Saturday Night Live opens by going back to a (very dry) well with a new edition of Fox News’s Ingraham Angle. Laura Ingraham (Kate McKinnon) celebrates “year one of Biden’s presidency” by listing some of his big failures: rising inflation, high gas prices, the green M&M being “cancelled just for being a whore”.
Her guests include Senator Ted Cruz (Aidy Bryant), who reminds all his fellow Texans that “February’s gonna be a cold one, so you might want to book your vacay to Cancún now”; her “one black friend” Candace Owens, there to “continue to fight for African Americans, no matter how many times they ask me to stop”; and finally, former president Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson).
Trump uses Wordle to free associate on random topics, including John Mayer (“I’d rather be mayor of anything than be Governor Ron DeSantis – I’d beat him so senseless if he went against me, just like I beat Hillary”), How I Met Your Father (“It doesn’t have the charm and sparkle of, frankly, Mother, but we love Duff”), Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa (“Momoa is a very big boy … he looks like a sexy devil”), before making a pitch for re-election in 2024.
As with every Ingraham sketch, it feels cobbled together at the last minute. Austin’s Trump’s impression remains aces, but he’s given little to work with here.
Former cast member Will Forte returns after 12 years away to host for the first time. Forte passive-aggressively celebrates his former alumni – Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, Andy Samberg, Fred Armisen, Seth Meyers and John Mulaney – all hosting before him, claiming they “saved the best for waaaay last”. His spotlight is quickly stolen by his MacGruber co-star Wiig, who shows up to support him, only to be quickly dismissed. Forte attempts to give a heartfelt speech about how much the show has meant to him, but he’s cut off by Lorne Michaels, who informs him that there was a mix-up and the night’s host was supposed to be Willem Dafoe (Dafoe, who pops up for a silent cameo, will actually be hosting next week).
Given that it’s the only SNL character of the last 21 years to make the jump to the big screen (and now streaming), it was a foregone conclusion we’d get some new MacGruber adventures, and the show wastes no time getting to them. The mulleted gadget master and man-of-action has to dismantle a bomb in a “small room with limited airflow” before it explodes and kills himself and his partners (series co-stars Wiig and Ryan Phillippe). However, the Covid-pandemic has thrown a monkey wrench into things, and he lets his anti-mask, anti-vax stance (“I don’t want the government putting a tracking device up my scrotum!”) distract him, leading to the inevitable explosion.
Next, Forte plays Mark Zazz, the host of Kid Klash, a Nickelodeon-style gameshow where kids compete in messy challenges for the chance to win pizza for life (“You get to keep this one pizza for your entire life”). Contestant Tatum (Bryant) is tasked with finding a flag in a giant bowl of whipped cream. She’s unable to complete the challenge, but Zazz forces her to stay in and finish, using the game to cruelly impart a harsh life lesson: “I didn’t start this gameshow to encourage children to quit like whiney little babies!” Forte’s hilariously menacing vibe and the impressive prop work combine to make one of the best sketches of the season
We then immediately return to the adventure of the new, alt-right MacGruber, who tries to reassure his teammates that he’s following the science and safety protocols for Covid, before immediately ingesting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat his “Covidifillis”– a combination of Covid, syphilis, free-standing herpes and horse worms. After eating some horse-worm-infested spaghetti he’s kept hidden in his underpants, he attempts to spout some QAnon nonsense, but is interrupted by another detonation.
On a new episode of Cinema Classics, host and perpetually miserable husband Reese De’What (Kenan Thompson) introduces the classic 1944 noir Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman (McKinnon) as a woman being driven insane by her evil husband, played by Charles Boyer (Forte), and her maid, played by a young Angela Lansbury (Chloe Fineman). Cinema Classics is always good for a few laughs – De’What may be the most reliably funny recurring character in the show’s repertoire at the moment – but this one is disappointingly slight.
A planned threesome between a married couple (Mikey Day, Fineman) and “experienced third” Gannon – a platinum blonde, goateed Forte – immediately goes off the rails when Gannon makes it clear that he intends to cut the husband out of the action (“This dog gets greedy with his treats!”). Forte makes for a perfect sleazebag, but as with the previous sketch, things wraps up before it really gets going.
On Weekend Update, Michael Che welcomes back Chinese trade minister/Olympic games organizer Chen Biao (Bowen Yang). Biao could care less about NBC’s decision to cover the games remotely, as well as diplomatic boycotts over China’s human rights violations: “It’s our party and we’ll spy if we want to.” Biao is followed by Sarah Sherman. Ostensibly there to talk about her favorite season, winter, she spends all her time trying to cancel Colin Jost, turning his innocuous comments into scandalized headlines such “Local Female Body Inspector Colin Jost Prefers Hairless Genitals”, “Wealth-Hoarding Hollywood Husband Colin Jost-Hansson Has Not a Dime to Spare”, and “Local Sex Bigot Rejects Queer Love”. Che and Sherman’s big, intentionally abrasive personalities have proven divisive among viewers, but they both bring an undeniably palpable energy to Update.
They’re followed by the smarmy Guy Who Just Bought a Boat (Alex Moffat), who congratulates “bro-bro from a ‘no ho” Jost, along with Pete Davidson, on their recent real-life purchase of a retired Staten Island ferryboat. Davidson joins the proceedings, but it’s Moffatt’s show all the way. He makes Davidson and Jost break continuously.
Then Forte and Wiig return to play washed-up country stars who sing bizarre and disturbing tunes about “the four things they know best: spaceships, toddlers, model-T cars and jars of beer”. It’s a Forte specialty: a late-in-the-night, go-for-broke blast of weirdness (see also: the classic potato chip sketch from 2009).
Then we’re treated to one final MacGruber sketch. Despite an intervention from friends and family, MacGruber has only fallen further into the rightwing rabbit hole. Dressed like the QAnon Shaman from the Capitol Insurrection, he rants about baby-eating Hollywood elites, ignoring another ticking time bomb until it’s too late.
There was never any doubt that Forte would nail his hosting duties, but luckily, the show let him get as weird as he wanted for most of the episode. Much of it played like a long advertisement for Peacock’s MacGruber series, but that’s hardly something to complain about. Along with Sudeikis’s episode from October, this is the best SNL has been all season. It’s only too bad every episode can’t be handed over to a cast member from that era of the show.
