Disney’s third and final film in the latest Star Wars trilogy, “The Rise of Skywalker,” had its world premiere Monday night in Los Angeles with audience members quickly taking to Twitter afterward to share their reactions.
The review embargo for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” lifts on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 12:01 a.m. PST. However, the social media embargo broke immediately after the premiere.
(No spoilers from the film ahead).
Members of the press, including critics and reporters, had mostly mixed-to-positive reactions of J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm’s final chapter in the Skywalker saga, which stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac.
“‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ is certainly the most convoluted Star Wars,” Uproxx’s Mike Ryan wrote. “There is a lot I liked, but the first half gets so bogged down with exposition and new plot and doodads and beacons and transmitters, it feels like it should have been three movies on its own.”
Variety’s Adam B. Vary tweeted: “There’s so much movie in this movie. But its best moments are the quietest and most human.”
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“The emotional highs are spectacular, and there are a lot of payoffs (some earned, some not). But some choices feel like an unnecessary course-correct from The Last Jedi and some just plain don’t make sense,” said Laura Prudom of IGN.
Meanwhile, other writers like Rob Keyes of Screen Rant were more enthused: “It’s an immensely satisfying and massive end to the saga. It somehow addresses issues, problematic characters, and most unanswered questions from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi too.”
Erik Davis of Fandango was also feeling The Force: “Epic. All of it. #TheRiseofSkywalker is a terrific finale that is just stuffed with so much of everything. Action, adventure — answers!! — humor, heart, love, and grit.”
See more reactions below.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” opens nationwide Friday, Dec. 20.
I’m gonna need a minute to digest #StarWarsTheRiseofSkywalker. There’s so much movie in this movie. But its best moments are the quietest and most human. Giving this more of a think, though.
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is certainly the most convoluted Star Wars. There is a lot I liked, but the first half gets so bogged down with exposition and new plot and doodads and beacons and transmitters, it feels like it should have been three movies on its own.
I’m still processing #StarWars#TheRiseofSkywalker. The emotional highs are spectacular, and there are a lot of payoffs (some earned, some not). But some choices feel like an unnecessary course-correct from The Last Jedi and some just plain don’t make sense. Need to see it again pic.twitter.com/NcgBbAeCVx
Epic. All of it. #TheRiseofSkywalker is a terrific finale that is just stuffed with so much of everything. Action, adventure — answers!! — humor, heart, love, and grit. I spent the entire second half with tears in my eyes – a wonderful way to end the Skywalker story pic.twitter.com/K2NhHSGWzM
I’m emotional, overwhelmed, surprised, shocked & stunned. More than anything, I’m happy. Thanks for coming through one more time, Star Wars.#TheRiseOfSkywalker
(There are no spoilers in this post for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)
Hype levels are at critical now that we’re just a couple days away from “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” hitting theaters, and the week’s festivities kicked off Monday night when the film got its world premiere in Los Angeles.
Finally, those in attendance are out of the theater and tweeting their reactions, and, well, those reactions are mostly what you’d expect from people attending the premiere of a new “Star Wars” movie. For the most part, the responses are very positive, though some are less positive than others.
The reactions thus far have come in two main flavors: folks voicing overwhelmingly effusive praise for the film, and folks who say that the movie is a whole lot and they’re gonna have to think about it. It’s not extremely surprising that we’d get those types of responses at the premiere — it’s unlikely that anyone at the premiere would straight up trash the movie, so this is the range I personally expected.
We want to reiterate here that there are no spoilers in the tweets below — unless you consider “I liked it” or “I’m not sure how I feel” to constitute plot and story details. Now let’s get into it.
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is certainly the most convoluted Star Wars. There is a lot I liked, but the first half gets so bogged down with exposition and new plot and doodads and beacons and transmitters, it feels like it should have been three movies on its own.
All I can say is “wow.”#StarWars: #TheRiseOfSkywalker is many things: horrifying, hopeful, violent, lowkey horny, and full of the right kind of fan service.
