Saturday Night Live: Ryan Gosling / Leon Bridges

December 7, 2015 9:22 AM - Season 41, Episode 7

Ryan Gosling makes his hosting debut alongside first-time musical guest Leon Bridges.
posted by komara (19 comments total)

I will forever love this episode for the line "full Porky Piggin' it in a drafty dome."
posted by komara at 9:25 AM on December 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

Oh gods, that skit. Just when I'd almost forgotten the corpsing in every sketch of a few years ago (*cough*Armsien*cough*), Ryan Gosling comes along to bring the olden days back. It was funny, but whoo. And he was particularly wooden in all of the other ones, too. The sketches weren't bad, but that was Walken-level card-reading, and Ryan Gosling, you are no Christopher Walken.

"We’re a country four deep into a Chipmunks franchise" left me paralyzed for a moment, I'll admit. The attempt to resurrect Peter Drunklage with Gosling as the Third-Hand News Correspondent didn't work well at all, and Cecily Strong's new Stereotype Female Correspondent fell stone dead. I'll admit that JostChe are working much better for me than they initially did, but this was a weak WU overall.

I couldn't tell who was who in the Wiz sketch -- was Jay the Tin Man and Leon Bridges the Scarecrow?
posted by Etrigan at 9:50 AM on December 7, 2015

I thought the Scarecrow was Michael Che? I know SNL has had (and continues to have) issues with diversity, but I can't remember the last time they had enough black cast members to fill out a Wiz parody.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:59 AM on December 7, 2015

Deadline confirms Michael Che under all that straw. Also, did they manage to snag the actual costumes from The Wiz Live? Those were pretty top notch if not.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:02 AM on December 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

That's the first time I can remember this cast having a full-on crack up like that. Kate McKinnon reminds me of Will Ferrel in that she's so funny I think the cast has a tough time keeping it together around her.

I also enjoyed the ad for Settl. Leslie Jones' expression at the end of it was just perfect.
posted by bondcliff at 10:03 AM on December 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

Two words: Santa. Baby.
posted by Naberius at 1:34 PM on December 7, 2015

Yeah Gosling was terrible! In fact with the musical guest (who I otherwise liked but they had a slightly odd meter in both of their songs) the whole show felt like it was playing back on some bad wifi. Gosling was clearly just fine in the recorded stuff and I felt like him on Weekend Update was the least bad but MAN it was really weird watching him just tank sketch after sketch that might have been okay. I liked him in the Wiz sketch but that was pretty inspired anyhow. I didn't expect him to be as good as McConaghey who is an experienced comedic actor, but I was surprised that he really didn't seem to be able to work inside the cue card environment at all.
posted by jessamyn at 2:20 PM on December 7, 2015

That alien abduction skit was great. Especially because they kept breaking. Kate is just a superstar though. I wish there was a way to have an episode of just her in every sketch. When I'm not wishing for that, I'm pondering who should be the musical guest for when Boyega hosts. And he'd better be hosting, damnit. Maybe PRhyme.
posted by cashman at 4:15 PM on December 7, 2015

I enjoyed this episode more than almost any other this season. The skits all worked for me, the news didn't fail & even the musical guest was likable for a change. Wooden or not, Gosling enabled a damn fine show to happen.
posted by scalefree at 4:57 PM on December 7, 2015

Gosling was no McConaughey, but I thought it was a pretty solid episode. As long as a host doesn't always demand to be the center of attention (like a certain other recent host we will not name), you can still get a good episode even if the host lacks comedic chops. I think the only sketch that Gosling was front-and-center on was the prerecorded Santa bit, which really played to his strengths, otherwise he kept to a more supporting role. (I think most notably, the alien abduction bit was a pretty similar formula formula to the 3d-printed man bit from two weeks ago, but this time the host was one of the (somewhat) normal ones.)
posted by ckape at 9:54 PM on December 7, 2015

And he was particularly wooden in all of the other ones, too.

It's so strange to me how somebody like Deniro or Gosling can come on SNL and just turn to wood and suuuuuck, and then you turn around and there's a guy who plays football for a living just killing it. (And his brother, too.)
posted by ftm at 6:43 AM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's so strange to me how somebody like Deniro or Gosling can come on SNL and just turn to wood and suuuuuck, and then you turn around and there's a guy who plays football for a living just killing it.

DeNiro and Gosling are actors who are used to getting a script and spending lots and lots of time studying it and drawing out every nuance and inhabiting a character for weeks, months at a time. Football players, on the other hand, spend their time memorizing starting points and short plans, and then within seconds changing those plans to fit the situation. For quarterbacks especially, every play is an improv exercise, and that translates well to live sketch comedy.

Don't make me defend the Mannings again, please.
posted by Etrigan at 6:52 AM on December 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

:P Will always make me think of Eli Manning and laugh and laugh.
posted by jessamyn at 7:10 AM on December 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

:P

(I love so much that the transcriber bothered to put "[leaning into the microphone]" over and over and over again.)
posted by Etrigan at 7:23 AM on December 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Gosling was as good in the Wiz sketch as he was bad in all the others.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:35 AM on December 8, 2015

Yeah, it was like Gosling had no idea what was coming up on the cue cards, and was trying hard not to laugh and failing because the skits and everyone else were otherwise funny. But Gosling's pauses and corpsing ruined the timing of all the sketches -- sketches that would have thrived under someone else's stewardship.

I felt this was the worst overall episode, but even with all the cracking up, the Alien Abduction sketch was one of the best of the season, and McKinnon owned that sketch.
posted by not_on_display at 11:05 AM on December 8, 2015

I think this was a successful episode, I mean the point of SNL is to watch your favorite celebrities put on silly costumes and toss up poorly read cue card lines for the professionals to hit home runs off of. The show has never been anything but that. If every once in awhile you get a celebrity who can do more, that's a bonus.
posted by bleep at 12:02 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I loved it. Gosling's thing is often "remote and removed" and while he wasn't as good with the funny stuff, he showed some pretty great singing-and-dancing chops in two very different situations (the hometown bar skit, where--COME ON, PEOPLE--he nonchalantly twirls two women at once, and the Wiz skit, which was so great).
posted by psoas at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2015

"... he showed some pretty great singing-and-dancing chops in two very different situations (the hometown bar skit, where--COME ON, PEOPLE--he nonchalantly twirls two women at once ..."

Golden Opportunity Missed in Hometown Bar Skit

[edit: whoops, that's exactly what they did]
posted by not_on_display at 1:38 PM on December 14, 2015 [1 favorite]