‘Saturday Night Live’ Recap: Hanks Joins the Nine-Timer’s Club

There’s no surer sign that we’re all done with this election than seeing Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon going toe-to-toe and — despite the same number and quality of the zingers — being unable to summon much more than a tired smile. The cold open of the third presidential debate plays like much of the rest of this week’s Saturday Night Live. With Tom Hanks returning for a ninth time, this episode feels like a worn and comfy chair. It isn’t exciting or surprising, but it sure is nice.

(In case you missed it, the “Trump Bingo” spaces that Hillary Clinton didn’t call out: N-word, Slut, Fatty fat fat, Homo, Dumps like a truck, Oriental, Uggo, Maj uggo, R-word, F-word (gay), Oinker Lardo, A real poopface, I’m sorry, Uh doi, Buttmunch, Lesbo, Pound town, Here’s my penis, Fairy)

Best Sketch: Black Jeopardy

This sketch defies expectations on multiple levels. It’s a recurring sketch that finds a new twist on its pattern; usually these bits come back to give us more of what we loved the first time, but dropping in a white guy allows it to replay the original beats while creating new and surprising jokes.

It’s also a sketch that could only work with Tom Hanks. There’s a tension as we wait for the character to say something racist, but Hanks’s charm defuses the tension and, when he answers correctly, the sketch becomes something almost unique: A feel-good satire.

Worst Sketch: Halloween Show
Is this sketch’s absence from the SNL website an accident or a deliberate attempt to bury it? The central idea is simple and inoffensive: A family puts on a terrible musical number. But it gets muddled by too many extra characters and arguments about how much money they’re owed for the performance. Add in the weird incest angle and the sketch being two minutes too long and that would be enough.

But it gets worse. Almost back to back, there is a second sketch about a terrible musical number. That one, “Haunted Elevator” (above), involves skeletons and a shamelessly mugging Hanks, and is just weird enough to be funny and makes the previous sketch look that much worse in comparison.

Best Use of Tom Hanks: Cockpit

What if Sully was a jerk? That’s all there is to this sketch and all there needs to be. Again, Hanks’s charm makes this sketch work. Sully’s not a loud, blustering jerk; he’s just a normal guy who’s let his fame make him a terrible person to be stuck in an enclosed space with for hours at a time. Baldwin plays the straight man and the two are both nimble and understated – old pros.

Episode MVP: Cecily Strong

With solid showings on Weekend Update as Girl at a Party, a sexy cat in “A Girl’s Halloween,” and the bleak French interpreter of animal misfortunes Joelle LaRue, Strong barely sneaks the title away from Kate McKinnon this week. From, “Forty percent of children are just their legs,” to, “Boom chicka meow meow,” she proves her range is almost unbeatable.

Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. on NBC. You can watch clips and full episodes of SNL for free on Yahoo View.