Saturday Night live continued this unprecedented pandemic preventing season this weekend with host Adele and musical guest H.E.R. And while the two top billed acts succeeded, the rest of the show continues to suffer badly from a case of the unfunnies.
Adele took the stage at the beginning of the show with a sweet monologue about her first appearance on SNL and with news that her new music wasn’t completed yet, acknowledging those who wanted her to perform. She was easily the best part of the show providing a skit where she was one of the guests on the Bachelorette, who would spontaneously burst into one of her hits during particularly emotional parts of the opening night cocktail party. This was the best part of the show because she got to be funny and did give us a taste of some of her old musical hits that we wanted to hear performed live.
Honestly, I was new to the H.E.R experience but I liked what I heard. It was a soulful outing and there will be a lot of new fans because of this appearance.
As for the rest of the show, it was bad.
We got another bad debate cold open with Alec Baldwin’s stale Donald Trump and Jim Carrey’s ineffective Joe Biden spoofing the latest meeting between the two candidates. This still isn’t working but we’re getting four more years of it regardless.
Pete Davidson gave us another unfunny Chad skit that they keep bringing back and Weekend Update rolled out the same tired jokes that have been taking up valuable show time for the last few years. In all fairness, Michael Che’ did give that Phil Collins joke a mighty swing though and the Village People performance did see members acting their tales off. Respect is due there.
There is some hope for next week. Former effective (and funny) SNL writer, John Mulaney, is back with The Strokes as a musical guest. Let’s hope for another good show where the regular elements of the program are actually funny. Mulaney’s stand up stuff is excellent.