Saturday Night Live review: SVU, Wilding Out, Kit Harington, & more
This is a LIVE review, so remember to refresh throughout the night for more impressions on the show, complete with grades and full assessments on how everyone fared.
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Cold Open – You can read more in-depth thoughts about it over here, but the short description of it is that Joe Biden got a lesson in sensitivity and it was great to see Jason Sudeikis back … even if a lot of the jokes were incredibly predictable virtually from start to finish. Grade: B-.
Kit Harington monologue – This was surprisingly fun, mostly as Kit mocked his career outside the show, Emilia Clarke did a hilarious exchange with him about the time they slept together, and Pete Davidson apparently spent all night getting into makeup as the Night King. Even Harington’s real-life wife Rose Leslie showed up for a bit about how they’re going to make money now. This was a great monologue, aided mostly by the fact that so many of Kit’s co-stars were in attendance in New York already for the recent premiere. Grade: A.
Nephew Pageant – What in the world was this? Apparently, the idea of this is that there are a ton of idiotic nephews out there that get attention from their aunts. The less we saw about this dud, the better. Grade: D.
Game of Thrones spin-offs – This was great as we got a chance to see a TON of different fake spin-off ideas for the show, including a Daria inspired animated comedy about Arya, Wilding Out (a spoof of Wild ‘N Out), and then also a hilarious play on SVU with Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T dressed in costume. Grade: A.
Cruise Ship – This is when we officially got all-in on the idea of Harington as an exceptional host. Kit came out here to perform a “Frank Sinatra impersonator” … who is really a Michael Jackson impersonator who had to switch so that he could continue to make some money. Kit’s performance as this guy was the sole reason to watch this sketch, and he was ridiculously funny throughout even if there wasn’t a lot of substance here. Grade: B+.
Virtual Reality – All our lead wanted to do this time was playing a zombie-killing video game while wearing his headset; instead, he found himself having to mediate a fight between two NPCs. This actually felt accurate to NPC actions in real games and we were with it … at least until the very end, when there was clearly no way for the writers to end it that made any sense. Grade: B.
Sara Bareilles’ performance! – be sure to head over to the link here for our take on how she did tonight.
Weekend Update – As good as the first few jokes were tonight, Alex Moffat’s movie critic character may have been one of the best characters we’ve had a chance to see on the show in a while. Basically, this is what happens when you combine a movie critic with copious amounts of LSD at the same time. Then, Kenan Thompson came out as Charles Barkley as he talked about the Final Four and also about “lake people” who hang out in Minnesota. This wasn’t a particularly amazing bit from Kenan — we’d rather have LaVar Ball. Grade: B.
Burlesque – Apparently, Harington played the part of a fiance who decided to showcase a striptease at a bachelorette party — but it wasn’t so much a proper striptease as it just was a tease show … one where one of the audience members was the guy’s own sister! This was weird, though credit to Kit for being game. Grade: C+.
Theresa May – Was SNL trying to make us feel sorry for the show’s Prime Minister? We do wonder given what we saw with this bizarre Kate McKinnon piece with Bareilles performing at the piano. Nothing that May does actually turns out to actually work, and that seemed to be the message as she tried to do what she could to be good at her job. We do wonder whether or not the writers really have a handle on what’s going on in Britain, though we give them credit for the effort they put into this. Grade: B.
Nerd Wars – This felt almost like The Big Bang Theory on steroids watching three nerdy office employees battle over an employee of the month prize. The part with the duplication spell at the end was great as they embarrassed their supervisor, but beyond that we don’t think we’re going to have any drive to ever watching this again. Grade: C+.
Exam – For the final sketch of the time, we apparently needed to watch Kit Harington have a rectal exam. Also, this was apparently a really weird showcase for a new Leslie Jones character — a doctor with really long fingernails. Apparently, this needed to become a segment on Undercover Boss at the end for some reason. Grade: C.
CarterMatt Verdict
Despite it falling apart a bit at the end, Harington’s SNL episode was pretty fun from start to finish. Kit did a great job, the sketches were funny, and we wouldn’t mind seeing him again someday.
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