SNL Season 41: Ep.7

SNL came off its Thanksgiving break and started its final push before Christmas. So how did Ryan Gosling do? Well hey....let me tell you about it. Onto the review

Donald Trump Christmas Message (Cold Open): The show started off with Taran Killan as Donald Trump (with Cecily Strong as his wife). This just missed the mark. You can't really do a proper parody anymore with Trump, given everything he's said or is likely to say on the campaign trail. That, combined with Taran's sub-par Trump impression, resulted in this being a total miss. (3.9)

Monologue: Ryan's monologue started with him pretending to be from Brooklyn instead of Canada, and looked like it was veering into a Q&A monologue, but then fellow Canadian Mike Myers appeared and livened things up a bit. Ryan still looked a bit nervous, but with Mike he looked fairly comfortable as they sang a "Canadian Christmas song". (6.9)

Settl App (ad): An ad for an app for those who want to settle for a partner. All in all, this was fine, but the idea wasn't all that inventive. I was kind of fascinated with Taran's character though. (6.2)

Close Counter: Ryan, Cecily and Kate McKinnon played UFO witnesses at a NSA meeting. Cecily and Ryan had tranquil experiences......but not so much for Kate. On its face, this was a sketch that should have been just "meh", but with Kate being the genius that she is, got everyone to break (even the NSA agents, Aidy Bryant and Bobby Moynihan). There was just so much energy in this sketch. (8.8)

        




Santa Baby (short): I don't know what the writers were on when they came up with this, but thank God whatever it was. This short played off like a drama, with Ryan and Vanessa Bayer playing a couple at a Christmas party, expecting to really see Santa. Beck Bennett and the rest of the guests quickly get creeped out as the tension and bizarreness of it all ratchets up. Ryan and Vanessa really sold and committed to this, and that makes it work as well as it did. (9.0)
        



Birthday Party: A recurring sketch from a while back, Ryan played a dad supervising a teenage birthday party, and Aidy Bryant is feeling some things. In general, this sketch was fairly flat, but Aidy did everything she could and saved it from being a miss. (6.8)


(Leon Bridges): (7.9)



Weekend Update: I don't know what happened here, maybe it was the writing, or the delivery, because you could hear crickets throughout the 1st half with Colin Jost & Michael Che. It wasn't until the guests showed up that the audience finally got into it.

Cecily Strong played magazine writer Jill Davenport who was supposed to talk about tech gift ideas, but instead used her time to flirt with Colin. Besides Cecily showing how attractive she is, I'm not sure what the point was behind this.

The guest that made Update this week was Bobby's Anthony Crespino (second-hand news man) and his partner & third-hand newsman Angelo Skaggs (Ryan). These two worked really well together and brought the energy level back up for Update. (6.5)
          




Hometown Bar: In this sketch, Ryan returned to his hometown bar to talk with a GQ reporter (Cecily). There, he ran into an old friend Kyle Mooney, who challenged him to dance and sing. That was pretty much the entire sketch. There really wasn't much to this besides giving Ryan an opportunity to dance. (5.8)


Nespresso (ad/short): Watching this for the first time, I didn't get it at all. But it turns out this was based off of an actual nespresso ad featuring George Clooney and Danny DeVito.
    

So with that context, this parody made sense (with Bobby returning as Devito, and Taran making for a pretty believable Clooney). In the parody, DeVito was puzzled on why Clooney was stringing him along for just a cup of coffee. All in all, this was actually pretty good (as mentioned, with the added context). (8.4)




The Wiz: Cut Scene: SNL got around to a sketch about this year's live musical telecast "The Wiz". It featured Sasheer Zamata as Dorothy, along with the scarecrow, lion and tin-man as they meet the wizard (Leslie Jones), when the Wizard Of Oz's scarecrow shows up (Ryan). This sketch was about the differences between the two adaptions (and its modernization). This could have been flat, but Ryan really made for a terrific scarecrow. (7.0)


(Leon Bridges): (8.0)


Submissive Elves: This was a pretty bizarre recurring sketch (last appearing with Louis CK). Keenan Thompson, Vanessa and Ryan played elves who wouldn't to be disciplined by Santa (Bobby). This sketch quickly made its point, and then kept on going. It was really trying to hard for that 10 to 1 spot. (4.7)


Ryan Gosling sure tried, and that's really all you can ask for from a host. They stayed away from topical material for original sketches, which were fairly hit or miss. Gosling's breaking got a little old after a while, but he still made for an appealing host.

Overall Score - 7.13


Tracy Morgan - 7.94
Elizabeth Banks - 7.53
Amy Schumer - 7.18

Matthew McConaughey - 7.13
Ryan Gosling - 6.92
Miley Cyrus - 6.07
Donald Trump - 4.92