‘SNL’ Recap: Pete Davidson Takes The High Road After High Profile Break-Up With Ariana Grande: “Sometimes Things Just Don’t Work Out”

Forgoing actual politicians, last night’s Saturday Night Live cold open focused on Fox News and the right wing media’s hysteria over the now-infamous refugee caravan heading north, with Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong portraying network personalities Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine Pirro.

The segment was intended to emphasize the fear-mongering and falsehoods surrounding the caravan, which the president has seized on as a campaign issue.

Ingraham was broadcasting live from the Arizona border, telling her viewers that “dozens, maybe millions” of immigrants are “headed straight for you and your grandchildren.” She flat out tells her audience it’s not fear-mongering, before a quick black and white graphic of the girl from The Ring pops up, with an announcer intoning “IMMIGRANTS” in his best death metal growl.

As usual, McKinnon interjects real commentary into her portrayal, as when Ingraham noted that the liberal media have tried to portray the president as racist, then asked, “except for his words and actions throughout his life, how is he racist?”

Strong’s Pirro is spot-on, capturing the Fox personality’s tendency to turn every word into a dagger, over-emphasized for maximum anger perception. Her rant captures Pirro’s fear-mongering to a T, saying the caravan includes “Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, The Menendez Brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, Thanos, and several Babadooks.”

McKinnon also, mocking Ingraham’s low-level sponsors, makes sure to remind viewers that the reason Ingraham lost so many sponsors was her mocking of victims of the Parkland shooting. For this, she is cursed with ads for Warm Ice Cream; My Hemorrhoid Donut, from the makers of My  Pillow; and White Castle. “A castle for whites?” she says. “Yes, please.”

Kenan Thompson also drops in as Sheriff David Clarke, informing Fox News viewers that the caravan is 800 miles away. “If these immigrants walk at a normal pace of 300 miles a day, they could be here in time to vote on Election Day.” At the end, McKinnon needled her almost-fellow-cast-member Alec Baldwin, who was arrested this week after a physical altercation over a parking spot, saying, “When we come back, an update from disgraced former actor Alec Baldwin, seen here molesting a young boy scout.” The picture was a still from Baldwin’s controversial 1994 “Canteen Boy” sketch on the show with Adam Sandler, where Baldwin played a scout master trying to seduce his scout.   

Jonah Hill hosted for the fifth time, and we all know what that means – entry into the now kinda-crowded Five Timers Club. He pines for the Club’s special jacket, psyched to be in the company of Five Timers like Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, and Justin Timberlake. Sure enough, he’s soon greeted by Five Timer Tina Fey, who brings him to the Five Timers lounge to meet fellow Five Timers Candice Bergen and Drew Barrymore – which is great and all, but Jonah can’t help wondering, “Where are the men?” Not allowed in right now, says Fey, since “They’re all a bunch of horny perverts.” Several minutes of banter follow, then Jonah is presented with his Five Timers jacket, which has been amended to include rhinestones, and also run much smaller.

Hill brings back his best original SNL character, 6-year-old jokester Adam Grossman, back at Benihana, this time with Jones, his nanny. Adam tries to set Jones up with two men sharing the table, Mikey Day and Thompson, and makes mildly risqué sounding remarks cushioned with the phrase, “I’m six!” Adam has the personality of a Borscht Belt comic, and this sketch is always good for a few laughs – so many, in fact, that Hill and Jones started breaking about a third of the way in. Some fun lines here from Adam: About Jones, “Her Social Security number is two. Lilly’s so old that in history class, she just wrote down what she was doing.” Jones enjoyed that one. After saying of his best friend that “I’m a top, he’s a bottom,” he saves it with, “I meant bunk beds. I’m six!” Hill always has fun with this sketch, and it was good to see it back.

A political ad urging people to vote on Tuesday perfectly captured current Democratic anxiety, as various Democrats try to look calm while telling people to vote, but fail miserably. When Leslie Jones, holding a cat, says to the camera, “White women promised to do the right thing this time. They’re not gonna let us down, right?” even the cat rolls its eyes. Heidi Gardner, Beck Bennett, and McKinnon perfectly encapsulate current liberal anxiety, with McKinnon letting out a window-shattering scream at the end. Also – Election Day is this Tuesday. Don’t forget to vote.

Also on the silly front, Thompson and Jones play newscasters on a looser-than-normal news broadcast, with Strong at the weather desk. After Strong opens the segment by casually relating on the air that she hit someone with her car on the way to work, Hill, as her boyfriend, suddenly appears. He’s there to propose but she clearly has no interest, and as she tries to do the weather, we learn that they haven’t been together that long. Nevertheless, he persists and makes a fool of himself, unleashing a terrible rap while wearing a green shirt in front of a green screen, making him look like a floating head. Given SNL‘s consistent support of #MeToo, the ending of this sketch – where Strong suddenly, inexplicably reverses her stance and claims, after her clear rejections, that she’ll marry him after all, and had hoped to ask him on-air – was inexplicable.

Hill and Strong also play stereotypical Long Islanders, complete with poofed-out hair for Strong and a Tony Soprano bowling shirt for Hill, to sell their product, Pug Wigs – wigs for pugs. Dogs are paraded out wearing wigs including the Marilyn Monroe and the Rachel, and if dogs in wigs can barely get a laugh, you know something’s not working. There was a funny idea in here somewhere, but the choice of making the couple such stereotypes worked against this. Hill and Strong played the characters just right, but they were the wrong characters for this premise, particular Hill’s, whose dialogue fell especially flat. By the time the studio audience laughed at the pug with the Tina Turner wig, it seemed like too little, too late.

