May 15, 2021 – Keegan-Michael Key / Olivia Rodrigo (S46 E19)

Cold Open – A Message From Dr. Anthony Fauci

• Surprisingly, I do recall enjoying this open back when it aired.
• A very promising concept for this cold open, with reenactments of different COVID scenarios.
• Beck is giving me laughs from his demeanor here.
• You could tell some of the cast members are theatre majors, or at least were back in high school.
• Good laugh from the king line in Bowen & Ego’s scene.
• Guilty laugh from Alex & Cecily’s scene.
• Good that SNL realized that Lauren & Punkie are in the cast.
• Chloe’s “oh no, I don’t like the bottom of your face!” gave me my biggest laugh so far, she’s so good in her delivery even in the smallest of appearances.
• Why is Cecily in this again?! Where is Heidi?!
• Ah, here’s Heidi.
• Heidi’s scene came and went with no laugh from me.
• A pretty good cold open overall, which sadly feels atypical for SNL in these last twenty years or so.

Rating: ***1/2

Monologue

• Keegan is ALREADY coming off fantastic and commanding the stage. Unsurprisingly due to his decades of experience in sketch comedy, both in Chicago, MADtv, and Key & Peele.
• Keegan is very fun here, and his energy and natural likability are showing. Yet, even when I enjoy musical monologues, when they’re funny that is, it feels like a waste of his comedic abilities.
• Steven Castillo!!!
• A good laugh from Steven confusing Keegan with Jordan Peele.
• The expected bit with Keegan & Kenan.
• A good, energetic monologue. A decent way to segue into the episode proper.

Rating: ***

Braxton High School Prom Red Carpet

• A fun premise.
• Heidi can play these types of her roles in her sleep by this point of her tenure.
• As no surprise, Keegan is doing a fantastic job with his character with great voice & solid characterization.
• A huge laugh from Chloe’s facial reactions, she’s so good at getting laughs from me without much effort. This was such a solid season for her in showcases & airtime. Well-deserved for such a talented, professional, and committed performer. I do hope the growth continues in the final six episodes of the currently-airing season as her airtime, while good and getting main roles, albeit using her underrated straight man work, is somewhat frustrating compared to how solid her second season was.
• Much like Heidi, Aidy & Mikey’s roles feel like the type of roles that both would be playing in their sleep by now.
• A fake sponsor? WHY?!
• Big laugh from Melissa’s look in here, too bad they barely gave her any funny lines.
• Pete is so accurate as the young sub teacher.
• Very fun sketch overall.

Rating: ***1/2

The Last Dance: Extended Scene

• I’ve never seen The Last Dance, but I’ve always enjoyed this pretape and considered it both a season highlight and one of Heidi’s best performances.
• Solid Michael Jordan from Keegan.
• Fantastic recreation of the original footage used in the documentary.
• Great makeup on Alex, rendering him nearly unrecognizable, and as no surprise, he’s doing a great Phil Jackson impression.
• Also, as no surprise to anyone, Chris is doing a spot-on Dennis Rodman.
• The casting of Heidi as the security guard may seem weird at the beginning, but she immediately wins me and the viewers with her spot-on impression of him in the original footage.
• Funny & welcomed addition of Kenan’s Charles Barkley, one of Kenan’s best impressions, especially in the criminally-underrated Iconoclasts sketch with Kristen Wiig’s fantastic Björk impression. A promising sketch that I thought would recur in an era of WAY too many one-note, unfunny recurring characters (this era dumped most of that and stuck with premise-driven & original sketches, which is the main reason why I started watching SNL eight years ago).
• Heidi is fantastic in selling her despair, her facial reactions, tone, movement, EVERYTHING about her performance here is fantastic.
• A very strong pretape overall, and deserving of the hype surrounding it by the community. A fantastic Heidi showcase in a truly standout season for her, it’s too bad she’s been having an invisible year in the currently-airing SNL season.

