Saturday Night Live review: Elf on a Shelf; Carrie Crum; Jason Momoa highlights
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As it turns out via the opening monologue, Momoa is an enormous SNL fan and he’s been looking forward to doing this for the majority of his life. He was excited to be there and you could also sense his nervousness in the opening monologue. Yet, he had high energy as he interacted with some of the cast and he also heard an Aquaman theme song from Kenan Thompson, Leslie Jones, and Chris Redd.
(Before continuing to read the rest of this article, be sure to visit the link here for more on the cold open.)
Elf on a Shelf – We’re really shocked that this sketch somehow aired before midnight on the East Coast, mostly because of the fact that it was entirely based on Momoa’s character watching after a kid that was going through puberty … and experiencing a lot of changes because of it. This was so inappropriate but also worthy of a whole lot of laughs from start to finish.
Big Boy Appliances – Apparently, this is what you get if you’re Jason Momoa the stay-at-home dad. We loved the line about all of these appliances running on gasoline, though other than that we wouldn’t call this necessarily the most memorable sketch in the entire world.
Khal Drogo’s Ghost Dojo – This was ridiculous and inspired insofar as Game of Thrones spoofs go. We appreciated all of the nods from start to finish to past seasons of the show. The unfortunate thing is that Momoa did mess up a couple of the lines, but you could see that he was really into having some more fun as this character in a live setting — we just don’t know if all of the audience even caught some of the little references that were in here to Kevin Hart.
Dem Trumps – Basically, this is the White House reimagined as Empire with similar styling and editing. This was, for the most part, fun … it just wasn’t long enough. If there was more time to dive into some of this, we could have had some more funny ties between the Fox series and the White House. We just didn’t get that.
Weekend Update – The jokes throughout this episode were solid from Michael Che and Colin Jost, but we do think that Carrie Crum proved to be a fun addition to the show as a travel expert who only shared her own experiences. We do think that Michael Che is going to be a subject of some conversation when it comes to Kevin Hart.
Also, we got a rare update feature from Che talking about a bidet and how much it has completely changed his life.
A Christmas Carol – Apparently, there was another ghost who was visiting Scrooge after the first three, and it just so happened to be a really extra one played by none other than Momoa. This one didn’t have all that much of a discernible purpose, but apparently him shaking his butt in very little clothing at the end was enough to cure Tiny Tim once and for all.
Day of the Dorks – Here, Momoa played a character named beef on a classic ’90s sitcom, someone who wanted to actually destroy all of the dorks in the worst way possible. Also, he destroyed a lot of stuff when he got really angry at dorks. This was a great example of the show trying to feature out how to feature a host almost constantly.
Sleigh Ride – This one featured Drogo and Cecily Strong played two really uncomfortable people on a sleigh ride trying to impress Kenan and Leslie Jones. We’ve seen variations of this sketch before with Cecile playing an untalented character whose husband thinks is fantastic.
Hide and Seek – This was the second time tonight to watch Momoa break stuff, this time around via a really weird game of hide and seek where a guy tries to play a game to impress his girlfriend’s father (Momoa sporting a dad bod). Apparently, this is what you do to look impressive in front of your daughter’s parents.
Rudolph spoof – This was hilarious, mostly because once Rudolph found out that he would be able to guide the sleigh, he then took advantage of the opportunity to completely roast all of the reindeer in Santa’s workshop. We’re actually surprised that nobody has done a Rudolph gloats sketch at some point in the past.
CarterMatt Verdict
Overall, Momoa really tried hard to make this episode work and while not every sketch landed, we did really appreciate a lot of the effort that went into it.
Related News – Be sure to check out even more insight on tonight’s episode right now!
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