But most of all, it’s a fitting ending for this incredible, 40+ year-long saga. pic.twitter.com/pd2GEwI7O3
I’ve seen #StarWarsTheRiseofSkywalker. It’s… a lot. There’s a lot I like and some I loved but overall my feelings are pretty mixed. It felt like an apology for The Last Jedi in some ways and a sequel to The Force Awakens in many, which I found frustrating. pic.twitter.com/6m8sOQWhTx
I’m gonna need a minute to digest #StarWarsTheRiseofSkywalker. There’s so much movie in this movie. But its best moments are the quietest and most human. Giving this more of a think, though.
Epic. All of it. #TheRiseofSkywalker is a terrific finale that is just stuffed with so much of everything. Action, adventure — answers!! — humor, heart, love, and grit. I spent the entire second half with tears in my eyes – a wonderful way to end the Skywalker story pic.twitter.com/K2NhHSGWzM
I saw #RiseofSkywalker. It was a movie with people in it! Things happened! @ThatKevinSmith was two rows behind me and enhanced my moviegoing experience tenfold. These are my spoiler-free words!
#StarWars#TheRiseOfSkwalker reaction: One word: EPIC! A satisfying crowd pleasing adventure, and a fitting end to the saga! My favorite of the three! Can't wait to see it again!
#StarWars#TheRiseOfSkywalker is a lot. It’s a big, giant movie with a lot of spectacle and high stakes and it’s definitely going to start a conversation (or a lot of conversations) among fans.
Just stepped out of #TheRiseofSkywalker. It’s an immensely satisfying and MASSIVE end to the saga. It somehow addresses issues, problematic characters, and most unanswered questions from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi too. pic.twitter.com/TMKeXCXuUx
I’m emotional, overwhelmed, surprised, shocked & stunned. More than anything, I’m happy. Thanks for coming through one more time, Star Wars.#TheRiseOfSkywalker
I am still processing #TheRiseofSkywalker but omggggg I’m so happy and sad at the same time!!!!! JJ Abrams you’re my hero! Thank you so much for this movie. pic.twitter.com/dMmv3k8N6Z
#StarWars#TheRiseOfSkywalker…OH MY GOD! I am absolutely blown away! I’ve never been so satisfied by a film. This is the end of an era and a franchise that has defined my life and this did it justice in a way I didn’t imagine it could. You WILL cry…. pic.twitter.com/Jfx5bzdZOO
If all these tweets are getting you wound up with anticipation, don’t worry. “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” hits theaters on Thursday evening.
15 Best Stories Ever Told in the 'Star Wars' Universe (Photos)
With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture.
These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
15. The Rise of Admiral Daala in the "Jedi Academy Trilogy"
After "Return of the Jedi" in the version of the "Star Wars" continuity before Disney bought Lucasfilm, the Empire fractured into a bunch of splinter governments led by self-proclaimed rulers who would make up new titles for themselves like "high admiral" or "warlord" while still maintaining the pretense of Imperial legitimacy. Daala (a woman!) decided to try to bring it back together, and eventually was able to do so -- for a short time at least. Her brilliant machinations were a compelling as hell tale, and one of author Kevin J Anderson's only good contributions to "Star Wars" lore.
14. The Black Fleet Crisis
This is not referring to the "Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy" as a whole, since two of the three main narrative arcs in those books are unrelated to the event in "Star Wars" lore known as the Black Fleet Crisis.
The Crisis is great because it's the sort of cool scifi story that checks a lot of boxes simultaneously. In particular: unknowable alien force you've never heard of, weird galactic political intrigue with lots of backstabs from said alien force, and a grand mystery regarding how those aliens came to power in the first place. It's a really interesting scenario.
13. Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice
The "Star Wars" universe is full of stories about good apprentices going bad and wreaking havoc on the good guys, but we've very rarely gotten the inverse. That made "The Force Unleashed" a really novel experience. You play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the years between the original and prequel trilogies. You're a dark side force user and soldier for the Empire who goes rogue in a really epic way.
12. "X-Wing Alliance"
You're Ace, and you work for your family shipping company. You fly a freighter doing pretty boring things, until your dad's sympathies for the Rebel Alliance come back to bite the whole family in the ass.
You know how this goes: the Empire brings the hammer down, you join the Rebellion as a fighter pilot. But maybe the entire family isn't on board with facing down the Empire. This is the only "Star Wars" space combat simulator that gives you a personal story, and it turned out to be a great idea.
11. Admiral Thrawn
Not specifically thinking of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy here, but the story of Thrawn's life as a whole and his lasting legacy in the Expanded Universe. This guy was such a genius that even a decade after his death the plans he'd laid out were threatening to tear apart the fledgling New Republic. His fingerprints are everywhere.
10. The Battle of Borleaias
Late in the "New Jedi Order," famed Rebel hero Wedge Antilles is charged with holding the planet Borleias from the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's one hell of a thing. Massively outgunned, Wedge pulls a whole lot of seat-of-your-pants gambits out of his ass -- and this pair of books, authored by the late fan favorite Aaron Allston, is full of great and witty dialogue of the sort you just never got from other "Star Wars" authors.
9. Wedge and Friends Go to Adumar
As the war against the Empire winds down, Rebel hero Wedge Antilles and pals Tycho, Hobbie and Janso, are sent as diplomats to a newly discovered planet full of people who pretty don't give a shit about anyone who isn't a fighter pilot. If that sounds like a sitcom scenario, that's because it basically is. And it's great, incessantly funny and very awkward -- a great little side story that's as witty as they get in this universe.
8. Wraith Squadron
The story of the Wraiths, told over three books, is unique among "Star Wars" stories in a lot of ways. It follows famed Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles as he assembles a hybrid starfighter/footsoldier squadron of emotionally unstable washouts -- the idea being that such a group, when given some operational leeway, might approach apparently normal war scenarios in really unpredictable ways, and that's exactly what happens. It's the most human of all the "Star Wars" stories, full of truth.
7. The Tale of the Imperial Agent in "The Old Republic"
Many of the most interesting "Star Wars" stories are those that focus on characters who can't use the Force, and this is one of those. You play as a spy for the Sith Empire (thousands of years before the movies), doing awesome wartime spy stuff. And you get caught up in a galactic conspiracy to destroy both the Republic and Empire -- by a secret society tired of Force-using factions starting all these galaxy-spanning wars. It's a compelling-as-hell hook.
6. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Revan
Thousands of years before the movies, Revan was a Jedi who led the Republic military against invading Mandalorians -- only to turn to the dark side and wage his own war on the Republic, before turning away from the dark and defeating his own armies. That's the very short, very incomplete version. The story of Revan is thoroughly fascinating and ends up lasting hundreds of years across two video games ("Knights of the Old Republic) and a pile of books and comics.
5. The Jabba's Palace Heist in "Return of the Jedi"
It's become clear in the last few years that a lot of folks never really got what Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie were doing during the first portion of "Return of the Jedi" -- and now we have all these thinkpieces about how it was reckless and haphazard. But no, that shit was an impeccable heist. They had a plan, and they pulled it off flawlessly and in style.
4. The Dark Wars
This story was told in the video game "Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords" -- a former Jedi who was exiled from the Order returns to known space only to find the Jedi gone from civilization and a pair of mysterious Sith lords wreaking havoc all over. It's a rare "Star Wars" noir story, and it's quite a doozy.
3. "Traitor"
In the '90s the "Star Wars" Expanded Universe got really moralistic and stuffy, and "Traitor" was a total refutation of that approach. It's the darkest "Star Wars" story ever written, but it serves a positive agenda in the end: one that asserts that maybe the Force isn't black and white and the Jedi don't need to stand around wondering about the moral implications of every little thing they do. It was a really great change for storytelling in the EU, and it's nice that it appears "The Last Jedi" might take a similar patch.