Rating: ****1/2

The Muppet Show

• A very popular, beloved sketch from this season.
• A funny Lily Tomlin impression from Melissa, it just reminds me of how much I loved Lily as the host back in SNL’s first two seasons (still didn’t see her third hosting stint).
• A surprisingly spot-on Kermit from an off-screen Kyle.
• Funny & dead-on Stalter & Waldorf voices from Beck & Mikey, respectively. I would like to think that these dead-on impression from our cast members are due to how ingrained The Muppets are in their minds since childhood.
• Keegan is killing me with his voice and delivery of his line “You are more! Than Welcome! To leave!”.
• I recall not enjoying this sketch on a previous watch, but now, it’s having me in stitches. Maybe because I still feel guilty about underrating the Paw Patrol sketch from the recent Oscar Isaac episode, that made me more open-minded in these reviews, again showing my growth as a reviewer.
• Big laughs from Keegan & Kenan beating the hell out of Stalter & Waldorf. This is so dumb, in the right kind of way, unlike that godforsaken Ratatouille sketch earlier in the season.
• Kenan seems to be breaking a bit, which is extremely rare for him to do, cannot blame him in this instance.
• Great ending.
• Overall, this sketch definitely is better on a rewatch, a laugh riot and the good kind of dumb, harmless fun.

Rating: ****

Gemma & DJ Balls

• Ohhhh God! Here comes Cecily to ruin the perfect streak of segments in tonight’s episode.
• With Cecily bringing back this awful character, which was last performed in season 44, it just further proves my point of how generally creatively bankrupt she is at this point of her tenure.
• DJ Balls? Really?! What is this high school-level juvenile shit doing on my screen?
• Am I supposed to believe that Kenan’s character still doesn’t know who Gemma is with this being their SIXTH sketch together?? Could the writing be any lazier?
• As always, I’m NOT caring about any of these songs, nor Cecily’s voice and delivery. It’s almost morbidly fascinating to see how low she would sink as a performer on week-to-week basis this season. Even some of her staunchest defenders regard this season as a low for her.
• Aaaaaaand this sketch ended with zero laughs from me. I would say that Keegan’s energy and natural likability almost saved this for me.

Rating: *1/2

Weekend Update

• As always, I get a huge laugh from that Mitch McConnell photo & our obligatory “seen here” joke.
• Again, Matt Gaetz is an absurd looking human & his photo also gives bigger laughs than I need.
• Here comes one of my favorite Kate performances in this whole season.
• ALREADY, I’m getting my usual laughs from Kate’s lived-in, funny, and biting take on Liz Cheney.
• Kate: “That’s right. I was kicked out of the republican party. I fell down to hell like Lil Nas X. I cracked with the devil and bounced back up on to MSNBC.”
• The Nancy Reagan’s ghost line gave me a huge laugh.
• Kate: “It’s Jared-” Colin: “Kushner?” Kate: “No, Subway”.
• Some brutal lines from Kate’s Liz Cheney, some of my favorites: “I loved him (Donald Trump) like a straight sister & “You don’t even know the size of the tsunami that’s coming. We’re talking me, Omorosa, five white women, maybe six. Have I said me?” and lastly, “I shoot buffalo in the ass. And I am not conservative enough?”
• A great ending to a fantastic, season highlight commentary from Kate, she was on FIRE throughout this, showing us why, even when she’s sometimes hit-or-miss, deservedly became both the show’s star and the undisputed MVP.
• Andrew Dismukes gets his very first Weekend Update commentary.
• Already, Andrew’s coming off likable, comfortable, and hilarious.
• I never noticed Andrew’s natural strong southern accent, probably because he mostly plays generic characters outside of his sketch-stealing appearances. We barely knew him till this commentary.
• A huge laugh from the audience’s lack of response when Andrew brings up his home state Texas.
• A memorable part with Andrew complaining about his photoless Wikipedia article.
• An overall fun, strong Weekend Update debut from Andrew. Might be the best since Kate’s (even when Andrew, as much as I love him, is NOWHERE near as strong as Kate as a performer), I would also say Sarah Sherman’s debut was very strong too, and went viral immediately and proved to be a turning point in her tenure and airtime.
• (*Sigh*) Back’s final Update appearance, he was surprisingly well-featured on Update this year, I’m sure because he knew he would be leaving, and wanted to do few commentaries before that.
• A good laugh from Beck’s Bob Baffert voice.
• I’m enjoying Beck’s smug and indifferent characterization, even when I don’t know that much about sport. I do know Baffert & this incident that this commentary is discussing though.
• A Pretty great Weekend Update overall, I enjoyed all three commentaries, in particular Kate’s Liz Cheney, loved the jokes, and didn’t feel the length at all.

