Saturday Night Live: Saoirse Ronan, U2

December 2, 2017 10:31 PM - Season 43, Episode 9

Host: Saoirse Ronan, Musical Guest: U2

• White House Christmas Carol - Kate McKinnon, Alec Baldwin, Mikey Day, Alex Moffat, Cecily Strong, Beck Bennett
• Opening Monologue - Saoirse Ronan
• Floribama Shore - Mikey Day, Saoirse Ronan, Luke Null, Heidi Gardner, Aidy Bryant, Chris Redd
• American Doll Store - Beck Bennett, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, Heidi Gardner, Alex Moffat
• Welcome To Hell - Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon, Saoirse Ronan, Melissa Villaseñor, Leslie Jones
• Return Counter - Mikey Day, Luke Null, Kyle Mooney, Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, Saoirse Ronan, Chris Redd, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Pete Davidson, Heidi Gardner, Kate McKinnon
• Office Race - Alex Moffat, Chris Redd, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, Saoirse Ronan, Heidi Gardner
• U2 - American Soul
• Weekend Update - Michael Che, Colin Jost
  • Theresa May - Kate McKinnon
  • The Duncans - Mikey Day, Leslie Jones


• Bachelor Auction - Mikey Day, Beck Bennett, Melissa Villaseñor, Pete Davidson, Cecily Strong, Saoirse Ronan, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Kenan Thompson, John McEnroe


• Brody Choad - Kenan Thompson, Luke Null, Saoirse Ronan, Alex Moffat, Chris Redd, Mikey Day, Kyle Mooney, Pete Davidson, Beck Bennett


• U2 - Get Out Of Your Own Way


• Aer Lingus - Cecily Strong, Saoirse Ronan, Alex Moffat, Kate McKinnon, Kyle Mooney, Aidy Bryant, Kenan Thompson

posted by DizzyOnBugSpray (26 comments total)

The classroom sketch had a good payoff, but for the first few minutes I was worried Luke Null was going to get fired on the spot. The audience was not going along with him.

I don't mind Kyle and Beck's pretaped bits, but they really need to be the last sketch of the night.
posted by Gary at 12:12 AM on December 3, 2017

The "Welcome to Hell" song was blowing up on Twitter late last night...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:03 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

A pretty good episode. I didn't know anything about Saoirse Ronan but she did really well. I know I shouldn't be amazed that non-Americans can pull of American accents but it still always seems weird to me that it's possible.

Welcome to Hell was pretty brutal. Good for them.

For once I liked the Trump cold open. I think having a lot of other characters and somewhat of a sketch makes it a little better than just Baldwin reciting the stupidity of the week.

Floribama Shores had me laughing out loud a couple of times.

I didn't really get the Air Lingus sketch. It was all over the place and is there a thing with Irish people and dogs? Something seemed to be happening off camera that had them about to lose it. Maybe one of the dogs was humping Lorne or something, I dunno. Typical ten-to-one sketch that didn't really work.

U2 was... meh. The first song was ok, though it maybe would have been nice if they showed Larry and Adam. The second song was just so boring and forgettable. They've been hyping this new album a lot but it seems like even the band doesn't really care about it much. I'll still never get tired of watching The Edge play all his fancy guitars though. God damn I love The Edge so much. Bono has really changed a lot in the way he performs. He's had a lot of health issues and injuries and he's just not the performer he used to be. Lose the megaphone, dude. Nobody is buyin' it.

I would have liked to have the band show up in a sketch but I think they were too busy taking themselves too seriously. I kept expecting them to show up to pronounce Saoirse in the monologue.

I was such a huge U2 fan in the early days and even though I haven't been into them since the 90s it's difficult for me to just not really care about them. They're making it easier for me though.

I liked the randomness of John McEnroe showing up.

Cecily Strong is so fucking great and Heidi Gardner is really starting to take the show. Shame they don't use Melissa Villaseñor too much and Pete just had a couple small bits this time.

