Saturday Night Live: Claire Foy / Anderson .Paak
December 3, 2018 12:58 AM - Season 44, Episode 7 - Subscribe

  • Trump in Argentina - Alec Baldwin, Cicely Strong, Kate McKinnon, Ben Stiller, Beck Bennett, Fred Armisen
  • Monologue - Claire Foy
  • Netflix Commercial - Claire Foy, Heidi Gardner, Mikey Day, Melissa Villaseñor, Kenan Thompson, Chris Redd, Ego Nwodim, Leslie Jones
  • Morning Joe - Alex Moffatt, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day, Claire Foy, Melissa Villaseñor
  • The War In Words - Claire Foy, Mikey Day, Kenan Thompson
  • Christmas Dad - Cicely Strong, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Claire Foy, Kate McKinnon
  • Anderson .Paak - "Tints" (with Kendrick Lamar)
  • Weekend Update - Colin Jost, Michael Che
    • Sex Retirement: Leslie Jones
    • Jules - Beck Bennett
    • RIP George Bush - Dana Carvey, George HW Bush
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, Heidi Gardner, Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney, Claire Foy
  • Teeny Adorables - Claire Foy, Kenan Thompson, Cicely Strong, Aidy Bryant
  • Anderson .Paak - "Who RU"
  • Good Morning Goomah - Claire Foy, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson
  • A Holiday Message from the Women of SNL - Cicely Strong, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Aidy Bryant, Ego Nwodim, Melissa Villaseñor, Heidi Gardner


I think I got it all!
posted by rhizome (11 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
We didn’t think much of this one, but then we rewatched WU onward because one or more of us had been falling asleep, and we kinda came around. In particular, my spouse didn’t know what a “Goomah” was, so their enjoyment of that sketch was significantly higher the second time around.

Claire Foy didn’t seem to do much, esp. in Teeny Adorables, which seems like should have been a showcase for the host rather than Cecily (or at least the Aidy role).

The 10:00 repeat was a Paul Rudd episode from 2010, and the thing that most struck me was a fake commercial that was only like 30 seconds long.
posted by Etrigan at 5:13 AM on December 3, 2018


I zoned out for most of this (I agree that Claire Foy seemed very peripheral, though I guess I enjoyed watching her crack up during the Willy Wonka sketch) but the Holiday Message from the Women was so, so good. I hate the restrictions that make musical performances so hard to view online again.
posted by TwoStride at 5:41 AM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


A much better episode than the previous one. I, too, felt Claire Foy didn't really do too much. That often happens when they discover a host doesn't have the chops for a live show or they're difficult or otherwise not easy to write for. Or, it could just be the sketches they wrote that week were more suited for cast members to lead them.

I only know her from First Man so I had no idea she was English.

Christmas Dad was good, though somewhere out there there's a story of a divorced dad who doesn't make things awkward for his kids.

I've never actually seen the real Morning Joe so I'm curious just how much actual flirting and sexual tension there is.

Pete seems to be branching out a bit. They actually had him in makeup playing "People who are not Pete Davidson" for a change.

Baldwin's Trump is ok in small doses. I hope they don't go back to putting him in the opener every week.

I enjoyed the Netflix commercial mostly because it is basically true.

Surprisingly I did not hate and was not baffled by the appeal of the musical guest. His first number was actually pretty good.

The War In Words started out with a pretty good premise but petered out a bit.

With the exception of the Steve Carrell episode, which was surprisingly dreadful, most of the shows this season have been pretty solid. "Solid" for SNL usually means "one or two sketches that make me chuckle"
posted by bondcliff at 6:45 AM on December 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


I am sick of Baldwin's Trump, but I do love Beck Bennett’s Putin trolling him. Melissa Villaseñor would work on her AOC impression a bit, and I think it would be promising.