2. "Star Wars"
The one that started it all is a silly, not-particularly-well-thought-out movie, but it's tight as hell and covers all the ground it needs to. It establishes a completely new universe so casually, making it feel from the very beginning that this is a real, lived-in place. Everything you need to know about what's going on is right there.
1. "The Empire Strikes Back"
The lesson J.J. Abrams and friends should have learned from "The Empire Strikes Back" widely considered the best "Star Wars" movie, is that you don't make a"Star Wars" movie that stands the test of time by aping previous ones -- you have to go somewhere new. "Empire" functions as a total counter to the first movie, and that's why it's a perfect sequel.
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There are more “Star Wars” stories than even you can imagine, even if you think you can imagine quite a bit. These are the best ones
With 40 years of movies, TV shows, comics, video games, novels and reference books, you'd be hard-pressed to ever run out of stories to read about the "Star Wars" universe, past and present. It's a big universe out there, and every story told in it is connected to all the others. Big stories are told as many different smaller ones, and small stories are told as chunks of a bigger picture.
These are the best chunks, big or small, in the history of the "Star Wars" universe.
Spoilers for the full season of HBO’s “Watchmen” follow:
“Now: We have a god to kill.”
It is a bold statement that Lady Trieu (Hong Chau) makes in the finale of HBO’s “Watchmen” — boldness being part of the job description for a comic-book mad genius. It is also a kind of mission statement for this daring, breathtaking series, which in one season took American history and pop mythology, dismantled it down to its smallest atoms and reconstructed it in a form that was familiar yet wholly new.
It’s hard to overstate how risky, how primed for disaster, was the challenge that the creator, Damon Lindelof, signed up for. First, to adapt a notoriously hard-to-adapt subversive superhero comic. Then to lovingly, impishly subvert that subversion, extending the story backward and forwards in time. To do all that while reframing the story as an antiracist pulp thriller, weighty without being pompous or exploitative. Oh — and could it also be electrifying and playful and fun?
Amazingly it could, culminating in “See How They Fly,” a mind-bending, gravity-defying finale that successfully landed this improbable airship.
Like a fine watch or a chicken’s egg, the symbols the finale returned to, this season was a marvel of self-contained engineering. It succeeded, first, in craft and performance, with visual invention and memorable work from Chau, Regina King, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons, Louis Gossett Jr. and many others. It set up a domino chain of mysteries that the finale satisfyingly paid off.
But it also created something more: an urgent entertainment that was as unignorable as the pealing of an alarm bell.
Alan Moore, the creator of the graphic novel, did not endorse this project, any more than he has other adaptations of his work. Yet Lindelof’s approach — to honor it by taking it apart and questioning the appeal of masked avengers in the first place — was very much in the spirit of the original.
Reinventing “Watchmen” by making its subject white supremacy rather than the Cold War — not to mention making its hero Angela Abar (King), an avenging black police-ninja — also meshes with Moore’s critique of the superhero genre, as he put it in a 2016 interview.
“Save for a smattering of nonwhite characters (and nonwhite creators),” Moore said, “these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s ‘Birth of a Nation’ as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”
Lindelof (who wisely assembled a diverse writers’ room for the job) made a form of that argument. Then he complicated it and recomplicated it.
One of the first things we see in “Watchmen” is not “Birth of a Nation” but its imagined silent-movie antithesis: “Trust in the Law!,” the story of the black Oklahoma marshal Bass Reeves, playing in a Tulsa movie theater that is about to burn in the white-terrorist massacre of 1921.
The boy sitting in that theater grows up to be Will Reeves (Gossett), who takes the marshal’s surname and becomes America’s first superhero, Hooded Justice, under cover of a lynching victim’s mask. His “origin story,” as he calls it in the finale, is horrific. Yet there’s also a heartbreaking optimism in the idea that this child would grow up with the trust — or at least furious determination — that the law might win out, even if it took a century.