Rating: ****

Gershwin Celebration

• A very rare pairing of Cecily & Kate in a sketch that’s not the cold open.
• Not caring for the stock voices that Cecily and Kate are using here.
• This sketch is eerily similar to the wretched Broadway Benefit sketch from season 47. I bet both were written by the same writer.
• Blah, a very weak comedic conceit with Ceily & Kate not knowing their lines, this sketch is definitely written by whomever wrote that aforementioned tripe.
• Keegan, like the pro he is, is trying his damnedest to save this sketch with his charisma and commitment.
• (*yawn*) Wow! It turns out they knew their lines all along!!!11!11!!.
• (*sigh*) Next, please.

Rating: *1/2

High School Graduation

• This seems to be a low-key, solid, dialogue-driven 10-to-1 sketch which feels so atypical to such a shaky season.
• Big laugh from Chris, Punkie, and Kenan’s scene at the beginning.
• Poor, poor Lauren.
• Ego is solid, unsurprisingly, as Keegan’s wife.
• Alex’s a solid straight in this.
• Gary Richardson!!!
• A huge laugh from Kenan’s “A white girl named Latisha?!”.
• Andrew’s hilarious here.
• A good laugh from Mikey and his family cheering.
• Guilty laugh from Beck’s “kid toucher”.
• Solid ending to a solid sketch, a great way to end the night.

Rating: ****

Cut For Time: Rap Diss

• (*sigh*) Another Chris pretape cut.
• A good laugh from this diss being an apology.
• Keegan look is hilarious & his rapping is surprisingly very catchy.
• A surprisingly short pretape, this was decent, but still below par to Chris’ usual fantastic work on SNL. It also felt somewhat underwritten and underdeveloped.

Rating: ***

Cut For Time: Sending Drinks

• This was cut from the Elon Musk (*shudder*) episode last week.
• Already, a huge laugh from Keegan’s look.
• Bowen almost steals this sketch with the cutaway to him.
• The REACTING portions are nearly derailing and ruining this fun sketch, just trim these parts modern SNL!
• Big laugh from Keegan sending his own shirt to Aidy & Kate.
• Solid turn with Bowen & Keegan fighting.
• Pretty good sketch, should’ve replaced that awful Gemma reprisal.

Rating: ***1/2

Segments Ranked From Best to Worst

The Last Dance: Extended Scene

High School Graduation

The Muppets

Weekend Update

Braxton High School Prom Red Carpet

CFT: Sending Drinks

A Message from Dr. Anthony Fauci

Monologue

CFT: Rap Diss

Gershwin Celebration

Gemma & DJ Balls

Final Thoughts:-

• While not the classic that one would expect a sketch comedy legend like Keegan to get, this was still a pretty good & fun episode, not to mention a massive step up from the notorious episode that preceded it.
• Keegan was a phenomenal host as expected, coming off a natural, again due to his decades-long sketch comedy experience. And, was mostly well-utilized tonight aside from the two Cecily & Kate vanity pieces, and was cast in roles that fit his comedic style perfectly.

Up Next:-

• Season 46 comes to end with our host Anya-Taylor Joy and musical guest Lil Nas X, it’s also the end of the road to modern-day SNL legend Beck Bennett and first-year featured player Lauren Holt.