I used to get Dana Carvey's Ross Perot and his Bush-41 impressions confused.
posted by gladly at 7:50 AM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


At first I thought the audio for the wife in the Goomah sketch was actually lifted from Goodfellas when Karen Hill pounded on the door to Janice's building. But on a second listening she calls her by the SNL character's name so I guess they just used the script & had someone imitate Lorraine Bracco's voice from the movie. Either way I thought it was a very nice touch.
posted by scalefree at 2:06 PM on December 3, 2018


This one was okay, although I only really laughed at War in Words.

I don't usually like watching comedians yell and carry on, but I could watch Leslie Jones do it all day. And I wished Colin Jost hadn't held her back when she tried to lunge at Michael Ché, as watching her administer a beat down on him would have been glorious.
posted by orange swan at 7:17 PM on December 3, 2018 [5 favorites]


That Bush tribute was pretty appalling. The best you can say about the guy is that he looks good now compared to Trump, and that bar is so low it's... Well, I think you'd have to dig it up to find it.

Foy did very well with what she was given, but it did seem like they weren't doing enough with her. Even her monologue barely existed, it felt utterly perfunctory and almost joke-free. It reminded me of when Liev Schreiber was on and his whole monologue was about "managing expectations" because he wasn't funny... and then it turned out he was really good! I kind of get the feeling the writers of this show are making up their minds about the hosts too soon, then they just decide this person cannot be funny and try to write them out or write around them. Schreiber was able to surprise everybody but I think Foy never really got that chance.

I feel like my take on this season isn't syncing with how other people seem to be seeing it. I'm glad Baldwin's back, I think his impression's great and they're doing a good job making fun of the Great Orange Toad. I think Che is a bad drag on the show and he needs to go, ASAP. I think the Steve Carrell episode might be a season highlight. I find Leslie Jones and Heidi Gardner wildly overrated but I really want to see more of Melissa Villaseñor. I thought Liev Schreiber was hilarious and Claire Foy showed lots of potential but was underused. The musical guests have generally been pretty shitty. I could go on. It's really weird to see people consistently hating on the stuff I like on this show, and celebrating the stuff I can't stand. I'm constantly like, "How did you not love this part? How could you possibly like THAT part?" At least we all seem to be in agreement that Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon are fantastic, so there's that.

In fairness to Che, in his last few Weekend Updates he's scaled way back on the gross misogynist stuff and it seems like his jokes have really suffered for it. I get the feeling that somebody gave him a real talking-to about how he couldn't just come out and slam the "Beckies" every freaking week, and now that he can't do that it's like he's got nothing left. I'd almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn't such a misogynist dink.

The goomahs bit was fine, but it played exactly like a sketch that would been repeated ad nauseam back in the Will Ferrell era and I pray that doesn't happen here. Whenever I get snarky about the show now I remind myself that they don't repeat unfunny sketches endlessly the way they used to and all is forgiven. I reached a point in the 2000s where if I saw Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz do their stoner dormroom characters one more time I was gonna put my foot through my TV.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:27 PM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


This week's "cut for time" sketch was another one of those Bennett/Mooney '90s sitcom remakes

I don't know why those are good, but they are.

I feel like my take on this season isn't syncing with how other people seem to be seeing it.

I'm convinced this is the reason SNL survives. It seems like every week I read the AV Club review and they feel exactly opposite of how I felt about that weeks episode.

That Bush tribute was pretty appalling.

Like him or not, and I generally didn't, the show got a lot of mileage out of him.
posted by bondcliff at 6:42 AM on December 4, 2018


Christmas Dad was so much better than the last Divorced Dad iteration. "...an inside cigarette." I hope they can catch whatever is good there, because it is, but not quite yet. Goomahs started slow for a sec but I wound up liking it a lot, Claire Foy can do any accent. Teeny Adorables was a good swear fest, I'm in the process of incorporating "chicken dump" into my vocabulary. Holiday Message was really good.

However, I thought this was the worst episode of the season so far so I'm gonna talk some shit. An underused host who was great but maybe showed up Friday at the earliest (i.e. not a writer, where I think Liev Schrieber probably was). Netflix should have been half as long, or really cut out everything between the first sentence and the last sentence of the intro and go right into Mikey money and the vignettes (sub-sketches?). "I'm in over my crown!" War in Words also spent too much time in the setup.

