'SNL' Recap: Election Distracts from Michael Keaton's Return

Photo: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC

Now-fourth-timer Michael Keaton’s last Saturday Night Live hosting stint in 2015 made it clear that he’s game for anything. Who could forget when he played a creepy Easter fanatic listing out everything in his freak-ass Easter basket and swilling an egg salad cosmo? On a rewatch, I realized that character never introduces himself, and it’s not until the end when his assistant, Kate McKinnon’s haunting Vanna White-esque tether, reveals he’s playing himself: “Happy Easter, Michael Keaton.” Happy Easter, Michael Keaton, indeed. This episode’s promo featured getting hyped up Keaton in studio 8H, ripping his pants and underwear off Wrestlemania-style and apologizing for his blurred-out crotch with the intonation of someone who just walked in on a stranger in a public restroom. Going into it, one wonders just how much this week’s episode will make use of Keaton returning to his comedy roots.

Not much, it turns out. Keaton was sorely underused in this episode, which is perhaps to be expected considering the election is quickly nearing. Keaton performed sufficiently with what he was tasked with an unassuming cookie salesman, three types of dads, a Michael Myers choreographer, and an Uber driver’s friend.

The episode had some really strong spots, some deep clunkers, and a lot of clips the KamalaHQ Twitter account is going to be reposting in the next few days. There’s a real downturn post-Weekend Update — the last three sketches were rough. “Tableside,” where Keaton plays a dad who thinks he recognizes the waitress, felt like it was spinning in a promising direction before ending abruptly. That being said, on balance, it rounded out to a relatively decent episode, all things considered (and if you feel like this is controversial, Joe will be back next episode). Here’s to hoping that he’ll have more to do when Keaton joins the five-timers club.

Here are the highlights:

It’s nearly two weeks from the election, which means the show is largely going to be about that. And by “that,” I mean an immediate Alec Baldwin jumpscare. It is almost Halloween, after all. His character, Fox News host Bret Baier, sits down with an interview with Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris and barely lets her speak, cutting her off and demanding answers to out-of-context questions. While the parts where Kamala’s throwing random internet slang (“very demure” is out of the news cycle at this point) at TikTok during the interview would make some want to willingly swallow a bag of uncooked lentils in the hopes of choking and perishing, it is crushing with the audience. Fine. It does feel a little like there’s palpable guilt from letting Trump host in 2015 and/or like Hillary Clinton is rappelling down the outside of 30 Rock and tapping on the windows as we speak, but I’d rather that than the alternative I guess? And being reminded about how hard Harris is courting Republicans in lieu of trying to get the progressive vote makes it a little hard to watch, but I’ll admit that seems like a personal problem. Despite that, I laughed out loud multiple times. The switches to James Austin Johnson’s Trump free-associative ramblings with Ego Nwodim’s interviewer and to Dana Carvey’s Joe Biden feel dynamic. The piece is joke-dense, but if it works, it works.

Keaton brings Easter creep energy into playing a guy selling a giant boob-shaped cookie on the shopping channel. The channel’s flabbergasted hosts, played by Heidi Gardner and Mikey Day, try their best to steer away from the fact that the cookie is a boob. Not only can you get one cookie for $14.99, but you can also get a second for free and free white glaze to dribble on the cookie boob. Some might be tired of SNL treading familiar territory, but I love the silliness. Life is hard. Why not put an icing cum joke on television?

Last week, we were worried that Please Don’t Destroy sketches could be gone for good. That’s not the case, and thank god for that. In “Skydiving,” two friends (John Higgins and Martin Herlihy) prepare to jump out of a plane. But one of their instructors (Ben Marshall) doesn’t have a good feeling about it but isn’t bothered by that. Keaton plays the grislier instructor, who, even at 10,000 feet in the air, cannot escape a custody battle. Emil Wakim’s pilot, who’s wearing AirPods, is delightfully chill about not knowing how to fly a plane. It’s silly and heightens in a really satisfying way — a clear standout for the night. I hope that a PDD/Jane Wickline collaboration is somewhere in the pipeline soon.

Sarah Sherman joined the Weekend Update desk to talk about what real inclusivity at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show would mean for her. Where are the VS angels with infected belly button rings? The specificity of jokes like “Pangea nipples,” “resting rabbi face,” and “a happy trail that wraps all the way around their back like a gorilla,” along with Sherman’s characteristically playful hostility with Jost, made it a treat to watch.

This starts as an onscreen text exchange between a viewer texting their partner that they’re on their way, despite actually scrolling through TikTok. We flip through a typically jarring For You page of trends and characters. Everyone shines! Saturday Night Live has been wanting to be more zeitgeisty, and this felt like a really effective way to do that. Some standouts included Heidi Gardner as a tradwife (“My kids wanted to color, but we were all out of paper. So I mashed up my law degree to make paper for my kids”), Marcello Hernandez as a gamer a little loose with the fireworks, Ego Nwodim as a Chili’s truther, and Chloe Fineman as Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper introducing the homeland security secretary onto the pod.

• Michael Keaton in his monologue: “SNL and Mister Rogers had a lot more similarities than you’d think. Lots of puppets, tons of cocaine.” I was tickled!

• No context minion production guy in the Halloween cookie sketch could be its own Halloween costume. Also, “squishy is delishy.”

• Sherman’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show arc ended with her deciding she’ll do anything to be in it. “I’ll get that BBL you’ve been offering to pay for,” she tells Jost, who hits back with “I offered to split it!” I love them together.

• The Uber Game Show sketch didn’t quite work for me, but there were some lines I liked, including, “He’s banned from Lyft, and he’s the smartest man I know,” and the Tiny Hot Water Bottle game (“Why is this water so hot?” “Because I keep ‘em between my legs”).  Monologue jokes are hard to have fun with as a form, but I appreciated Michael Che’s national no-bra day joke. Between that and Sarah Sherman’s “Pangea Nipples” and the boob cookie sketch, big naturals are in!