‘SNL’ Recap: Willem Dafoe’s Hosting Debut Upstaged By Peyton Manning Dishing On ‘Emily In Paris’

Lorne Michaels did a gag with Willem Dafoe during Will Forte’s monologue last week, suggesting he wouldn’t book two Wills in a row. But why hadn’t he booked Dafoe before now? He certainly was a riot in The Lighthouse back in late 2019. Saturday Night Live even did a parody based on the movie in Season 45. Dafoe was due!

Have you noticed recently that SNL has produced more and more live sketches that force the performers to play to the camera instead of each other by having them on separate stages inside the studio? I’d love to chalk it up to COVID pandemic precautions, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing whatever they’ve wanted this past year. Perhaps there’s another logical explanation? Or perhaps they’ve just got such an oversized cast and want to get as many of them involved, and that prompts them to write sketches where they cannot all be on the same stage. Whatever the reason, sketches like these always lose some of their punch and suffer comedically for it. Live comedy needs the actors to play to each other and not to the cameras and cue cards. Oh well. Insert one of those Simpsons memes of me as the old man yelling at the cloud, why don’t you? 

Let’s recap!

What’s The Deal For The SNL Cold Open For Last Night (01/29/22)?

What is the record for the number of cast members taking part in a sketch that opens an SNL episode? I would’ve made a case for this week’s episode, except I remembered that last year for Mother’s Day, a full 17 cast members brought their mothers onscreen with them to share screen and stage time as Miley Cyrus sang in tribute.

This week’s cold open featured 12 cast members. Still way too many moving parts in a sketch that’s trying to do too much and would be better served with some tightening and/or heightening.

The writers want to tackle the ongoing diplomatic kerfuffle with Russia looking like it wants to invade neighboring Ukraine again, and take a stab at a premise that Russia is at it again with the social media disinformation campaign. They throw James Austin Johnson back in as President Joe Biden and have a bunch of people brief him on it.

Kenan Thompson is from the military. Ego Nwodim and Alex Moffatt are advisers of some sort. Aristotle Athari and Andrew Dismukes do a Russian dance on TikTok. Kyle Mooney and Kate McKinnon play Russian kids acting as if they think it’d be cooler to move to Russia than stay in the Ukraine. Pete Davidson returns as NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, this time joined by Chris Redd as Jake from State Farm in a fake pro-Russia commercial. Chloe Fineman arrives at the White House to save the day with her own social media expertise, which includes having Sarah Sherman do a sexy TikTok trend.

At least Nwodim got to deliver a timely Tom Brady joke in the middle of all of this.

How Did The SNL Guest Host Willem Dafoe Do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOuAlG5jJM

Considering how much love SNL has for Christopher Walken, you’d have thought or expected or even hoped that they’d have invited Willem Dafoe to host long before now. But no. He made his debut this week. In his monologue, Dafoe reminisced about moving to New York City at 21, and despite only paying $200 a month in rent for a place in the East Village, he joked he learned to act by acting he enjoyed having a bathtub in his kitchen. Don’t think twice about that joke. The monologue also features cast members interrupting him from the audience, as Mikey Day and Aidy Bryant play tourists from Appleton, Wisc., (Dafoe’s hometown!), goading him into using his Wisconsin accent once more.

Dafoe put his expressive face and boundless talent to good use in the episode, even if the writing didn’t always give him much leeway.

In “Tenant Meeting,” he played the guy who managed to buy the top three floors for dirt cheap in the 1970s, only to complain about how NYC isn’t as gritty or exciting as it once was. Two other sketches relied completely on basic sex jokes — one in which he played himself in a parody of those “Nugenix” ads for testosterone pills to help a golfer with his “low drive,” the other (“Good Morning Columbus“) in which he played an author for a self-exploration book that’s supposedly titled “Knowing Yourself” even though all of the dialogue is played as if the book is called “Blowing Yourself.” Get it? Oh wait, there also was a third sketch in which perverted sex stuff was implied.

Sometimes you don’t want the Beast (Pete Davidson) to gift a “magic mirror” so Belle (Chloe Fineman) can see what her father does when he’s finally all alone in the house. That they keep the sketch going long enough to trot out Mikey Day as the candlesticks, Kyle Mooney as the teacup and Punkie Johnson as the pot makes me think they had more planned for this at dress rehearsal? Otherwise, why add that part? Just for the sight gag?