Jules felt basically unwritten, maybe a couple of the lines, so it was just a riff between Beck and Colin. A lot of the news things feel like improv exercises, probably with some Del Close type name like "3 Features," so they go, "ok, trust fund kid, kinda fey, and wears a neckerchief." Leslie, yea how I love her, doesn't often reach me with the monologue slots. I'd like to see her on a Lorne-produced morning show.

Morning Joe has the soul of a good sketch but they are focusing on exactly the wrong aspects for me and the lovey stuff really overshadows how good Alex's Joe bits seem to be, which makes it a trash sketch period. I really think it's a waste of effort, but maybe it would be funnier if I watched the actual show, which...how much overlap is there between MJ and SNL audiences? Willy Wonka was also incredibad. I liked the outtake sitcom better than either of these, which gets me wondering how those votes go. Bush RIP was obligatory, Lorne is just that kind of guy.

I was remembering a few days ago how fully developed a lot of the Original Cast characters were. How many writers are there now, like 15 including cast? Might be too many, or we need a new Buck Henry.
posted by rhizome at 10:22 AM on December 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't know why those are good, but they are.

I think they hit an uncanny valley in terms of quality & narrative. They sort of veer between fake earnestness, unpolished acting & inexplicable behavior so you're never sure which will come next but you know it'll be unsettling.
posted by scalefree at 7:44 PM on December 5, 2018


C-minus. They can do better than this. A few good moments and laughs which were killed and buried deep in sketches that were cringey and/or too long, hating on women, or just plain stupid. I did like Netflix's fucking ADVERTISEMENT, but when I was a kid, I liked the commercials more than the shows themselves. Then again, I was different, like Jules. We appreciated... the pauses. (Oh god we all knew someone like that. That was the highlight of the show for me.)

But the HSN sketch made me want to find out who wrote that and give them a come-to-jesus talk. Worst sketch I can remember, and coming off the heels of the Fuckin' Buckets sketch that's saying a lot. Maybe the two worst sketches since... I don't know... What are some other memorable klunkers? Canteen Boy? One of Spade's Hollywood Minutes? Cause these two sketches, back-to-back, were just a fucking insult. And I like the show, really. But you have to be EXCEPTIONAL to pull off a good Buckets in Bed sketch (and what were Kyle and Aidy DOING? That was the funny part obviously cause everyone else was breaking); and you have to be really mean to write an overlong sketch about the inner hell of someone with cascading panic attacks actively digging herself deeper on LIVE TV, not to mention her bad mom coming in to ratchet up that cringe factor. Wow that was PAINFUL, me and my sweetie agreed. Just. Painful.

Host: does US accents well. Musical Guest: had CHARISMA, and how long did his mic stand remain balanced before it dropped to the ground just at the right time. That in and of itself was amazing. Never had heard of either before the show. Also, I coulda sworn in the first song, that Anderson .Paak (groan stylized name) was singing about how much he liked tits. I knew it couldn't be the case but that's all I could make out—that he is a man who likes tits, plays drums and sings and smiles. His band was incredible. One of the better musical acts of the past few years.

And I don't get why Lorne is investing so much in Che. Half the time he's funny, thinks on his toes, reads a good cue card, or is actually insightful. The other half, he's "just-not-funny-man". Like, he tosses a half-assed joke or adlib off, and I think, "come on, give ____ a break." Fill in the blank with whatever group of people he just slammed meanly. Jost hasn't really upped his game much; he's plateaued. I still look forward to WU, for the desk pieces mostly, now. Then again, like Jules.... I am different.

The musical thing at the end was unintelligible. Except the "throw us a bone" line from Ego and Heidi. Yes, please.

OK, I downgrade this to a "D". D-plus if you like TINTS
posted by not_on_display at 8:52 PM on December 5, 2018


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