In one of the worst episodes Saturday Night Live in recent memories, unnatural presenter Miles Teller made his way through the half-baked material until Brandi Carlile was a bright spot. The show's writing has really taken a turn for the worse this season and needs to be fixed soon. That's all that happened on SNL This week.
Cold opening
The show went local and meta, with Kenan Thompson's New York news anchor Errol Louis admitting that he was “the least famous person ever portrayed on television.” SNL” before heading up the fictional mayoral debate. Host Miles Teller made a rare appearance as host in the cold to play disgraced candidate Andrew Cuomo. He was joined by comedian Ramy Youssef, who made a cameo as Zohran Mamdani and satirized his rage-filled hilarity, and was joined by Shane Gillies, playing eccentric dark horse candidate Curtis Sliwa, who truly seems to have invented it. The show had showcasing all the mayor's idiosyncrasies and quirks, while Louis joked about the New York City broadcast's sponsors, Cam Patterson appeared as outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, and Youssef played Mamdani as an overly sincere social media nerd. James Austin Johnson soon appeared as Donald Trump to question the candidates, disrupt the hearings, and boast with surprise about the results of his MRI test, this frantic open worked well enough.
Monologue
Miles Teller returned as host and told us about the time he and his sisters went to Halloween. SNLRoxbury characters. Teller waxed sentimental about his relationship with the show as a fan and former host, then made a weird joke about losing his house in the Palisades fire, and then the uneven monologue unraveled.
What did I do last night?
Kenan Thompson played the host of a show with hungover contestants who had to remember what they were doing on their drunken Halloweens. Subject to awkward memory jogs, participants squirmed over specific questions and even videotapes. It wasn't very funny.
Property Brothers
In the film, Teller played twin brothers, the Property Brothers, who were tasked with building a new White House ballroom, which meant more JAJ as Trump and Chloe Fineman as Melania Trump. Poking fun at Trump's slow destruction of the White House and his coup in plain sight, it was pretty funny.
NHL Promotions
Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes played directors of promotions for social initiatives involving NHL players. Teller played the Nashville Predator who stumbles by calling himself “The Predator in My Community.” As the commercials continued, this lazily written sketch reinforced the pedophile references with every line, which was predictable and muted by Teller's unconvincing performance.
Gone in a few tracks
In this deleted fake Netflix documentary trailer, we came across three unhappy men who were profiled because they claimed their wives had disappeared. It turned out that they simply didn't listen to their wives when they told them where they would be, and it was all pretty bad.
News studio
The news show introduced a new look in which viewers could see the people behind the anchors doing their jobs. Unfortunately, this proved challenging for the staff, like the one played by Mikey Day, who got scared when caught on camera and got into an accident. Teller played a creepy jerk who gets caught watching erotica, and Cam Patterson plays someone mugging in front of the cameras. Bowen Yang was electrocuted by the printer. Again, it was a simple one-note premise that didn't stick.
Brandi Carlile
To some surprise, Brandi Carlile and her larger band used early U2 cuts (especially the Edge's jangly, atmospheric guitar licks) for the post-punk-adjacent, politically charged song “Church & State,” which was good.
The U2 vibe returned during “Human”, although it took us from the band's early '80s sound to their mid-'90s pop-soul mode. Carlisle is a wonderful singer and performer, so she succeeded.
Weekend update
Colin Jost began Update by talking about Halloween celebrations at the White House, where Trump often places candy on children's heads, and made a tasteless joke about Michael Jackson. Michael Che reported on Japan's nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Yost told us about the president's embarrassing trip abroad. Che told us that Rudy Giuliani supported the “white panther” Curtis Sliwa.
Bowen Young appeared as George Santos and comically lied about everything that came to mind. He also stole Yost's wallet and told us what life was like in prison. It was normal.
Jost reminded us of his “Nut Up, Kids” health campaign, and Che suggested that Kid Rock represents the mentally retarded community. Yost told us that a woman was hunted by vultures on a hike, and Che told a reasonable anecdote about Prince Andrew. Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes played two people who had just met and wanted to discuss the US government shutdown. Oddly enough, each of their topics of conversation prompted them to exchange warm and loving glances. It was well done by Padilla and Dismukes and was one of the funniest moments in this dark episode.
Wait, the update is still ongoing? Che told us about a golden retriever stealing things and getting benefits, then suggested that the 101-year-old woman was a prostitute. Jost told one more lame joke, and then this update, which would normally end after a tabletop article about the character, finally ended.
Steak knife
Teller played a homicide detective leading a press conference about a murder investigation. One of the press guys, played by Andrew Dismukes, switched gears and just wanted feedback on his rejected comic book series. Gar Girlwhich changed the course of the proceedings and its direction. Absurd and decent, but it also led to the strangest abrupt ending in recent memory.
Italian Restaurant In a callback to Dana Carvey and Adam Sandler's old Italian Waiters sketch, Teller and Marcello Hernandez played Italian waiters who brazenly flirted with Chloe Fineman's character while insulting and insulting her companion, played by Mikey Day. In some ways it was both a nostalgia bomb and a genuine comedy bomb that, again, had no real narrative resolution. Just terribly written stuff.