The history and present of American racism figure directly in “Watchmen”: the use of nostalgia as a literal drug; the Seventh Kavalry’s resentment at being expected to “say sorry” for the “alleged” sins of the past; the circled-thumb-and-finger-to-forehead gesture of the racist secret society Cyclops, which resembles the real-life white-power appropriation of the “O.K.” symbol.
But “Watchmen” also asked: What if black people were among the ones wearing the masks? What if a black man — a black policeman — were the first masked hero? Why would he need to shield his identity, even more than Clark Kent? And would the subterfuge work so well that — as we saw on the show-within-a-show “American Hero Story” — later generations would assume he must have been a white man?
All this played out in the sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being,” which reimagined the origin of Moore’s Hooded Justice, astonishingly taking that character’s symbols — the hood and the noose — and tying them to the dark history of lynching in such a way that it seemed as if that reading was always there, begging to be revealed.
The “Watchmen” endgame then one-upped this gambit, remaking perhaps the original comics’ most memorable character, Dr. Manhattan, revealed here not to be in exile on Mars but living incognito as Angela’s husband, Cal (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).
The image itself, of an African American man as the azure Übermensch — as both black and blue, to quote Fats Waller — was a striking statement, reimagining the universe’s one superbeing like an icon out of Afrofuturistic art.
Now the show was asking: What does it mean to give god a black man’s face? What if the very people once left out of superhero stories have the greatest claim of all to their themes and ideals? Who has a greater stake in truth, justice and the American way — an exile from Krypton, or the black child who fled a ruined movie theater, yet didn’t forsake the words of Bass Reeves?
In the end, “Watchmen” returned to the subject of power: Who holds it, who can be trusted with it and what should be done with it.
Superpowers are obviously horrifying in the hands of evildoers; hence the story of the Seventh Kavalry trying to steal Dr. Manhattan’s power, the show’s most conventionally comic-book-villain plot.
But “Watchmen” is also suspicious of those, like Veidt and Lady Trieu, who want to use power to impose their idea of good on the world. That opposition — toxic hate and toxic idealism — is paralleled in the background, in the fictional, quasi-autocratic presidencies of Richard Nixon and Robert Redford.
But dispassionate withdrawal, as represented by Dr. Manhattan’s retreat from the world, is no answer either. “He was a good man,” Will says. “But considering what he could do, he could have done more.”
Can anybody be trusted with absolute power? Can it ever be employed in a way that won’t create new and greater problems? “Watchmen” doesn’t answer these questions. But by ending with the suggestion that Dr. Manhattan could transfer his powers to Angela (incubated, like a vaccine, in a raw egg), it offers a suggestion as to who might be the best kind of person to entrust power to.
Maybe, the ending suggests, someone who didn’t ask for it. Maybe someone who has watched god and her only love die simultaneously. Maybe a black woman who has swallowed the memories of a century of injustice and persecution and struggle, who has (through an egg and a pill) literally taken into her body both the ultimate power and the ultimate understanding of powerlessness.
We are left, to wonder what Angela will do and should do from here. In a quintessentially Lindelof move, the screen cuts to black the instant that Angela’s sole touches the surface of her swimming pool, to test whether she can, like Dr. Manhattan, walk on water.
It’s tempting to call this a “cliffhanger” though I have no reason to believe the show intends to resolve it. You could call it a “tease,” but I don’t think that’s the spirit of it at all.
Instead, “Watchmen” leaves us at the electric moment of transformation — the precise instant when foot meets water, flesh meets the elemental, mortality meets immortality.
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Aidy Bryant dressed as a magical snowman opened NBC's variety show on Saturday saying that it's almost Christmas and "folks in America seem more divided than ever."
