‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton, Von Miller, Beyonce, Melissa McCarthy (video)
One week removed from Bernie Sanders appearing on “Saturday Night Live” for a cameo, his presence loomed large in the cold open for Melissa McCarthy’s fourth show as a host. Specifically, we saw some people talking about voting for him despite Hillary Clinton’s credentials … which led to a ghostly Hillary (played by Kate McKinnon) singing a musical number set to “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”
Ultimately, we think that the whole message here was the way in which millennials have all started to flock to Bernie over Hillary, and also some of her struggles to get people to root for her despite some of the qualifications that she has.
There were a couple of funny turns in here, whether it be Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton and then Beck Bennett as Jeb Bush popping out from under a table singing the same song … only to realize people could see him. It was a smart idea in theory to open with this, but it actually wasn’t that funny as a whole.
Stay tuned for more updates from this show!
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Melissa McCarthy monologue – A little cheesy, mostly because we knew going into it that this was only her fourth time and the setup for the joke was incredibly obvious. Also, a structural nitpick: Kenan said that he only just realized backstage that this was her fourth and one-sixteenth time hosting (the 40th anniversary special being the one-sixteenth), and yet he had brand-new glasses with that marked on him. The jokes still gotta make sense!
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Beyonce video – This was a funny take on the outcry to Beyond releasing her new music video, though to be honest we’re surprised it wasn’t more about her Super Bowl performance than the video itself, since that got more of the attention.
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Screen test – We don’t why this sketch didn’t connect with us more than it did; it was very funny on paper! The only reason we can think of is because we’ve seen McCarthy play this sort of character so many times that it no longer has that much buzz.
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Terminator scene sketch – The funniest one of the night so far, mostly because of the way in which the entire sketch was about a family having to watch a very adult-oriented situation from the movie. Pete Davidson, McCarthy, and Bobby Moynihan were all great.
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Weekend Update – This was, for the most part, really fun. We had a lot of good content in here, starting with the great impression of Rachel from “Friends” by Vanessa Bayer. Von Miller made a nice little cameo in here celebrating the Super Bowl, and we also learned that Leslie Jones hates guys who love avocados. The Panda Express joke may be our personal favorite that we’ve seen on the show in weeks.
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Pick-up training – McCarthy really went all-in on the physical comedy here, hitting on Kyle Mooney in possibly one of the grossest ways imaginable. We’re not sure if the humor matched the effort, but we’re never going to dog a sketch that had this level of commitment behind it, even if some people seemed on the verge of breaking the whole time.
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Kyle vs. Kanye – Here was your appearance of Kanye in a sketch this week (check out our take on his music here), and the funny thing about this was that we’re not actually sure Kanye was trying to be funny. After Kyle Mooney challenged him to a rap battle, Kanye hit him with a long, self-reflective rap about his former self. Then, the joke was that Kyle thought he won.
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Whiskers are We – This sketch is always for the most part odd, but we’ve enjoyed it every time in between the live animals and the odd one-sided romances that seem to constantly surface here time and time again.
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In the end, we’d call this show a mixed bag. It did some things well, but there were other moments where, despite the efforts of all involved, the comedy fell a little flat. Grade: B.
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