Saturday Night Live review: Adam Driver, Fortnite, Pete Davidson, & more
Let’s kick things off here with the opening monologue (at least following the cold open, which you can read more about it here), which contained a number of different random comments about what was going on with a number of the different cast members over the course of their summers. The basic idea here was simply that nobody’s summer is anywhere near as interesting as they think it is … but they all like to rattle on about them anyway as though people are really into it.
Now, let’s head into some other headlines from the night…
Fortnite – This was silly, but also really fun as someone who has played computer games like this before and be completely terrible at them. We like how SNL did this by giving us a chance to see Driver but then also someone simulating his avatar within the game.
Kyle Mooney becomes Pete Davidson – We had a feeling that we were going to see the show mock Davidson and Ariana Grande’s engagement somehow, and they did so by having Kyle literally become him in a search for understanding. This was ridiculous, but we’ve always loved the sort of sketches in which Kyle gets super-meta with the show. At this point, these really are the show’s bread and butter.
Burger King – This was ridiculous, but also inspired by the sketch last season where there was a focus group full of people very surprised, and angry, to learn that they’ve been having a product from a popular chain rather than something rich and exclusive.
Weekend Update – It made sense to bring on board Ruth Bader Ginsburg for this edition, mostly because of the Brett Kavanaugh headlines from the past few weeks. Yet, we admittedly have never really loved this character just because it relies on the same joke over and over again — that Ruth is old and sassy.
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What we appreciated more was seeing Leslie Jones storm on the set as Serena Williams and demand to play her … even though the story around her and Naomi Osaka was several weeks old.
Finally, we had an appearance from Pete Davidson to talk about his engagement, and he got surprisingly personal and ridiculous about it. He recognized that he was not the famous person in the relationship and beyond just that, he recognized that the one person that he had was stocking her fridge. Self-deprecation is very much Pete’s humor, and we thought this was funny because of that — though we think he’s gonna catch some heat for the birth-control joke.
Mordecai’s father – This cold open was, to be frank, strange. Basically, Davidson’s character was a young student at career day when his father showed up. As it turns out, Adam Driver played a rather ruthless, evil old man. This was really weird and felt like almost performance art — it wasn’t especially hilarious, but we do think that Driver nailed this from start to finish.
White Nationalist Meeting – This was a strange sketch, but that is the sort of thing that SNL likes to put on the air really late in the show. The whole idea here is based on the fact that the white nationalist characters had this idea for a perfect society … but it apparently just turned out to be Vermont.
Overall, this was a solid premiere that actually felt hit-or-miss when it comes to the sketches … though Driver was great. We’re just surprised that they relied as heavily on Kanye West as they did given that they had so much comedic potential with material from the past few months.
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