"But if we listen in to some dinner conversations tonight, I bet we'd find out we have more in common than we realize," Bryant's snowman said. "And now we can listen because I hacked into three Nest home cams."
The first holiday dinner "SNL" took audiences to was in San Francisco.
"I'm so happy everyone flew here for the holidays, and I'm even more happy that they did it, they're impeaching Trump," Cecily Strong's character said at the dinner table.
The next dinner was in Charleston, South Carolina.
"Well, they did it. They're impeaching Trump," Beck Bennett's character said. "I'm sorry, it's a disgrace. What crime did he even commit?!"
The final dinner "SNL" looked in on was in Atlanta.
"Dad, c'mon, you're going to rile everyone up," Chris Redd's character said.
"Well, I'm just asking, do y'all think 'Bad Boys III' is going to be good or what?" Kenan Thompson's character said to his family.
Redd's character said he'd rather talk about politics instead.
"Oh, you mean how Trump is definitely getting impeached and then definitely getting re-elected? I'm good," Thompson's character responded.
The sketch then bounced around each of the three dinners in the cities showing the differences between each.
"I just don't understand who on Earth could vote for Trump after this," the family in San Francisco said.
Then the family in Charleston could be seen saying "how could anyone not for Trump after this?"
The sketch then cut to the Thompson's character in Atlanta asking his family, "who do you think is going to get voted off 'The Mask Singer' next week?"
"SNL's" cold open then ended with Bryant's snowman.
"Now, those three families may seem different, but you see they have one important thing in common: they live in states where their votes don't matter," she said. "None of them live in the three states that will decide our election."
Climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg, who was played by Kate McKinnon, then appeared on screen to warn people about climate change.
"I also have a Christmas message," McKinnon's Thunberg said. "In 10 years, this snowman won't exist! Her home will be a puddle. Santa, reindeer, the North Pole, all of it, gone! The ice caps will melt and elves will drown."
McKinnon's Thunberg then wished the audience a "merry maybe our last Christmas to all."
Bryant's snowman and McKinnon's Thunberg then said the show's signature opening, "Live from New York... It's Saturday night!"
Michael Che, Scarlett Johansson, Colin JostScreenshot: Saturday Night Live
“It’s like saving the world, too, just on a smaller level.”
“I’m not an actress, I’m a [much bigger] star [than my SNL-writer fiancé]!!”
Scarlett Johansson’s sixth hosting gig came with the added baggage of her now being engaged to the show’s co-head writer, something the show (apart from a center stage smooch during the goodnights) refreshingly didn’t address all that much. Johansson’s monologue played around with the public’s curiosity about the match by having her embrace Jost’s Update partner Michael Che warmly during a moment of crisis, while barely noticing Jost standing nearby, and joking about how the pair will ever make ends meet should she do so bad a job hosting that Jost gets fired. On a show all too often willing to let its backstage news spill out into self-aware cuteness on-air, it honestly could have gone a lot worse.
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The monologue itself was the half-funny sort of meta-joke that makes one wish for an actual funny premise, as half the SNL cast (plus the backstage llama) get Thanos-snapped out of existence while Johansson explains that all the special effects dusting going on is from that Marvel movie she did. Not the last one, but the one before that. Beck Bennett, before himself winking into nothingness (while complaining, “Who’s gonna play the dumb idiot . . ?”) winks at the lameness of the bit, asking the host if this was a leftover idea from a few years ago, which, again, is the sort of “we’re so lame” joke that gets its chuckles at the idea that nobody at SNL seems very good at writing monologues these days. (The relief that must sweep the writers room whenever a capable standup hosts the show.) Still, there were a few better pieces of backstage in-joking, as Chris Redd bemoans the loss of Mikey Day (it’s actually Alex Moffat), and Pete Davidson (absent from the show again, except for this bit) turned out to be the possessor of the Infinity Gauntlet, and clearly grossed out Johansson when he went in for a hug. And Kenan—who had a big show all around—capped it off best by getting resentful at Davidson’s blithe explanation that, when you’ve been on SNL as long as he has, you can take a few shows off.
