Chris Rock has a rarified position as a Saturday Night Live alumnus, in that the show very much helped put him and his comic style on the map, yet by most accounts he wasn’t all that successful or satisfied during his abbreviated three seasons as a cast member (and, indeed, already had a pretty decent movie career before he left). Rock was part of an era where the show was loading up on brash stand-up comics who popped on camera but didn’t always seem to know how to write themselves sketches (or even, according to some interviews, that they were supposed to write themselves sketches); he’s easily the most accomplished stand-up of that group, and maybe the least comfortable doing crazy make-em-ups and silly characters. Rock simply appeared to have a limited appetite for pretending to be someone else; isn’t Nat X really just the kind of heightened point-of-view stand-ups often adopt for a laugh, not an act of inhabiting a fully sketched-in persona?
Yet Rock also came back to host must faster than his fellow “bad boys” and/or Grown Ups cast members David Spade, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, or the still-waiting-for-his-invite Rob Schneider, reflecting just how quickly he hit his stride after leaving the show. And he’s hosted more frequently than any of those guys, for, well, a variety of reasons, but it does align him more with alumni like Tina Fey or Julia Louis-Dreyfus (repeatedly returning having conquered another area of media) moreso than, say, Spade or even semi-frequent host and guest star Dana Carvey, who was absent from this week’s Rock-hosted episode for the first time all season. (Interestingly, Carvey did cameo on Rock’s first hosting gig, back in 1996.)
Another, bigger-name cameo turned up in the back half of the episode, sort of encapsulating Rock’s whole deal as a host. In a hospital-set sketch that first seemed to be some odd combination of Gen-Z sensitivity satire and bid for a more normie Sarah Sherman recurring bit, Sherman played Leslie, a nurse making repeated, massive errors during surgery, then demanding to know if everyone is mad at her. The first twist was Rock’s doctor character repeatedly defending Leslie, at least in part due to her beauty; then the patient wakes up, turns out to be played by Adam Sandler, and the sketch becomes an under-rehearsed bloodbath with the Sandman making a game of squirting fake blood at each actor in turn (despite some initial trouble with Sherman), and at one point congratulating Emil Wakim for scoring some screentime despite not really having a role in the “skit” (ouch, Sandman). All together, you have Rock stumbling over his lines and not especially convincing even as a comedy doctor; Sherman doing a character that the sketch seems to give up on halfway through; Sandler appearing and taking over the sketch to make it more meta; and multiple throwback vibes at once (fake blood spray; intentionally annoying character). It’s a mess of a sketch. (Actually, Sandler might be right. It really might be a skit.) And it landed as weirdly funny and charming anyway, a ramshackle admission that sometimes the show really is just dressing up silly and squirting blood at your comedian friends.
Other sketches in Rock’s episode worked in more traditional, held-together ways. But the one that felt for about a minute as if it might turn into an easy-layup classic (and might yet turn up on this year’s Christmas compilation regardless) was similarly sloppy: Rock plays a department store elf gleefully welcoming white families to choose between a white Santa (James Austin Johnson) and a Black Santa (Devon Walker), the term for which is not “Blanta,” no matter how hard Chloe Fineman’s mom character tries. Great premise, but the execution turned out to just be Rock standing around awkwardly, essentially repeating the joke with minor variation. Maybe it needed better lead-up; as-is, it felt as if the sketch was waiting for a big moment of catharsis that it rushed toward without ever achieving, despite plenty of smaller laughs.
For that matter, that energized search for something bigger was there in Rock’s stand-up monologue, too. First feinting toward a scolding over the United Healthcare CEO assassination, he sharply and succinctly pivoted from expressing sympathy to a great punchline: “Sometimes drug dealers get shot.” Then he rambled a little about Trump and worked in a couple of Menendez Brothers jokes… there were laughs for sure, because Rock remains a skilled comedian who clearly thinks in terms of stand-up more than sketches or screenplays, but you could still catch a glimpse of the guy who got publicly slapped for doing a G.I. Jane joke 25 years late. Moreover, watching him back on SNL, still not exactly reveling in live sketch comedy while still giving it a shot, was a reminder that sometimes the show’s odds-and-ends moments can generate more compelling comic tension than the smoothest professionalism.