The show returned to an easy premise that often works for them, the mocking of amateur or independent theater, with a pre-filmed ad for the off-Broadway play “Divided We Stand.” The show carries all the qualities SNL seizes upon in these sketches – the unbridled enthusiasm of naive liberals and theater artists alike, the all-too-obvious attempts to be clever and insightful, the liberal tendency to combine unrelated causes into a mushy political stew, and the knack for such endeavors to hit the audience over the head with unfiltered politicizing. All captured perfectly here, this still felt recycled from older efforts right down to the terrible-review pull quotes superimposed on the ad. All in all, a bit too similar to many of SNL‘s efforts along these lines to generate big laughs.

An America’s Got Talent parody took on that show’s tendency to introduce contestants who seem like they’re going to be terrible, only to have them turn out to be incredible. Quick tangent – As we see here, Melissa Villasenor can sing really well. For a cast member who’s had trouble finding her niche on the show, this talent could be put to more frequent use. For the sketch itself, it’s a segment of the show called “Wait – They’re Good?” Hill plays a mumbling cowboy who’s never heard the word “music,” but wows anyway with a kicky, poppy, upbeat dance number. Strong plays a woman who was raised in the woods like Jodie Foster’s Nell. She can’t speak words, but can sing a heartfelt “Send In The Clowns.”  Thompson is in a full-on coma – it was his dream to sing on the show, and his wife, Jones, wants to sing his song for him – but of course, Thompson emerges from the coma and the two sing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” as a duet. Ultimately, the sketch does a good job mocking the premise, noting that given its commonality, no one should be surprised at anything this show’s contestants have to offer. If the Travelocity gnome appeared as a contestant, he’d probably have a surprising talent for opera.

Weekend Update took on the caravan and the midterms. Colin Jost: “President Trump announced that he will deploy more than 15,000 troops to the US/Mexico border to stop a migrant caravan from entering the country. Meanwhile, a second migrant caravan just pulled up to landscape Mar-a-Lago.” Trump is calling the operation “Faithful Patriot,” which is also, said Jost, “What Mike Pence yells out during sex.” Michael Che talked about voting, which he rarely does, and blamed much of our problems on liberal New Yorkers who moved here from other places. “If you really wanna make a difference, why don’t you go back to Ohio, Megan, or whatever your parents are paying your rent from, and vote there. That’s where it counts. You know how those red states stay so red? By sending all their liberal kids to coastal cities to study improv.”

Pete Davidson hit the desk to talk about the midterms, but had other things on his mind, as did the audience. He opened with, “The midterm elections are actually a huge deal, and after I had to move back in with my mom, I started paying attention to them.” The crowd, clearly curious to see if Davidson would address his now-former relationship with Ariana Grande, reacted immediately, laughing as soon as he said “mom.” From there, though, Davidson returned to a format he’s used before, “reviewing” various candidates with one-liner insults reminiscent of David Spade’s old “Hollywood Minute.” This segment played perfectly into Davidson’s strengths, and was the funniest part of the show so far. Among his stronger lines, about Florida governor Rick Scott: “He looks like someone tried to whittle Bruce Willis out of a penis.” Of New York congressman Peter King, he said he looks like “if a cigar came to life.” Turning the lens on himself, he said he looks like “I make vape juice in a bathtub.” He ended by addressing the break-up for real, telling the crowd what happened is no one else’s business, that it just didn’t work out, and that he wishes Grande all the happiness in the world.

Villasenor came to the desk as Every Teen Girl Murder Suspect on Law & Order, there to review the latest in YA book releases. What followed were suddenly-recalled memories and trembling denials related in a halting manner before a final confession, a sequence familiar to any viewer of Law & Order. The bit was more accurate than funny, and I couldn’t help compare it, unfavorably, the Gardner’s insecure teen movie reviewer Bailey Gismert. This character echoes Villasenor’s larger problem on SNL. She’s a splendid impressionist, but has yet to unlock the formula of how to take these impressions to the next level, to elevate them above their similarities to the subject and find the funny angles within.

In the wake of the Red Sox World Series win, Thompson brought David Ortiz back to the desk for more fake ads, this time for Spokes – yes, the things in your bike wheels – and for Apple Watch, noting in his accent, “You gotta watch your apples – or a monkey’s gonna steal them. It’s a gun.”

Yet another fake ad – two in one show is unusual for SNL – and another political hit come with an ad for the sleep aid Hucka PM, “the only sleep medication strong enough for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.” Aidy Bryant plays Sanders, saying to the camera, “People are always asking me, ‘How do you sleep at night?’ In fact, they scream it at me all day long.” The pill itself contains “Melatonin, Extra Strength Quaaludes, and what Michael Jackson’s doctor called ‘One & Dones”  – and, according to the packaging, Ketamine as well – and Sanders passes out hard immediately after taking it. The premise is funny, as are Bryant’s hard falls upon taking them. The sketch’s issue is one the show often had with McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway: portraying her as someone doing the president’s bidding almost against her will, as someone who requires the strongest sleep aid imaginable to deal with her guilty conscience, as opposed to as a full-on willing participant in the president’s agenda.

McKinnon went surreal in “Teacher Fell Down,” a melodrama constructed around McKinnon, a driver’s ed teacher, tripping over her sneakers and falling down. The students want to help her up. She wants to delve into the psychology of what it all means like a character in a Whit Stillman film. A few random laughs here, but it remained more strange than funny.

SNL returns next week with first-time host Liev Schreiber and musical guest Lil’ Wayne.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.