All in all a decent episode.
posted by bondcliff at 7:28 AM on December 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

I have been quoting "There's a dog on the runway. He has sad eyes and the soul of Oscar Wilde. We'll be waiting for him to move, because this is his story, not ours." to my wife for the last hour. That made the sketch for me, also I like dogs so that worked too, even though I didnt know dogs are a Thing in Ireland.
posted by Mogur at 7:34 AM on December 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

I zoned out through big sections of this. I'm not sure what the feature film length office sketch was all about. Update was strangely weak, considering what all they had to work with. I felt like Kenan brought a lot of laughs to some stuff that would otherwise have just been really flat. Saoirse Ronan was good, but the writing just wasn't that hot.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:22 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

HRC is too classy to say it publicly, so thank you Kate McKinnon for saying it vicariously. Lock him up.

Chris Redd was my favorite part of Floribama Shore.

I was pleasantly surprised when Leslie Jones walked in on Welcome to Hell and dropped her truth bomb. Not that SNL is anywhere close to intersectionality, but it was good to deliberately make it not about white feminism.

I will never understand Chad.
posted by Ruki at 11:43 AM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I will never understand Chad.

Okay.
--

With various comments here, now I have to watch the airplane and auction sketches. Only caught a bit of the show. (Switching to SNL right after streaming the melancholy but good "Indecent" on PBS felt too jarring.)

Re cold opening - *last* Xmas there was a throwaway line about donnie getting a visit from 3 ghosts - and then they deliberately DIDN'T go there. Don't know if going there this year equals lesser writing or not.

Cecily Strong is so fucking great and Heidi Gardner is really starting to take the show.

Agree, agree. And it was fun to see Kate inhabit HRC again.
posted by NorthernLite at 12:06 PM on December 3, 2017 [4 favorites]

I saw Lady Bird yesterday so I was excited for this. I wasn't impressed.
posted by k8t at 12:49 PM on December 3, 2017

I will never understand Chad.

Okay.
--

However, this made me laugh. Well played.
posted by Ruki at 1:07 PM on December 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

I was a little disappointed that the Weekend Update cameo was Jones and Day instead of someone else and Day - to preserve the running Jones/Mooney gag.

But the 'every position in the book' was a good sketch.
posted by porpoise at 3:08 PM on December 3, 2017

U2 blew their one good chance to be relevant again. Damn you, Bono, you have a perfectly awesome band behind you. Do something with them! YOU WERE A GOOD, INSPIRING BAND ONCE. Thirty years ago.

even though I didnt know dogs are a Thing in Ireland.

I said the same thing!

The rest of the show was okay, everyone was performing solid, all the newbies are doing great, Leslie was hitting her lines, but the writing was unsure of itself sometimes. (And as for WU, the real news is just so awful lately that it's hard to make it funny. And there is little difference between Kate's Merkel and May. )

I think the real winner is Kenan's mystery bidder. Because he gets to date CHAD.

I get Chad.
posted by not_on_display at 6:36 PM on December 3, 2017 [5 favorites]

Last week I was trying to find the time to write down every single Luke Null skit and all the words he said in each and present a Total Null Spoken Word Count but finally this week cured me of the need to do that.

Now hopefully it didn't also cure Lorne of the need to have him on the show.

Also I agree with whoever said it above - it's ridiculous that Day and Moffat are still featured players. They've been the most rock-solid introductions to the team since I started watching again.
posted by komara at 7:15 PM on December 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Saoirse's held her own all around the circuit.
posted by porpoise at 8:31 PM on December 3, 2017

Here's a Saoirse Ronan thing I'm trying to find le mot juste for...
Not quite "she can give as good as she gets", not quite "ha! see! she can't do it either".
More "she knows what it's like, which is how she stays a good sport about it".
posted by bartleby at 12:58 AM on December 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Seeing U2 on SNL merely confirmed the thoughts I had when I saw them perform the Joshua Tree this summer. They once were a beautiful and powerful band that Meant Something. That is not who they are anymore.
posted by teleri025 at 1:53 PM on December 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Watching this my SO was completely baffled by the Office Race sketch because it made no sense. I tried to explain that the fact it made no sense made it the funniest thing in the whole show. She was not persuaded. Now I want Beck and Kyle to spin off into their own Mr. Show/Key and Peele-style cable show.

