Saturday Night Live: Jason Bateman / Musical Guest

December 6, 2020 4:57 AM - Season 46, Episode 7

Original "Monkeys Throwing Poop at Celebrities" sketch.

• Cold Open - Giuliani Hearing: Mikey Day, Ego Nwodim, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Lauren Holt, Heidi Gardner, Beck Bennett, Alex Moffatt, Chloe Fineman, Pete Davidson, Kyle Mooney
• Monologue: Jason Bateman
• Sleepover: Jason Bateman, Heidi Gardner, Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, Kate McKinnon, Melissa Villaseñor
• Stu: Chloe Fineman, Kyle Mooney, Jason Bateman, Beck Bennett, Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Bowen Yang, Eminem
• Outdoor Cabaret: Lauren Holt, Melissa Villaseñor, Jason Bateman, Bowen Yang, Cecily Strong, Beck Bennett
• The Christmas Conversation: Lauren Holt, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Punkie Johnson, Kate McKinnon, Chloe Fineman, Jason Bateman, Kenan Thompson
• The Contrition of Morgan Wallen: Beck Bennett, Morgan Wallen, Chloe Fineman, Andrew Dismukes, Jason Bateman, Bowen Yang
• Musical Guest
• Weekend Update: Colin Jost, Michael Che
  • Pete Davidson
  • Bailey Gismert: Heidi Gardner
• Socially Distanced Santa's Village: Mikey Day, Melissa Villaseñor, Kyle Mooney, Cecily Strong, Jason Bateman
• Musical Guest
• Cut To: Mikey Day, Pete Davidson, Chris Redd, Kyle Mooney, Beck Bennett

posted by rhizome (16 comments total)

I thought it was fun! (Could have done without mullet man, however.)
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 11:41 AM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I liked Heidi's little offhand dig at Che during WU about him never doing sketches. Not sure if it was in the script or not, but it was funny nonetheless. Does Colin ever show up in sketches?

I felt like Stu had a really strong potential, but went off the rails.

Lots of Kate this episode. She really has that "suburban mom" act down pat, doesn't she?
posted by Thorzdad at 12:58 PM on December 6, 2020

I thought this was a really strong cast episode! JB was fine, of course, as is his wont, but everybody else really worked for me last night. The opener was good, Outdoor Cabaret was really good (especially as a fresh idea), lots of good Kyle, Melissa, Chloe, and Pete...really Santa's Village was the weakest to me, and could really have been the 10-to-1 if "Cut To" was more accessible.
posted by rhizome at 1:50 PM on December 6, 2020

Cold open was an obvious one, but Strong was very strong in the part.

Davidson on fire! I hope it's not just a manic phase.

Gardner's Bailey sketch had some clever moments.
posted by porpoise at 2:12 PM on December 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Wild how in the cold open Cecily was basically playing "the girl you wish you hadn't talked to at a party" but it was still perfect.

I love Kate's Guilliani. Just as creepy as the real thing.

I didn't realize going into it that the musical guest was the guy they cancelled a few weeks back. The time travel sketch was ok, it would have been better if the timing wasn't off, but I couldn't take his actual performances.

Nice to see Bowen Yang getting to branch out a bit.

I felt Cut To in my bones. I am that guy.

An ok episode with a not very interesting host.
posted by bondcliff at 4:29 PM on December 6, 2020

The Sleepover sketch was a remake of the Clogged Toilet sketch with Adam Driver in January.

The cold open was predicted days ago on social and regular media, which makes me wish they had taken less obvious choices than just repeating what basically happened. Christmas Conversation was relevant to certain discussions happening at my house, and the pre-recorded bits were ok, but overall this wasn’t my favourite.
posted by cardboard at 4:50 PM on December 6, 2020

I used Christmas Conversation as a segue to having my own conversation with my mom. (She took it better than expected!)

I'm not normally a Pete fan, but he rocked it. "I'm curious about fossils!" was the best line of the night.
posted by Ruki at 5:07 AM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

Glad to see Cecily back live. Her Liza Minelli character in the Outdoor Cabaret sketch was great, but it seemed like she did the exact same thing in the Santa sketch.

Jason Bateman was adequate. I liked it when the little chimpanzee tried to bit his face off.
posted by briank at 8:08 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

"I'm curious about fossils!" was the best line of the night.

