Even thought Drake made his big return tonight as an overall excellent host, SNL was once again mediocre, letting down one of their great hosts with subpar writing and just plain bad material. I am SO ready for this season to be over, guys. It had on okay middle, but this final run has just sucked the life out of me at this point.
COLD OPEN: A Trump opening, with Darrell in Trump's office, pretending to be his own publicist on the phone and going over potential VP candidates, with Bobby's pathetic Chris Christie and Jay's Ben Carson making appearances. I don't know why this show has so utterly failed to come up with an angle on Trump for these opening skits. Is he just too much of a parody of himself already? That sure didn't stop those Sarah Palin sketches from being funny. Yeah, I don't get why, but these are so flat every single time. It's weird.
MONOLOGUE: The return of Drake, the surprise fantastic host from a few years back, as he comes onstage and raps about all those internet memes made about him. It's only okay. What's actually funny are the memes, to be honest.
RENT-A-CAR: Awkward bit where Beck and Vanessa are a married couple trying to rent a car and Drake is an irritating worker at the rent-a-car place and Jay is his even more irritating manager. The bit is the creation of the characters I guess. Drake gives it his all and this is obviously Jay's character, but it just isn't that funny. Maybe there's some potential in here, with some fine-tuning though. And some funnier dialogue.
AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR: A spoof of the NBC competition show with Beck and Drake as the hosts and Bobby as a contestant who fails instantly on the first challenge. They mock him by replaying in slow-mo and rubbing salt in the wounds. It's kinda funny, I guess, because it's a pretty straight on parody of the show.
SEXY EVENING: Okay, so, I don't really know what this was, but it appeared to be some kind of send-up of a fake 70's variety show with Drake as a supersexy R&B singer and his back-up dancers Kate and Cecily. The joke is that there's a lot of technical glitches in the show and he keeps screwing up his bit and undercutting the "sexiness." The whole thing falls totally flat, but again, Drake is super committed to this, totally in character, and really the center of the sketch- it's just too bad it's nothing to work with.
BABY BOSS: Oh, god. One of my most hated skits is back. Drake is a congressman talking to Paul Ryan about using the baby man as a possible third party candidate against Trump. You know the rest- Beck comes in and does his thing. I don't really know what to say about this. If you find his baby man schtick funny, then it's funny. I don't and never have, so...yeah. Ugh. I hate this character so much.
UPDATE: Che and Jost do a lot of jokes about the Trump fake publicist thing and then Kate comes on as her Russian peasant woman who jokes that Trump snatched up Melania from her village. Leslie then comes in with a bit about achieving your dreams at any age (it's actually one of her less annoying spiels), and finally Jay arrives with another roll of impressions, this time at the secret rapper's meeting to give Jay-Z advice on Beyonce. It's pretty funny, but I liked his comedians one better.
BLACK JEOPARDY: This boring skit is back with Drake as the world's only black Canadian who doesn't know any of the answers- he does a good job with the funny accent and all, but this whole sketch just doesn't have enough punchlines in it and never has, so whatever.
DRAKE'S BEEF: Yes! Something actually, genuinely funny! And of course, this appears to have been entirely Drake's thing, A video of him backstage, being silently offended by perceived slights from the cast and then drifting into his own head to rap about each of them insulting him. This was good! Drake himself is pretty hilarious, you have to admit.
HIGH SCHOOL DANCE: A totally unfunny bit that Drake is 100% committed to as he does a Hulk Hogan-esque character who chaperones a high school dance and accosts students with weird lectures about him chasing famous criminals from 15 years ago. I really don't get what the joke of this was- it was totally lost on me, whatever the point was here, but hey, Drake once again is spot on with the character. Weird though.
So that's it. Drake was on, but the show was eh. I loved his beef video, and Jay's rapper impressions were good. The rest? Pretty bleh, despite the host's efforts. I give it a C (could have been worse, and the recent previous ones were). I have no expectations that these guys are going to step it up for the finale next week, but with Fred Armisen hosting, I expect other former cast members of his era to pop up as well (maybe Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig for the inevitable Californians sketch?). And then we'll be mercifully done with this season. See you guys then!
