, the sight of MacGruber’s mullet had me rightfully assuming that this was not going to be the most adventurous episode ever.

Graduating from a simple (if enjoyably loopy) MacGyver parody to an extended referendum on alpha male pigheadedness and emotional fragility, MacGruber sketches turn on Forte’s conception of his gizmocrat hero’s inability to let anything go, at least when it comes to reinforcing his own self-identity as the smartest (and toughest, sexiest, and most all-around badass) person in the room. That that room is invariably packed with explosives strapped to a ticking timer is merely secondary to MacGruber’s desperate need for self-validation and praise, allowing Forte to take his take action movie clichés into the weird, wild wonderland that is his comedy-brain.

Of course MacGruber, for all his vaunted scientific acumen, would be a conspiracy-minded anti-vaxxer nutcase—macho heroism is yoked irretrievably to pig-headed, solipsistic exceptionalism. Toss in a handful of gross-out humor (and the spaghetti MacGruber had down his pants to prank his sidekicks about his use of Joe Rogan-touted horse de-wormer instead of that egghead vaccine), and you’ve got the idea for this trio of MacGrubers. (Oh, MacGruber also has horse worms.) Again, I’ve really enjoyed watching Forte spin this one-joke character into an entire, decades-spanning vehicle for his febrile comic imagination, but in these short canned segments the one joke felt more one-dimensional. Maybe I just was pining for Greg Stink.

“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report

I mean, there’s nothing in the rule book that mandates the cold open be about politics. It’s like SNL feels like it has to get the political satire out of the way so everyone can really get into the game show sketches and whatnot. And while the Laura Ingraham opener tonight gave Kate another chance to take on one of Fox News’ whitest white supremacist bad-faith talking heads (and this was at least marginally more relevant than last week’s bafflingly irrelevant Joe Biden Opener last week), it wasn’t anything special.

SNL doing politics has traditionally been more about recognition applause than insightful comedy, with viewers looking for that long-overrated SNL edgy rebel cred having to settle for the show at least putting a few damningly relevant facts out there for mockery. That Fox’s advertising is drying up on these nightly manufactured outrage-fests thanks to its hosts’ penchant for saying hateful nonsense (not that Fox itself gives a damn), the parade of jokes about Ingraham’s sponsors winnowing down to a fraudulent, all-negative COVID-testing company (“Covid Negs: I’m Going To Your Wedding”) is still a funny idea. And anytime SNL gets to dress Aidy up as a perpetually groveling Ted Cruz at least keeps Aidy happy. (“Hit me, choke me, spit in my face—I just want to stay in the mix,” Bryant’s Cruz proclaims, happily.)

Then it’s Trump time. James Austin Johnson’s Trump remains the best iteration of the [stomach tries to eat itself] former president in SNL history. (Not that most recent Trump Alec Baldwin gives Johnson much competition.) And the framework of Trump popping by Fox News like he’s their resident cooking segment guy gives Johnson’s uncannily topic-flipping Trump a driving comic force. Here, SNL can’t resist jumping on that Wordle trend (that’s going to age well), but Johnson is a major talent, and his babbling, groove-skipping Trump is tight and loose at the same time, SNL once again showing that a political impression is more about finding the core of a subject rather than simply rattling off verbatim topicality.

Ego Nwodim’s Candace Owens and Pete Davidson’s Novak Djokovic also drop in as Ingraham’s “one Black friend” and public figure Fox-hyped for ignorant bullshit, respectively. Both are fine—Kate’s Ingraham laments that Djokovic’s anti-vaxxer expulsion from Australia makes her use the word “deported” in a bad way. Here I’ll just reiterate that, if Saturday Night Live is going to do political, then it’s going to get evaluated not just on the comedy, but the politics as well. And, sure, my own political leanings (in favor: truth, justice, human decency; against: bigotry, fascism, hypocrisy) come into play here.