Dafoe also played the co-host alongside Aidy Bryant to the Badminster Dog Show, which allowed for lots of cute dogs, and the show has loved adding dogs and cats into the mix for live sketches because it combines the cute factor with the chaos factor. Anything could go awry!

Dafoe also fared well with his turn in a pre-taped music video by Chris and Kenan called “Now I’m Up,” exploring all of the reasons you might not be able to get to sleep or get back to sleep, from a mysterious lump to full body spasms, getting kicked by a spouse’s toenail, or even by interruptions from Spotify ads because you were too cheap to pay for Premium. Dump Spotify?!

How Relevant Was The Musical Guest Katy Perry?

Katy Perry is no stranger to SNL, having hosted once before and performing three other times before now. So why now? Because Perry is one of several big musical acts to start new residencies in Las Vegas, and you’ve got to get that word out somehow. For a hot second, I thought the magic mushroom setting might have something to do with her voiceover work in The Smurfs and The Smurfs 2, but it’s really more about promoting the Vegas show, which is meant to evoke play worlds. I don’t know how I feel about those dancers having big mushroom heads and grotesquely-perverse-looking legs.

And her first song, “When I’m Gone,” was written for the Vegas show, which began on Dec. 29, 2021.

For her second song, Perry performed “Never Really Over,” the lead track from her 2020 album, “Smile.”

Which Sketch Will We Be Sharing: “Martin’s Friend”

The boys from Please Destroy Me hadn’t been seen on the show since the holidays, and they brought a youthful energy tonight thanks to a 10-year-old wonderboy named Connor. He can play string instruments, has a great sense of humor, and is even a real life-saver. What can’t Connor do?!? Good thing Martin Herlihy befriended him, right?

Who Stopped By Weekend Update?

The most impressive performance of the night came during Update, but not from anyone in the cast or the scheduled host or musical guest. Peyton Manning, who has hosted SNL before and proved quite adept at it, delivered the funniest, best-written bit of the evening, as it turns out he missed all of last weekend’s exciting NFL playoff games due to a binge of Emily in Paris.

But first, Aidy Bryant and Bowen Yang let us know what’s IN and what’s OUT for 2022 as expert trend forecasters who look like they get their cues from Scandinavia, even though they claim it’s 4,000 computers doing all of the work. OUT? Shiny shoes (“Go back to hell!”), movie posters as decor (“Grow up, Pulp Fiction movie poster, and be a painting!”), babies dumping their diapers and not speaking up about it, cat-eye glasses, fidget spinners and Michael Che.

And then, Manning Time! He broke down Emily’s love lives using football terminology and strategy, and even though it’s all great, I’m still not watching that show.

What Sketch Filled The “10-to-1” Slot?

At 12:50 a.m. Eastern, Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim serve as the local TV news hosts for “Good Morning Columbus,” where reporter Scott Cott (Mikey Day) is live interviewing Dr. Benjamin Bloom (Dafoe), who wrote “Knowing Yourself.” Only all of the double-entendres, and that’s all we get here, wants you to imagine a different type of self-exploration. “We are deeply sorry. This looks very bad,” Yang’s character says.

And then at 12:57 a.m., they squeezed in a short live sketch where Dafoe is Jeremiah, the brand-new office temp who doesn’t quite know how to join in the impromptu musical rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Despite endangering everyone, the company employees defend Jeremiah to the boss, only to have the temp do worse the next day.

Who Was The Episode’s MVP?

This week’s MVPs was Chris Redd with runner-up Chloe Fineman. Redd displayed the most range, from his State Farm impersonation in the cold open to his bad-dog owner, to singing lead on the music video “Now I’m Up,” to the doorman at the tenant who needs to remind everyone his name is Robert and not JaMarcus. Fineman played Belle in that Beauty and the Beast sketch, as well as contributing to both the cold open and the dog show.

The Winter Olympics start next weekend on NBC and Peacock, so don’t expect a new SNL for a while! Heck, we could use a month off. See you back here in four weeks, when John Mulaney gets Five-Timers Club official and LCD Soundsystem reunites to celebrate.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Season 47, Episode 12 of Saturday Night Live on Peacock