Saturday Night Live recap: Go Dua Lipa, give us something!

After a few weeks of spring break, Saturday Night Live returned this week still buzzing off that season-high giggle fest of a Ryan Gosling episode. (His Beavis and Mikey Day’s Butt-Head walked the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of The Fall Guy on Tuesday.) And who better to usher us into the last few episodes of the season—and the beginning of a sultry summer—than the seemingly-perpetually-vacationing pop star Dua Lipa.

To support her third studio album, Radical Optimism, the artist formerly known as Dula Peep—who previously appeared as the show’s musical guest in seasons 43 and 46—joined a long line of musicians who’ve pulled double duty as SNL host, from Quncy Jones to Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake to Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish to Bad Bunny.

Given that the singer does have acting experience—though we were hoping the episode would give more Barbie, less Argylle—and a healthy sense of humor about herself, Ms. Lipa was clearly eager to get silly alongside the cast. (A decades-late The Elephant Man bit? Sign her, and us, up!) Sadly, despite all of our radical optimism, the “Houdini” crooner wasn’t amplified or accentuated by the mostly mid writing this week, so much as she tried to give us “everything.”

Cold open: Kenan & Co. on college protests

If you’re going to do a touchy topical open—like this week’s kickoff interviewing parents of college students (Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, Heidi Gardner) about their feelings on the on-going Israel-Palestine protests happening at campuses across the country—the most surefire way to soften tensions is by bringing in Kenan, whose funny voices and facial reactions have been a humorous, and harmless, salve for 21 seasons.

After a notably shaky opening from Michael Longfellow, playing our NY1 host, Thompson got easy laughs as a Columbia dad who supports the student protests, but does not support his own daughter Alexis Vanessa’s involvement: “She better not be talking ’bout free this, free that, because I tell you what ain’t free. Columbia!” After detailing all of the various jobs it takes to afford the Ivy Leaguer’s $68,ooo-a-year tuition, it seemed a missed opportunity to not end the bit with footage of Alexis Vanessa out at the protests, complete with a characteristically over-the-top Kenan reaction. Instead, the sketch petered out long before we got to the “Live from New York” bit.

Opening monologue: Dua remains radically optimistic

In a too-short but sweet monologue, our first-time host highlighted her fun-loving parents (“We ended up at the club at 3:00 in the morning and who do I bump into but my parents, which was embarrassing because the last thing you want to see when you’re super high and drunk off your ass is your daughter”), gave optimistic advice to folks in the audience (we can’t wait for those “On the bright side, there’s always poppers!” reaction GIFs to hit Twitter) and shared her sheer willingness to do whatever it takes to make a good show. “I’m here, I’m hosting, I’m performing, I’m making the wigs, I’m dealing Adderall to the writers…I’m going to give you everything!” she proclaimed—we just wish those writers would put in the same level of effort.

The best sketch of the night:

The Elephant Man meets The Twilight Zone with a good deal of Poor Things horniness thrown in—this black-and-white body-horror bit stars Dua Lipa as a theater fan taken with a timid, disabled playwright (Sarah Sherman). From the costuming to the prosthetics, the production levels were high with this one, which made it all the funnier when it was revealed that our titular Anomalous Man not only secretly owns a cell phone but has been messaging other women on the side, and with increasingly graphic sexts. You can hear how much fun the staff had coming up with choice texts like “I’m tryna show you what this snout do!” and “I’m gonna ride your face until it looks normal.”

The “there had to be a better Challengers sketch” of the night:

Because I am a nearly 35-year-old working woman, I’d never before heard of Sonny Angels, the apparently very real and creepy little dolls that sport whimsical hats, rosy cheeks and small, fully exposed penises. Much to Marcello Hernàndez’s confusion, his date (Lipa) is obsessed with the faddish toys, particularly a grape-crowned one played by Bowen Yang.

Once the platter of churros (“the most penis dessert”) came out and that “stressful and horny” Challengers soundtrack cranked up, the surreal premise finally started taking shape, but it was let down by awkward timing and line stumbles. Given how unabashedly horny and genuinely funny the Luca Guadagnino-directed tennis flick is, we wish it got a stronger parody treatment than this.

The worst celebrity cameo of the night:

Fellow pop star Troye Sivan dropped into Studio 8H to introduce Lipa’s first musical performance of the night, for the single “Illusion,” but he wasn’t the only starry appearance. During this week’s “Weekend Update” segment, Colin Jost and Michael Che were joined by “A Man Who Did Too Much Press,” a.k.a. Jerry Seinfeld, who showed up to promote his new Netflix film Unfrosted and seemingly walk back some of the boomer crap he recently spewed about the state of modern-day comedy. (Like most 70-year-old billionaires, he’s annoyed with “woke culture.”) “Where am I, exactly? Is this a podcast?” the frazzled comedian intro’d his middling cameo. Real edgy stuff, Jer. (Far more enjoyable was Hernàndez as Kristi Noem’s other dog and Chloe Fineman as good-girl-gone-bad JoJo Siwa.)

The better returning sketch of the night:

That “Young Spicy” bit has pretty much lost all its flavor, but we do see long-term potential in the recurring “Jingle Pitch” sketch, which debuted during the Jenna Ortega-hosted episode last year.

Playing a local band tasked with crafting a catchy jingle for a family flooring business, Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson were giving Samberg-and-Timberlake before the latter got insufferable. And it was nice to see the powers that be actually let Lipa give something, which was actually not-the-worst New Yawk accent we’ve ever heard. We don’t know if the sketch quite hit the “Daiqued down, Pepped up, Luched out” levels that Bowen Yang was demanding, but we wouldn’t be unopposed to boogying down with Soul Booth in the future.

Stray observations

• One of the best editions of Saturday Night Live this season was hosted by Kristen Wiig, and next week her fellow SNL alum and frequent costar Maya Rudolph gets her turn as host, in support of the second season of her Apple TV+ series Loot. One of the best SNL cast members of this century, Rudolph is always a joy to watch on the Studio 8H stage. The comedy great will be joined by Vampire Weekend as musical guest; the band recently released its first LP in five years, Only God Was Above Us.
• And for our big season finale on Saturday, May 18, Lorne and Co. has tapped Jake Gyllenhaal as host for the third time. The actor has had a busy year so far, between the Road House remake and his new Apple TV+ limited series, Presumed Innocent, which premieres in June. And pop star Sabrina Carpenter will make her SNL debut as musical guest, bringing with her some of that “me espresso.”