Saturday Night Live Highlights: Holiday High Jinks with Jason Momoa Bring Christmas Early
Watching Aquaman and a ghostbuster having a screaming contest alongside mild-mannered English band Mumford & Sons in this week’s Saturday Night Live preview (below) normally wouldn’t have raised my hopes. (Marcus Mumford, while playing it polite, looks as though he’s already set to fire his band’s agent — and these are just the promos.) But after last week’s show, in which the funniest moment was Charlie Bucket’s bedridden grandparents knockin’ slippers until they rocked a bedpost through an adjacent wall and plaster fell on them, I’m ready for Season 44 to go silly or go home.
This could be the breakout week of the season, though. While Anderson .Paak set a new bar for musical guests last week, the Mumfords are no slouches, and host Jason Momoa — basically, Jesus with a gym membership and an island vibe — will bring a stature and physicality that no other host has been able to supply this season. Will it all add up to an early Christmas miracle? Can Saturday Night Live finally deliver a show that earns more than a few chuckles and delivers a sketch or two truly worth talking about come Monday morning? Can they keep from cutting their best skit of the night … again?!?!
You tell us. Here are this week’s best moments.
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Ads, Ads, Ads…
While Season 44 hasn’t quite delivered us a life-changing product on par with Oops! I Crapped My Pants (though, the announcement of Amazon’s new HQ nearly got there), this week’s ads were definite must-sees. As our friends at Fox News and white supremacists around the nation bemoan “shifting demographics,” young, white men in khakis better realize that it’s not the Jews, or even the Mexicans, coming to replace them; it’s their fed-up wives. Yes, that’s right. It’s a dangerous time to be a young, white man in America with women not only falsely accusing them left and right but now taking over the workforce as well. Luckily, GE Big Boy Home Appliances are available so that men can still feel manly even while doing man’s work.
Oh, and sick and tired of your libtard friends playing the old “If Obama Had Done That Game?” No worries. Them Trumps will save them all that speculation now that the orange family in the White House is black! Coming to television sooner than you can say L’evanka.
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‘Tis the Season…
Although SNL has confirmed at least one more show before Christmas, this week’s episode doubled down on the holiday themes. Skits included a cocky Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer bullying others after Santa gives him the lead deer gig (Pete Davidson needed this victory after his week), a sleigh ride through the forest with Cecily Strong’s Gemma, Dickens’ holiday classic A Christmas Carol getting updated with a fourth spirit who has plenty of “extra,” and one of Santa’s watcher elves, Scrabby, reporting back that his 13-year-old charge, Marshall, sure spent a lot of time alone in his room this year working on a new, very hands-on hobby. The winner has to be the very non-elf-like Momoa filing his report, with perfect comedic timing, on his chronic masturbating boy. That said, Kate McKinnon can make it rain as “Tiny” Tim Cratchet anytime she likes. God, bless us extra!
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Christmas in the Delta
Admittedly, the odds of Kendrick dropping a surprise guest verse during the Mumford set were as long as a Migos album. But while Mumford & Sons might be a few years removed from stirring up those levels of excitement, few can argue the quality delivered by the band, especially when they harmonize over acoustics and keys. Both their recent hit “Guiding Light” and the title track off their last album, Delta, reminded listeners that the band can still deliver big, emotional songs that will never be unwelcome.
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First Impressions
I said go silly or go home, and Beck Bennett’s hide-and-seek strategy for meeting the father (Momoa) of his girlfriend for the first time played silly to absolute perfection. Momoa’s childish enthusiasm in response to the creepy gesture made for one of the funnier pairings of the night and season. It’s easily a top-five sketch of the season.
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Is That the Dude from Rocky IV?
For all you Game of Thrones nerds, Momoa reprised his brutish role of Khal Drogo on a talk show that revisits characters killed off during the series. If you like that sort of thing…