What was on
In terms of purely well-written, old-fashioned sketch comedy that made unexpectedly good use of Rock’s admirable enthusiasm for, and questionable skill at, playing Weird Guys Who Keep Saying Weird Stuff, that Secret Santa piece was terrific. Funny lines and moments in the margins, Rock’s character not just loving his Secret Santa gift but allowing it to activate his imagination and potentially questionable understanding of The Simpsons, and the cheerfulness of the whole enterprise made this a winner. The blind-date sketch with Rock that closed out the night didn’t exactly fall flat, but it was striking to see another Weird Guy Saying Weird Stuff sketch, with a more traditional hook at that, not work quite so well.
I also thought Jane Wickline’s second Update song was very funny, a smartly off-center take on pop music fandom with her singing “as” Sabrina Carpenter protesting about the complete lack of suspicion over her sexuality. So far, Wickline, despite her TikTok background hewing closer to sketches than stand-up, is more in the tradition of those early-’90s SNL players like Rock, where her specific personality, more than a wide-ranging versatility, seems to be the reason for her hiring. But though I’ve been impatient with the show’s seeming interest in recreating a Pete Davidson dynamic in recent years, the show in 2024 has a better handle on balancing traditional ensemble performers like Ashley Padilla with those more idiosyncratic personalities like Wickline. The 1993 version of Jane Wickline would be encouraged to come up with a one-note recurring sketch ASAP.
What was off
Kenan really sells the bit about the security guy whose harassment engenders way more affection from a sternly disapproving group of office employees than a more traditionally piggish exec or higher-up. But truly, there was no reason to bring this one out, what was it, a third time? It just can’t hold a candle to everyone’s favorite recurring sketch: Michael Che protesting “it’s the ’90s” after a Weekend Update joke.
Most valuable player (who may not be ready for prime time)
Even given how surprisingly well Sarah Sherman has integrated her sensibility into the show, it was a big week for her, especially considering her hair and costuming never went further than “somewhat outlandish”—and that was mostly in service of her playing certified actual person Nancy Grace. The Nancy Grace opener was a real revelation in the sense that I had no idea Nancy Grace was still around (though, yeah, of course she is). As an actually-funny sketch, well, Sherman did bring some weird touches to it, and the interrupting YouTube ads (with Marcello Hernandez well-cast as “insanely loud guy”) added a fun structural wrinkle. “Best” isn’t always “most,” but Sherman really tied the episode together this week.
Next time
Martin Short gets that five-timer bag in his latest December hosting gig, and also Hozier apparently still exists!
Stray observations
- • I would love to get more into music discussions in these recaps, and may at some point, but nothing I have to say about Gracie Abrams is going to seem wildly original. She sounds like Taylor Swift. Like, a lot like Taylor Swift. She looks a bit like Dua Lipa meets Phoebe Bridgers. I saw someone on the internet say that she’s like “if Phoebe Bridgers was talented” and that made me kind of depressed for a few minutes until I realized some people are just very young.
- • Dismukes playing a super-defensive bald man on Update made me laugh, although it was a confusing area to cover so soon after that bald-guy song they did on the Bill Burr episode just about a month ago.
- • The two filmed pieces, “Grandpa’s Magic Car” and “Your Office Christmas Party,” both felt like they could have been pulled out from Rock’s second time hosting, in 2014, or (barring COVID), his third, in 2020; both were funny enough, but I’d give the edge to “Your Office Christmas Party” because frankly, I am a sucker for sketches that make ironic use of the monster-truck-rally-style announcer voice. In that arena, this was no “Kick-Spit Underground Rock Festival” or aggro Black Friday ad (“Find him! Touch him! Win!”), instead playing more like an amped-up version of the Thanksgiving classic ad for “Your Hometown.”