Saturday Night Live review: A Kanye Place; Barbie; Donald Glover highlights

Donald Glover was the host of Saturday Night Live this weekend and when you think about some of his all-encompassing talent, it wasn’t altogether difficult to figure out that this was going to be a great show. Glover has a history performing live comedy and, to go along with that, is a very good writer.

As it turns out, Glover had auditioned for SNL twice and didn’t get the gig  The joke throughout the monologue was that he was still bitter about it and he doesn’t understand why they wouldn’t want him to be a part of the show. While there was a good payoff here in that it turns out that Glover has many flaws, it actually wasn’t as much of a home-run monologue as we would have thought given Glover’s talent. We would’ve preferred something closer to standup.

Now with that said, we did love his Community shout-out very much.

Related – Read our take on the cold open

Jurassic World Trial – Glover gave a great performance during this silly sketch, which was mostly just about how terrible the theme park is for every person who ends up attending it. This sketch actually made more points about being at Jurassic Park than any of the movies did.

Lambo debate – We never thought that there would be a sketch that was all about rappers debating on the problems with getting a Lambo. Yet, here we are. This basically told the story of these guys undergoing therapy to feel better over a conflict that revolved around jealousy and, of course, a fancy sports car.

Raz P. Berry – When we first saw Glover show up as this weird sort of late eighties / early nineties pop star for a music video, it was hard to get that excited. Then, Raz stopped singing and started talking to a woman (Cecily Strong) about some of the weird, stalker-like things that he does. As it turns out, this woman had no real idea who he was at all. By far, this was the best Glover-led sketch of the night.

A Kanye Place – We love when SNL finds a way to combine a pop-culture sensation and also something that is in the headlines. Case in point this combo platter of A Quiet Place and some of the various things that Kanye West has said over the course of the past few weeks.

Pillow talk – This took about three seconds before things got controversial, mostly because of Melissa Villasenor saying an r-word that is not used really used on television anymore. This was basically a regurgitation of a similar sketch that we’d seen from Villasenor in the past, though this time there was no Owen Wilson impersonation included.

Weekend Update – This was a weird edition of the segment, mostly because despite the best of intentions, there were some segments that just didn’t work. For starters, the Pete Davidson segment talking about Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Emmy hosting gig just fell flat. Having Leslie Jones singing and talking about her exes was fun, but there wasn’t anything that was altogether memorable about it.

Black People in Space – It was great to see Glover play his Solo: A Star Wars Story character, but once you got past the fact that there weren’t many black people in space, there wasn’t much else here.

Barbie gets meta – This was one of the strangest, funniest sketches of the night, largely because Glover’s character, while at a pitch meeting for a company, tried to sent the character into an existential funk where she was depressed and questioning her own identity and purpose.

Customer Service – The final sketch of the night featured Glover alongside Kenan Thompson and Chris Redd talking about some intense and dark topics before hopping on phone calls and providing great customer service. The biggest twist here was that it turned out that all of these service agents were actually also inmates.

CarterMatt Verdict

Glover was brilliant throughout the episode, and we’d consider the Barbie spoof an A Kanye Place to be altogether brilliant pieces of entertainment. The same goes for the monologue. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily know if any of the individual sketches will be all that memorable in a few weeks’ time.

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