The second episode of the landmark comedy show’s 50th season felt like a comeback of sorts on multiple levels. The popular stand-up Nate Bargatze has been handed over hosting duties once again after his well-received hosting debut almost exactly a year ago. Meanwhile, musical guest Coldplay returned for their eighth appearance. On the sketch front, there were multiple retreads of past bits; one from just last week. And by the last quarter of the show, the surprise return of an SNL favorite.
Following up on last week’s grand debuts of Dana Carvey as Joe Biden, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff, that star-studded cameo crew anchored by Maya Rudolph’s pitch-perfect spin on Kamala Harris reunited to spoof the most recent vice-presidential debate. Finding a slick way to include this election season’s eclectic cast of characters, the sketch volleyed between Rudolph’s Harris and Samberg’s Emhoff watching Walz take on JD Vance (keenly played by Bowen Yang) on TV, with the cordialness between Walz and Vance played to romantic effect here.
Samberg did what he does best by grafting his goofy guy persona onto his caricature of Emhoff, while Rudolph served as the glue that sticks everything together. That includes nods of Walz’s cringey mishaps last week (including his “I’m friends with school shooters” line), which cut back to Rudolph spitting out her red wine. “I should have chosen Josh,” she said, with Samberg’s Emhoff assuming she was referring to possible vice-presidential pick Josh Shapiro. No, she was actually referring to the wine brand.
Providing a link to the sketch show’s stacked political history, Carvey then wanders into the room as President Biden, armed with the president’s vocal tic and non-sequiturs (“Guess what … and by the way!”) and eventually, a vanilla ice cream cone. And yes, it eventually does indeed drip all over Rudolph’s Harris. The final result was an opening slapstick, relevant, cartoonish and bitingly satirical.
Bargatze is one of stand-up comedy’s modern powerhouses, last year he broke the attendance record at Bridgestone Arena in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. So if you’re unsure who he is, perhaps that says more about the splintered culture of the craft than his personal impact on mainstream culture. Regardless, Bargatze delivered a monologue focused on the food delivery app DoorDash, which at times felt like hearing your friend’s simple rehash of an otherwise normal DoorDash order. It was endearing and unspectacular, which was probably the whole point.
The history of Saturday Night Live has featured plenty of goofs on mainstream sports like football and baseball, while golf has seemed to be underrepresented with some exceptions. The premise for this filmed short centers on a golfer who can’t seem to stop killing animals while on the course; with each accidental kill, the consequences get higher (including veterans turning their backs on him and a Nike representative played by Michael Longfellow taping over their logo on his hat in an attempt for the brand to distance themselves). It’s another sophomoric jaunt that wouldn’t have felt out of place as a Looney Tunes cartoon – not that that’s a bad thing.
One of the most acclaimed sketches in recent memory occurred the last time Bargatze hosted in the form of Washington’s Dream, in which the titular father of America muses about his inane goals for the new country, with the sketch essentially doubling as a commentary on the nonsensical cultural phrasing we take for granted. He’s back here in a sketch that follows the same beats and finds more to comment on, including how the meat from cows and pigs are called beef and pork, while chicken is just, well, chicken. Once again, it’s the writing that shines here, as both the first and now this second Washington’s Dream could have felt right at home as a witty Shouts and Murmurs piece in the New Yorker.
Before the season began, cast member Marcello Hernández was being teed up as its breakout star (including covering Variety for their Power of Young Hollywood issue). Here, Hernández plays host during a parody of Univision’s long-running Sábado Gigante, where an American (Bargatze, naturally) appears as a confused guest. It all harkened back to one of the most memorable game show sketches in the history of the show when Chris Farley played a hapless contestant on a Japanese game show in 1994. The 90s truly are making a comeback.
The game, or premise, of this unique sketch is based around whether to carry down a dead body from the top of a waterslide or just push him down, which was inspired by a longtime stand-up routine from cast member Longfellow. Going back and forth with Bargatze playing another version of his laidback self, its inherent strangeness made you wonder why it didn’t air later in the show. It’s nothing a little Coldplay can’t fix, with the band performing their schmaltzy All My Love.
Coming down off their offshoot Peacock project New York After Dark, Colin Jost and Michael Che are back in their comfort zone behind the Update desk by skewering the aforementioned vice-presidential debate as well as the latest in Trump world, including the former president’s appearance with Elon Musk at his Pennsylvania rally. Notably the jokes turned inward, with Jost zinging the next time we’ll see Trump and Musk together is when they both host SNL in December, a nod to the show’s penchant for occasionally courting controversy when it comes to their hosting choices, with both the tech billionaire and former president hosting in recent memory.
Meanwhile, it was Jane Wickline’s time to shine in her second episode as cast member after she was recruited after her turn on the under-the-radar TikTok sketch comedy series dubbed Stapleview after gaining a following on the platform. Tonight she made her Update debut representing gen Z with a charming song about partying with lines like: “I am the plus one of someone who has left.” It was somewhat stressful to see her walk out on a tightrope with her keyboard, but in the end she seemed to have pulled it together.
Here, a family has a serious conversation about the patriarch’s dementia while Heidi Gardner tries to chow down on a massive burger to win a trip to Hawaii. The laughs here stemmed from Gardner’s sloppy eating (which caused cast member Yang to break). Still, it felt like another sketch flavored by the past; this one maybe borrowing some inspiration from 2004’s Debbie Downer; perhaps they were even nodding to it considering that sketch takes place in Disney World.
For a surprise return of The Lonely Island (Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and presumably an off-camera Jorma Taccone), you would think it would have elicited a mightier fanfare as opposed to being the second to last sketch of the night. Maybe its late airtime stems from the raunchy subject matter, which devolves into a bevy of glory hole gags (“Hear us out…”). Either way, the whole affair makes you pine for the days when these aired on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Coldplay hits the stage again for We Pray, complete with support from the Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna and Argentina’s Tina alongside a barefoot Chris Martin.
Perhaps they jammed this in for the classic “10 to 1 sketch” as its known and had to cut some lines, because its simple premise focusing on a coach and the price of jerseys came and went in a flash with scattered laughs to show for it.
Overall, there seemed to be no sophomore slump for this second episode. While Bargatze played a version of himself in every sketch, what more does one expect from a stand-up comedian non-actor? Veteran and new cast members both found chances to shine, which can be a rarity due to the nature of the show. We’ll have to see what happens next week when Ariana Grande comes to Studio 8H in support of her upcoming turn in the Wicked film.
• This article was amended on 7 October 2024. The prize for eating the Mile High Burger was a trip to Hawaii, not Disney World as a previous version said.
