Adam Driver continues to demonstrate that he's a hall-of-fame Saturday Night Live host, while Halsey revealed a whole new persona during her two, traditional music-inspired performances. Here's everything that happened on SNL this week.
The cold open
The cold open
Beck Bennett's rather stunning Senator Mitch McConnell and Cecily Strong's Senator Susan Collins had a meeting to discuss their defense of President Trump, when SNL alum Jon Lovitz appeared to play Trump's attorney, Alan Dershowitz. After a bit of a spiel, Dershowitz is jettisoned to hell, where he encounters Kate McKinnon's Satan. The writers used this device to satirize everything from podcasts to "Baby Shark" to the death of Jeffrey Epstein (played by host Adam Driver) and it mostly all worked just fine.
The monologue
To counter his intense image as an actor, SNL monologue king Adam Driver performed a very funny, "chill" open, in which he taught us all about a version of himself. Wandering around the stage armed with one-liners, making fun of the show, his image and getting a bit meta, Driver did a masterful job warming up the audience once again.
Sleepover
Driver played a dad confronting his daughter's slumber party about a sanitary pad/toilet mishap, which is so extensive and elaborate, it causes $10,000 damage to the house. McKinnon's Megan seems to be the prime suspect but, amusingly, denies any involvement in the matter. This was very good.
Undercover Boss: Where Are They Now? – Kylo Ren
Reprising a bit from some years ago, Driver played Kylo Ren as an Undercover Boss participant who destroys/murders anything/anyone who badmouths his true self. The first edition of this was funny and surprising, and this one was okay but it also got a bit rote as it went on.
"Aw man, I'm all out of cash"
A commercial shoot for Del Taco's new "buck and under" menu devolves when one of the actors, Douglas, played by Kyle Mooney, can't seem to nail the key line, "Aw man, I'm all out of cash." With Beck Bennett's exasperated director and Adam Driver's Del Taco rep cajoling Mooney by helping/not helping him to figure out his part, this absurdly incessant thing turned out really funny.
The Science Room
Driver's Professor Zachary Adams hosts a PBS show called The Science Room and is joined by two young idiot students, played by Cecily Strong and Mikey Day. As the kids engage him in an increasingly awkward and inane dialogue, Adams becomes more and more exasperated and eventually has an on-air temper tantrum, all of which was well-executed and very funny.
SLOW
In this spoof of music videos that employ slow motion for dramatic effect, Halsey played a woman singing a longing hook about a romantic encounter, only to have three male R&B artists, played by Chris Redd, Kenan Thompson and Driver, demonstrate that rather than simply engaging in anticipatory foreplay, they may actually, in fact, be slow at everything they do. Kind of a dated knock in an age when no one really makes such music videos anymore, and these kinds of artists aren't really around anymore, this was likely most pleasing to Gen Xers than anyone else.
Halsey
(Barely) costumed like a cowboy Madonna, Halsey appeared in silhouette on a bucking horse to sing "You Should be Sad," an angry, country ballad with barely any drum beat, but some full-on choreography, which made for a fascinating visual. If you had the volume off, you'd think Halsey was engaged in some anthemic pop song, but instead it was a sparse, moody tune.
For her second song, "Finally // Beautiful Stranger," Halsey carried through with this country-folk vibe, looking a bit like Elvis, dressed in classic, modest Nashville attire, brandishing an out-of-the-box sunburst Gibson and crooning about an intensely good first date. Each tonally and visually surprising in their own way, Halsey's performances were thoughtful and executed well.
Weekend Update
Curiously, the much-loathed Colin Jost and Michael Che opted to attack Democrats a lot more than Republicans in their recall of the impeachment proceedings of the past week. Maybe it's not that curious actually. They did go after Trump, but generally used the Republican talking points about the trial being "boring," which is reprehensibly irresponsible for any satirist worth their salt right now. Aidy Bryant's pre-pubescent Carrie Crum dropped by to "Michael? Michael?" her way through a cutesy, overly fascinated look at her life.
Melissa Villaseñor appeared for an Oscars bit, in which she sang songs about nominated films like Joker, The Irishman, and a host of others, which all seem to deal with white male rage. This was good and the best part of Update this week.
Medieval Times
A dinner production of Medieval Times goes haywire when the Red and Yellow Knight goes off-script and behaves erratically intense. Driver played Cameron, the rogue actor whose community college acting coursework seemed to have gone to his head. The comedic tension here was harnessed and heightened by Mikey Day's haplessly enraged MC, whose constant attempts to keep Cameron in check were amusing.
CHEER
Driver and Heidi Gardner played coaches on the Netflix show CHEER, which appears to be some kind of show about people from the American South trying out to be cheerleaders. Everyone in this seemed to be dumb and delusional, which was a one-note joke that grew tiresome quickly (particularly if you've never watched the Netflix show, CHEER).
Lily's Diner
Apparently, in diner speak, when ketchup bottles are half empty and are subsequently combined together to make one full bottle, it's called "marrying" them. After a brief exchange between Aidy Bryant's manager and Heidi Gardner's waitress about completing such a task, the action panned down to a restaurant table where Driver and Cecily Strong appeared as estranged, sentient ketchup bottles who were arguing angrily. This was a rather ridiculous but satisfying way to satirize Driver's much-discussed new film, Marriage Story, and seemed to reflect the journey of a tossed-off pitch actually making it to air.