Right? And I’m still chuckling about the line in Stu about drinking a fifth of eggnog. Pete had a really great week.
posted by mochapickle at 8:41 AM on December 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

I loved the Stu parody - incredibly accurate! (I remember the "Stan" video so well; Eminem at his greatest conceptually). At first I was kind of confused as to why they were doing a parody of a song from 18 years ago (Pete was certainly too young to remember it), but then I remembered that most of the SNL cast and writers are my age (which is a very odd thing to contemplate, existentially, given how long I've been watching SNL) and so maybe it's not so weird that everyone would suddenly get nostalgic for a song that was HUGE when we were in high school.

Bateman was solid - I loved the monologue - but I didn't find a lot of the other sketches that funny. The outdoor cabaret one had potential, but sort of petered out.

Davidson on fire! I hope it's not just a manic phase.

I agree this was a great week for Pete Davidson, but can we avoid making jokes about his mental illness like this please? As someone with the same set of diagnoses that he does, this kind of flippant comment is pretty hurtful.

Great week for Bowen Yang too, which made me very happy.
posted by nayantara at 3:01 PM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

My apologies, nayantara - thank you for bring it up. For what it's worth, it was not a joke, but part of my (and a few other posters?) running commentary on Davidson's wellbeing over the past few years.

I also have a set of mental wellness deficits that overlaps with Davidsons, I sometimes think that I have good weeks (or days) and sometimes those feelings are grossly incongruent with my outside-objective mental wellbeing.

Conversely, sometimes I can project "normal" or "good" but be completely cut up inside.

In light of your comment, I suppose that I should amend my comment to:


Davidson on fire! I hope his external wellness, both mental and physical, are reflective of his stable internal status and that it isn't transient or an aberrant response due to a regular phase-change in his mental state.
posted by porpoise at 8:30 PM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thanks porpoise. I totally hear you on the dissonance between seeming/presenting "normal" while feeling raw underneath - that tends to be my default mode these days and it's definitely taking a toll on me. The holidays don't help. Anyway no harm no foul! And I'm glad Pete seems well too and I also hope it's because he's in a stable place right now!

While we're at it - Eminem was almost unrecognizable to me in his cameo at the end of "Stu". He looks healthy and like he's taking care of himself. I was worried about him for a few years.
posted by nayantara at 9:43 PM on December 7, 2020

I thought this show was solid! I'm always surprised at how much Bateman has that Rudd-like non-aging thing going on. I thought he was a reasonable host who looked fine in wigs and did just fine. It was good to see Cecily back and to have a cold open with no Carrey-Biden or Baldwin-Trump. That was a fun ensemble opener. Sleepover felt too derivative of the last time they did it, even though that sketch idea was funny the first time. I thought Stu was inspired which makes sense because I am about that age. All the holiday sketches seemed good, and I was pleased to not have to deal with any oversexed elves this year. I enjoyed the conceit of The Contrition of Morgan Wallen but the sketch as it played out was less good. And YES to Bowen branching out, he was good. Now I'd like to see more of Kyle in the Kyle-and-Leslie style and less "totally awkward guy at a party" style which was kind of what he did last week with the Nintendo (?) sketch. Wallen's music was fine, not exactly my thing but he's got a nice voice.
posted by jessamyn at 9:40 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Pretty much what jessamyn said: hooray for Cecily, and hooray for no Carrey/Baldwin... I also thought the monologue was hilarious—Jason Bateman the eternally 40-something unreliable narrator. I had no problems with any of the sketches, and found some of them clever. Pete's looking healthier, the WU was tight... the elf sketches didn't turn out all creepy from what I am remembering... I still miss Aidy, and Lauren Holt has less screen presence than a planted audience member. I feel like they should be using her more in a variety of things, see where she DOES fit.

But, make no mistake, folks... don't let looks or accents fool ya... Morgan Waller is mediocre Yacht Rock.

Also, the more Bowen I see, the better. He's my favorite cast addition since Leslie & Pete. But I'd also like to see more Punkie and the New Dizmyooks kid. (I get no sense of him yet either, but jessamyn reports that his standup is pretty good. Desk piece for the kid, maybe? Desk piece for Lauren and Punkie too?)

And I agree with jessamyn—the Awkward Kyle sketch wasn't hitting those notes of sweetness and innocence and humanity (like with the Leslie sketches). It was just a couple of silly-good songs mixed with Kyle acting like he was locked in a basement his whole life. He works better when he acts humble, or just stupid, rather than stunted.
posted by not_on_display at 8:40 PM on December 10, 2020

But, make no mistake, folks... don't let looks or accents fool ya... Morgan Waller is mediocre Yacht Rock.

I fast-forwarded through the second song, but the first song could have been a deep-cut America cover.
posted by rhizome at 10:11 PM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh, I looked up the product Pete Davidson was talking about!
posted by not_on_display at 10:12 PM on December 10, 2020