SNL skews to the left, I guess, if looking at the world as it is and refusing to be blatantly gaslit is left. And mocking people like Ingraham for the sneering propagandists they are at least puts Fox’s alternate universe of white fragility and scare tactics out there for all to see. (I’m guessing that the Fox News/SNL crossover viewership is comprised entirely of hate-watchers and people who want to see Morgan Wallen perform.) But, with the exception of Johnson’s inhabited and stand-alone-funny Trump here, that’s more public service than searing satire. It’s fine.

I Am Hip To The Musics Of Today

I admit to never jumping on the Eurovision Song Contest ironic appreciation bandwagon, so this was my first exposure to 2021 winners Måneskin. And I gotta say—these jokes.

It’s nice that Aristotle Athari got such a high-profile musical follow-up to Angelo.

Are we sure this isn’t a Mighty Boosh sketch?

The Italian band’s lyrics sounded like Sparks was Google translated from English to Italian and back again about three times.

Are we sure this isn’t one of those BBC-mandated musical interludes from The Young Ones?

Man, alternate universe Perry Farrell went in a whole other direction.

Nice to see that the incongruous rap breakdown has made it overseas.

And I’m done. I loved this.

Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player

With Wiig in the house, this was a bloodbath for the second-tier cast. People I did not see except for the goodnights: Melissa, Punkie, Chris Redd, Aristotle Athari (I think?), Dismukes. People completely absent: Cecily, for the second show in a row. Forte shouted out, “This amazing cast back here,” during the goodnights, inadvertently summing up the role of this underused and overpopulated group with a wave of his hand.

Kate got the most airtime, so Kate gets the top spot, although nothing tonight is going on anybody’s best-of reel.

“What the hell is that thing?”—Dispatches From Ten-To-Oneland

Ideally, when a former cast member comes in to host, the show should highlight what made them special enough to warrant it. Too often, a returning cast member is chucked into a few recurring sketches and flanked by a few more returning stars to edge out the cast proper. Guess which example tonight was? Nobody’s dissing Kristen Wiig, but the final sketch tonight could have been filled out by a present cast member just fine, instead of seeing Wiig join Forte in what was a pretty funny and Forte-like sketch. (Kenan got into the spirit as exuberant emcee Jevner Keeblerelv. Lots of “funny name” jokes tonight.)

As a pair of very specifically insane country singers (their matching lyrical obsessions are toddlers, Model Ts, aliens, and beer in jars), Wiig and Forte croon out a series of tunes where their pet topics trump all considerations of rhyme or coherent song-storytelling. As in Forte’s bed-banging, this sketch had the virtue of Forte’s penchant for taking things into the too-much for too-long arena. I especially liked the duo’s new NFL anthem, another screed about aliens and toddlers accosting players “while you hunt your little leather ball,” crescendoing to a screeching chorus of, “Oh, football sport—here is your official new football song!”

Points off that this ten-to-one shoo-in was followed by some back-from-break band vamping at 12:56. Either there was another, even weirder sketch cut for time, or the show’s timing was thrown off somewhere along the line. Honestly, with Will Forte in the house, I expected ten-to-oneland to seep into the show more than it did, and not ten-to-oneland being annexed for a late musical number and some time-filling.

Stray observations

• A 47-year old show’s memorial title cards keep coming, with Emmy-winning former SNL writer John Bowman having died earlier this month.
• Ingraham claims she likes tennis “because, in tennis, love is bad.”
• After Wiig complains that she flew in only for Forte to shoo her off the monologue stage, Forte snaps, “Oh, great, so you know where the airport is.”
• Chen Biao on reporters’ plans to circumvent Chinese censorship: “Burner phones? What is this, The Wire? Must be season 2 because you’re white an no one cares.”
• Mikey Day will have a job until Saturday Night Live decides it no longer needs someone to explain the premise of sketches in a slightly confused and outraged manner. That’s what you call job security.
• The one cut-for-time sketch the show posted is… fine. Kenan and Redd are outstanding as sports shouters Michael Irvin and Stephen A. Smith, but you can’t flash that ESPN logo on a Will Forte episode and not give me that Greg Stink.
• Next week: It’s Willem Dafoe for real, which is the sort of booking that has me tingly with curiosity and not a little anxiety. (Musical guest, Katy Perry.)