Amy Schumer gave a solid performance during a perfectly fine, but uneventful, episode of Saturday Night Live this past weekend. The hosting gig capped off a great few months for Schumer, who saw her feature debut, Trainwreck (which she also wrote), become a box office hit and her Comedy Central sketch comedy show, Inside Amy Schumer, won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series last month, beating out SNL in the process.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Schumer did a great job, given just how good she is on Inside Amy Schumer. The live concept of SNL didn’t hinder her performance, and she most likely gained some new fans with a really good monologue of stand-up material. Here’s hoping we see Schumer back in a season or two as a host for the second time.
Cold Open: Fox & Friends
There were a lot of comments on Facebook and Twitter about the liberal agenda of SNL after this episode, and it all started with this standard send-up of the Fox News morning show. We all know the routine of this sketch: The hosts all say stupid things, Brian Kilmeade (Bobby Moynihan) is portrayed as possibly having a mental disability, a couple of crazy guests appear (Pete Davidson and Kate McKinnon as Representatives Jason Chaffetz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz), and then they roll a list of corrections. They did not change-up the routine at all this week.
Best Sketch: Hot for Teacher 8
Kyle Mooney has created for himself a nice character that can appear in any number of sketches with “the bad actor.” It’s a versatile character, and Mooney’s quirkiness makes it endearing and hilarious at the same time. This time around, he’s a student in a porno who needs to stay after class for some “extra work” with his teacher (Schumer), but the two are continually interrupted by a fellow student (Aidy Bryant) who actually thinks she’s in a school and not on a porn set.
Since I know you’re wondering, yes, there is an actual porno titled Hot for Teacher 8. Because of course there is.
Second Best Sketch: Ford’s Theatre
On the other side of the bad actor spectrum is Schumer’s Mary Todd Lincoln reenactor at Ford’s Theater who decides she needs to ad-lib her lines (she actually didn’t have any), and save President Lincoln’s (Taran Killam) life moments before being shot by John Wilkes Booth (Mooney).
The night had a couple sketches that were slightly weirder than we see outside the typically odd “10 to 1” sketch, which was nice to see, and hopefully will be a continuing trend for the rest of the season.
Weekend Update Moment: Michael Che, Colin Jost, and Guns
The best Weekend Update ever for Che and Jost contained a really great discussion between the anchors about guns, which eventually led to a hilarious sight gag that continued to push the direction these two want Update to head in the face of racial and social issues plaguing the country. Che and Jost were better and funnier than either guest this week (Jay Pharaoh as Solomon the WU Travel Correspondent and McKinnon as Jost’s neighbor Ms. Santini).
This duo will always have its detractors because of who they followed or who was replaced, but through two episodes they are the best thing going on SNL right now, and it’s not really close.
Other Notes:
Guns were definitely the focus of this episode, with a “Guns” parody commercial sketch appearing and a rant from a six-year old (Schumer) at a city council meeting that included her asking to be allowed to carry her gun in school.
Beck Bennett and Jon Rudnitsky did not have a role in any of the night’s eight sketches.
Pete Davidson tweeted out a picture of himself backstage with cast members from the 1990’s Nickelodeon sketch comedy show, All That. The cast, which also featured Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, and Nick Cannon during its nine-year run, was in town for a reunion at the New York Comic Con:
Whaaaaaaaaaat losing my fuckin shit right now!!! pic.twitter.com/m71YBpwZ3k
— Pete Davidson (@petedavidson) October 11, 2015
Saturday Night Live returns on Oct. 17 with host Tracy Morgan and musical guest Demi Lovato.
