‘SNL’ Review: Host Jennifer Lopez Struts Her Stuff On Above Average Episode

HOST: Jennifer Lopez
MUSICAL GUEST: DaBaby
EPISODE: SNL Season 45, Episode 8
DATE: December 7, 2019

BIG PICTURE: A slightly funnier-than-average episode thanks to an unusual reliance on recurring characters and sketches. The cold open took on this week’s news of world leaders mocking the president by turning the incident into a gossipy teen drama, with special guests Jimmy Fallon as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Paul Rudd as French President Emmanuel Macron, and James Cordon as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Host Jennifer Lopez was joined for the monologue by the Radio City Rockettes, and in a filmed sketch by her fiancee, Alex Rodriguez.

MONOLOGUE/HOST: Lopez started her monologue wearing a tuxedo. She talked for a few minutes about the tremendous year she’s had, including fulfilling every Bronx girl’s dream of being proposed to by a New York Yankee. She then turned to her strengths and sang “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” with the Rockettes behind her. At the end of the monologue, the tuxedo ripped off, and she revealed herself to be wearing the infamous green Versace dress from the 2000 Grammy Awards.

Lopez performed admirably in the night’s sketches, if confounded by the cue cards a time or two. In general, the show took advantage of her looks, playing her against the jealousy of other women and the diminished looks of the inadequate men she was matched up against for laughs.

NOTABLE SKETCHES/PERFORMANCES: The cold open wasn’t the funniest ever, but at least the show took a different approach than just ripping a scenario straight from the news, and gave it a comedic twist. Watching Cordon’s Johnson try to pretend he’s the cool kid as Macron and Trudeau mock him was effective, as was his sneaking a sign onto Trump’s back that read, “Impeach Me.” The sketch got some solid laughs sending Trump to the nerd’s lunch table with Latvia, played by an uber-geeky Alex Moffat, but the biggest laugh of the sketch came from Kate McKinnon’s Angela Merkel as she tried to walk like a cool kid and instead resembled a character from a Monty Python sketch.

Mikey Day brought back Matt Shatt, the plain, unimpressive man with a knack for marrying the world’s hottest women, this time paired up with Lopez. As with the Margot Robbie sketch from 2016, Kenan Thompson played a TV announcer, here for a home makeover show, who can’t believe the hotness disparity. Shatt is an unemployed Smurf addict – he even has a Smurf tramp stamp – with open marriage rights that apply only to him. While Thompson and the show’s other correspondents can’t get over what they’re seeing – Beck Bennett asks if it’s a green card thing – the sketch cleverly escalates the disparity to bigger laughs each time, revealing incongruities such as that it was Lopez who asked Shatt for marriage, and that it took him three times to respond.

Pete Davidson brings back oblivious loser Chad, another character who has amazing women fall in love with him for no discernible reason, in a short film that saw Lopez as herself jeopardizing her relation to A-Rod, who appears briefly, for a kiss with her clueless roadie. Davidson debuted this character before his personal life was plastered all over the internet. Now, this has a much greater relevance.

Also funny was a modern-day Cinderella sketch positioned as a 1950s TV mystery, where Aidy Bryant and McKinnon are two homely sisters who’ve convinced their other sister, Lopez, that she’s really ugly, and try to hide her from a suitor. The hateful banter between Bryant and McKinnon worked well – Bryant offers McKinnon a drink to relax her, but it’s really a cup of pills – as does how everything they try to do to make Lopez fade into the woodwork, like putting her into an cage, only makes her sexier.

The filmed commercial parody Potty PM, initially a way for men to pee at night without getting out of bed, tricks the viewer, seemingly morphing into a sex toy ad before revealing itself as an indictment of the lack of knowledge men have about women’s anatomy. Watching Kyle Mooney trying to explain how women pee was the funniest moment of the episode.

WEEKEND UPDATE: A strong Weekend Update on the joke front found Colin Jost with some powerful punchlines. On the dust-up this week between Nancy Pelosi and a reporter, where she claimed that as a Catholic, she doesn’t hate anyone: “The Catholic approach wouldn’t be to impeach Trump, it would be to quietly transfer him to a different presidency.” And on Trump calling Trudeau two-faced, he said, “It’s true, I’ve definitely seen Trudeau with at least one other face,” before showing his blackface picture from college.

At the desk, McKinnon appeared as Pelosi, comparing herself to a lifeguard and Trump as a rich kid leaving a dookie in the pool, in a largely uninspired desk bit.

Then, Bennett returned to some laughs as Jules, the man who sees things a little differently, which in this case includes leaving CBD out for Santa along with a note saying, “You are enough,” and a ban from his own home because of a “cocaine misunderstanding.”

THE 10 TO 1 SLOT: Oof. SNL also brought back the personal trainers from earlier this season, for reasons I’ll never understand. It was trainer auditions for Barry’s Bootcamp, and to me this fell completely flat, with every trainer trying to outdo each other in outrageousness to no effect. Bowen Yang wants to turn his penis into a bicep. Cecily Strong will push her trainees like she pushed her boyfriend to get a vasectomy. Yawn. This is a sketch we don’t need to see again.

SNL returns next week with host Scarlett Johansson and musical guest Niall Horan.

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

Stream SNL Season 45 Episode 8 with host Jennifer Lopez on YouTube