The first Saturday Night of 2024 kicks off with Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) holding court in front of reporters following his appearance in literal court. The former president crows about his recent blowout victory in the Iowa primary, congratulating “Mr DeSantis on a truly embarrassing showing. It went to 99 counties, but bitch couldn’t win one.” He also thanks “Vivika A Ramaswamy” for dropping out and agreeing to live in his suit pocket (“I love my little Ratatouille”), before free-associating on Mean Girls (“Where’s Lacey Chabert? Left out of remake, so sad”), Jeffrey Epstein (“You ever see that video of me dancing with Epstein? Boy is that some dark image … very strange, very Twin Peaks”), and his elderly base (“We just need ‘em to stay alive until November … just pull that lever and drop dead!”).
Johnson’s Trump continues to impress, but there’s very little meat on the bone here. The character as developed by Johnson and the writers over the past few years works better when he’s placed within definite parameters, rather than just given an open stage to ramble.
Jacob Elordi makes his SNL debut as host. The Aussie actor thanks everyone who watched his new movie Saltburn – unless they watched it with their parents, in which case he apologizes. He then takes questions from the fawning audience (the first two members of which aren’t cast members, despite being given several comedic lines to deliver). Eventually, Sarah Sherman stands up and harangues Elordi for his 2018 romcom The Kissing Booth, while Bowen Yang swoons over him while doing a poor Australian accent of his own. As with the cold open, things wrap up in a noticeably rushed fashion. We’re left with zero impression of what kind of a live performer Elordi will make.
Crown Your Short King is a reality dating show where small-statured bachelors vie for the love of Courtney (Chloe Fineman). Before she chooses between the three final contestants, with whom she’s spent the last three months falling for, the show springs a twist and introduces her to a new guy – the very tall Jackson (Elordi). Even though he’s a Pittsburgh dirtbag with a girlfriend and a $20,000 debt, she immediately chooses him. This same exact joke plays out a couple of times before the sketch is through.
Then, we get an extended cut of the viral Club Shay Shay interview between Shannon Sharpe (Devon Walker) and Katt Williams (Ego Nwodim), with Katt going on even more unhinged rants about Kevin Hart (“Everybody knows that Kevin was made in the same factory as they make Teddy Grahams”), Avatar (“James Cameron begged me to be in it. He said, I’ll suck your penis in front of all the Na’vi”), Gretas Gerwig and Thunberg (“Doing all that talking – you need to Gretta job!”), and more. Both impressions are merely okay.
On Entertainment Tonight’s awards show special, the hosts welcome a pair of professional lip readers to decipher viral celebrity conversations, including those between Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner and Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. It quickly becomes apparent that the two have no idea what they’re talking about. Elordi’s dumb-dumb caveman impression of Kelce gets the first big laugh of the night, before the musical guest Reneé Rapp joins the duo to show off her equally poor lip-reading skills.
Elordi and Heidi Gardner play a couple on a first date at a bowling alley who become distracted by the pun-filled animations that appear on the scoreboard after every play. These turn from silly skits to harrowing dramas about anthropomorphic bowling pins dealing with divorce, addiction, organized crime and serial murder. Things start out a little stilted, but the laughs pick up as the set becomes more obvious. Gardner’s reaction to the addiction vignette – “A needle in her arm? Pretty girl like that would shoot between her toes” – is one of the darker and funnier lines of the whole season.
A commercial for Alaska Airlines seeks to reassure travelers in the wake of the recent disaster (caught on camera) that saw one of its plane’s doors being blown off mid-flight. Rather than promising safety improvements, it decides to go all in on the disaster with its new slogan: “You didn’t die and you got a cool story.”
Following Rapp’s first performance, it’s time for Weekend Update. Colin Jost laments the impending repeat of the 2020 election, pointing out the cognitive declines of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump: “It’s starting to feel like elder abuse … it reminds of those Bum Fight videos, where they made two homeless guys fight for money. And now we look back on it and we’re like, how did we as a society let that happen?” Michael Che, meanwhile, earns groans from the audience after joking that Tim Scott’s recent backing of Trump will only count as “three-fifths of an endorsem*nt from his voters”. Later jokes from both hosts about people voting for Trump then dying from Covid, American slaveowners having sex with their slaves, and Catholic priests molesting kids also brook antagonistic reactions from the crowd.
Their first guest is the aforementioned Tim Scott (Walker), who doubles down on his endorsem*nt of Trump. The South Carolina senator – who sounds like “if Bill Clinton were actually black” – defends turning his back on Nikki Haley, who appointed him to the Senate in the first place, by parroting Trump’s “racist dog whistles” about her not even being born in America. Scott’s producing an actual racist dog whistle that only Jost can hear gets the second big laugh of the night.
Next, Che welcomes on Deobra Redden (Punkie Johnson), the court defendant who went viral for hilariously hurling himself at a judge during sentencing. Redden plays the video and breaks it down, sports-clip style, to show that the bailiff and sheriffs in the courtroom were caught slacking, making them just as culpable for endangering the judge as he himself was. It’s actually a very sound argument.
A women’s AA meeting is interrupted by two male alcoholics looking for a support group. The ladies callously reject the first guy, a regular schlub, but excitedly accept Elordi’s hunky alcoholic. His concerns about replacing drugs and booze with sex sends their lust into the stratosphere. For all intents and purposes, this is the same basic premise as the short kings sketch from earlier in the night – Elordi is so hot women can’t stop themselves from betraying their principles in order to objectify him.
Admittedly, this sketch proves hard to follow after one of the cast member’s mic picks up what is without a doubt a live fart. That’s about all the viewer can be expected to focus on, at least until Johnson flashes some majorly revealing cleavage towards the end.
Rachel McAdams, the villainous Regina George in the original Mean Girls, pops in to introduce Rapp (who takes over the role for the new musical remake) for her second performance. On stage, she’s joined by “Black Regina George” Megan Thee Stallion.
At an acting workshop, McAdams’s struggling student deals with the obstacle of “looking strikingly like Rachel McAdams”. (It doesn’t help that her name is Natalie Partman.) The class is treated to a surprise appearance by Elordi’s successful actor, but his experience – being discovered by Selena Gomez as soon as he stepped foot in LA, not being familiar with the concept of “rejection”, and never having had to audition – proves immensely discouraging. This is the third sketch of the night that centers around Elordi being so good-looking that he simply breezes through life. It’s especially disappointing here since the conceit of McAdams playing her own struggling actor doppelganger had way more potential.
The show wraps up with Elordi and Chloe Troast’s wedding being interrupted by Garett (Yang), a Stewie Griffin-obsessed weirdo who went on one Hinge date with the bride. Despite ruining the ceremony, Garett bonds with the groom (as well as the priest) over their shared love of Family Guy impressions. The bizarre asides that take place in front of the bathroom mirror leave the audience audibly befuddled, sending the episode out on an awkward note. You have to wonder at the show bringing the character of Garett back, considering his introduction last season (during Travis Kelce’s episode) was met with a similarly befuddled and chilly response.
This was a mostly weak episode, with too many sketches petering out before they got started and Elordi playing the same character in most of those he featured in. However, a couple strong individual jokes, as well as some noticeably prurient sights and sounds peppered throughout the night make it one of the more memorable entries of the season thus far. A strange start to 2024, but better that than being forgettable.