Count me among the group that didn’t get the dogs and Irish connection, but I was happy to enjoy the bit from the “makes no sense” perspective (see previous paragraph).
posted by ejs at 2:30 PM on December 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

for the first few minutes I was worried Luke Null was going to get fired on the spot. The audience was not going along with him.

Yes. I was like "Oh man this is when that other guy who I can never remember did that wild dance as part of Weekend Update and it was simultaneously great but you knew he wasn't going to be there a second season...." I am maybe tired of kid sketches though I am a sucker for an ensemble cast piece.

- I get Chad.
- Office Race definitely the best thing in the show
- I felt like Welcome to Hell would have been better with better writers, it seemed weak compared to how super fucked up things are. Props for even mild intersectionality not and not playing that for laughs.
- Chris Redd was my favorite part of Floribama Shore too. I really like him this season.
- Return Counter wasn't that good and I get a little tired of Mackinnon's "old lady" characters

I was a little disappointed that the Weekend Update cameo was Jones and Day

IIRC they did this once before, same pairing and I was a liuttle squicked out because it seemed a little BDSM-shamey but this one was more funny less "kink is weird" which I appreciated. Day is really becoming a sort of standout workman-like player on the show (that doll sketch in the hands of someone less talented would have been messy) and I am getting to the point where I am liking to see him in things.

I saw U2 in high school in 1985 or something and... yeah. I don't know their work well enough to know if that whole video montage stuff wasn't straight out appropriation but it seemed weird and made for a stadium not for a teeny teevee show stage.
posted by jessamyn at 5:36 PM on December 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Office Race was all the generic plot beats of shitty, generic inspirational sports movies in a setting that stripped them of any potential to be meaningful. That's great.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:43 PM on December 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

I agree, I thought it took what was probably some goofy thing a coworker at a temp job said ("last one to the copy machine is a rotten egg") and made it an office-wide thing. Regardless, it was just silly enough for me.
posted by rhizome at 7:36 PM on December 4, 2017

Welcome to Hell was way too much about, like, stranger danger and being afraid to walk out at night. But that's like. What the issue was in the 80s. "Take back the night" and all. What's been in the news this year is women being harassed in their damn workplace.

That said it's a total banger and I love it.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 8:03 PM on December 4, 2017

Ha, the best part of Office Race was the musical beats. Every new camera angle: CUE SYNTHESIZER. There was the essence of all those beats and shitty movie plot points. I liked the punchline, where the boss is like, "OK, go back to work, I don't even know what we actually do here." And then she did the "elevator going down" exit, which is rarely used in ANY movie, 80's or otherwise. So: The hair. The bad acting. The color filter. The tension. The challenge. The bully. THE SYNTHESIZER.

Speaking of the 80's, John McEnroe is the worst actor ever. And this isn't his first cameo, I don't think.

He's definitely no Chad.
posted by not_on_display at 11:34 PM on December 4, 2017

I get Chad.

Hell, I have known Chads.
posted by bondcliff at 6:18 AM on December 5, 2017

Yeah, I'm not even sure that that was John McEnroe, he was so unconvincing
posted by Flashman at 9:55 AM on December 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

So am I doomed to be forever in the weeds with Chad? Is it one of those things where you either get him or you don't?
posted by Ruki at 6:39 AM on December 6, 2017

At the risk of explaining the joke, I think the *thing* there is that there is absolutely nothing appealing about him, he's a clueless weirdo that, for some reason, people have a really strong fixation on and derive an entire set of meanings around and he is completely clueless about that also. I think the first time he appeared was the pool boy sketch where it's really drawn out and it's really clear that people are just imprinting on him and he's just vagueing his way through it.... "OK"

I like it because I have known people like Chad and people who have been in relationships with a Chad where they are like "Oh no, he is actually very thoughtful and deep and sensitive..." and you're like "Really?" Sort of like how people say all sorts of things about their cats and their complicated thought processes and personalities and while I love cats and the various ways they are lovable and weird and different, at the end of the day, they are cats.
posted by jessamyn at 6:54 AM on December 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ha, the best part of Office Race was the musical beats.

I laughed out loud at the bit that was totally not the theme from Chariots of Fire.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:01 PM on December 6, 2017 [3 favorites]