Chris Rock got some help from Adam Sandler on Saturday Night Live
Chris Rock Enter Studio 8H and look like a new person. He uses his monologue to attack targets that are both expected and surprising. On the occasion of the old show turning fifty, Rock said “I want to congratulate Lorne Michaels into the great twenty-five years of Saturday night live.” sure Jonah Hill didn’t see the twist at the end of Rock’s joke about the alleged killer of the CEO and internet enthusiast Luigi Mangione. “If he looked like Jonah Hill, no one would care. They could have given him the chair. He will die.” Rock took a hit on creatine pimples Jake Paul for boxing Mike Tyson. “Who will he fight next, Morgan Freeman?” But Rock saved his sharpest material for skewering people holding their necks as if the president’s office had never seen the cruel and vulgar example of Donald Trump. “Come on man, this isn’t the most rewarding job in the world…I mean do you know what country we live in? You know how many rapists are in my wallet right now. A cup of coffee in America costs as much as seven rapists.” Trump’s friend Elon Musk hailed as the richest African-American in the world. And finally, Rock compliments Joe Biden for forgiving his son Hunter Biden. “I gotta hand it to Joe, he doesn’t move as fast as he used to, he doesn’t talk as fast as he used to, but that middle finger still works, boy.”
Alas, the Rock works best with a mic in hand. In the sketch, he will read the cue card like in the bottom row of the eye test. He appeared fine in “Mall Santas,” mocking white parents with their options of placing pictures of their children on the lap of a black Santa or a white Santa. “What’s your hobby?” he said. “What do you want me to do with this painting? Do you want to put it on the refrigerator or in the garage?” To throw shoppers into even more chaos, he upped the ante with additional options of a strange, ho ho ho Santa Claus Jane WicklineAnd Emil Wakim looking fat in a wife beater like an Arab Santa.
Just when the show seems in danger of stalling, Rock receives some supernatural help from his old friend. Adam Sandler. Sarah Sherman plays a miserable nurse that Rock’s doctor doesn’t want his team to take on. “When she cries, she sounds like a Victorian ghost,” he said, in one of the better lines of the night. The patient emerges from under the surgical blanket and wouldn’t you know it was Sandler wearing one of his signature Hawaiian shirts. Sandler gets to work spraying his blood in Sherman’s face, but then he goes to town spraying Nwodim Ego, Cung Duongand Wakim, to whom the ancients happily said “Glad you are on air, good luck, hope your parents are proud of you.” The highlight of the night was Sandler making Rock open his mouth wide to suck a mouthful of blood down the hatch. It was a wave big enough to shoot Rock’s glasses right off his face.
Now what to do with Weekend Update? The bad of Colin Jost And Michael Cheindividually, and especially as a duo, became increasingly boring. We seem stuck in the pattern of Jost reminding us of what a moody guy he was in high school, or of him being teased about marrying someone. Scarlett Johannson. Meanwhile, we can bet that Che will giggle at a lame misogynistic joke that the studio audience won’t laugh at. “A drone crashed into someone’s backyard,” he said tonight, referring to mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey, “but at least now we I know the person driving them is a scary woman.” When his punch line is especially weak and off, he has the annoying habit of saying “It’s the 90s, guys.” Next week we may have to follow the boys’ annual tradition of writing jokes for others to read. Che would chuckle as Jost recited lines that portrayed him as a cheerful white supremacist. Jost will act embarrassed. I’m afraid of it. These two great talents, the longest-running Update hosts in the show’s history, can’t have this job forever. Good things should end before they become bad.
The best part of Weekend Update is Wickline, which is supposed to be a commentary on the new Christmas special of Sabrina Carpenter. “I’m actually going to sing a song as her,” she explains with her characteristic lack of affect. “For the purposes of this song, I am her.” She then followed up the Gaylor theory with a brilliant song complaining about the Internet’s refusal to speculate that she, Carpenter, was secretly gay. “I get used to it Jenna Ortegapassionate, and everyone thinks I heard this song about Shawn Mendes”, she sang. “Why am I the only outspoken pop star who listens to them?” By my count, Wickline appeared three times on Weekend Update during the first half of her freshman season. Maybe one day we’ll see her wearing the anchor jacket.