Johansson remains an enthusiastically game Saturday Night Live host. Clearly into playing broad comic characters with big, working class accents, like the rapping Santa’s elf alongside Kenan here, she’s yet the sort of big star whose considerable talents slot comfortably into whatever roles come her way. She’s professional and confident without ever being especially endearing, but—Jost factor aside—it’s no secret why SNL continues to have her back. As to how the show—now considering the Jost factor—would address some of the actresses’ variousrecent, verypubliccontroversies? Yeah, don’t hold your breath, as the sliver of an opening Aidy’s elf on the shelf gave before being dusted, asking if Johansson’s been good this year, went nowhere before the cutesy gimmick washed it all away.
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For more on why the Colin Jost-ScarJo match might be a better match than people seem to think, stay tuned.
Best/Worst sketch of the night
With the news breaking Saturday that the Hallmark Channel had bowed to pressure from vastly-inflating-its-membership hate group One Million Moms and pulled an ad depicting—gasp—two women getting married, the fact that SNL had another “ladies network” game show sketch in the pipeline was just a happy coincidence. And while it’s no Lifetime’s What’s Wrong With Tanya?, that’s no crime, since that remains one of the funniest damned things the show’s ever done. Dissecting Hallmark’s signature brand of movies about bland white C-listers exchanging “dry kisses” in snowy gazebos might not be groundbreaking stuff (although occasionally it is), but the Christmas-themed dating show A Winter Boyfriend For Holiday Christmas had enough off-center gags to make the Hallmark-bashing consistently funny. It’s all in the bafflingly ubiquitous details, like Johansson’s big city reporter being assigned a story about how Santa Claus isn’t real from her home in a New York made up of “stock footage that still has the Twin Towers in it.” Or how each of her three prospective (white) suitors click snugly into one of the network’s cosily acceptable holiday stereotypes (secret prince, hunky ghost, secretly Santa). Alex Moffatt’s prince hails from the “vaguely Europe” kingdom of Caucasia, while his one black friend (Redd) urges Scarlett’s contestant to marry him in “hip, urban” style, but breaks down immediately upon being asked anything about himself. (“I don’t have a backstory!,” he cries, fleeing.) Aidy’s host drops the cryptic detail in passing that, if Johansson doesn’t pick a suitor in time, “Christmas is cancelled and the killer goes free,” and reminds everyone, “the true meaning of Christmas is husband.” As for the newsworthy corporate caving to right-wing bigotry, she also tossed in a “Stay straight out there” as a breezy goodbye. (Always points for writing Saturday’s news into the show on the fly.)
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There were two egregious product integration ads tonight. (Sure, we all want fewer actual commercials in the show, but at what cost, people?) Yet, both were actually pretty decent, although, as is my puny act of rebellion each week, I shall omit the names of the corporate beneficiaries of Lorne’s pandering. Fight the power, etc.
The [department store chain] commercial threw [department store chain]’s name all over the screen, and had a would-be heartwarming button at the end that could serve as straight-up [department store chain] advertising slogan. That being said, the sketch itself was another of the show’s perversely warm holiday ads, where chipper commercialism and clichéd sentiment are shown to necessarily wallpaper over the more down-to-earth tribulations of the season, especially when it comes to parenting. The fact that all holiday clothes are itchy, nut-pinching, too-hot, overly elaborate frippery that all kids hate and all parents revile is carried across pretty delightfully by the cast, all playing beleaguered parents just trying to get through the damned day without completely losing it over red-faced, miserable kids and the occasional, clothing-caused bathroom mishap. Still, there are enough blatant product placements and branding going on that [department store chain] isn’t likely to complain.
The [hotel chain] sketch not only opened on a shot of one of the chain’s hotels, but saw Ego Nwodim conspicuously naming [hotel chain] at the outset, in case [discount hotel chain] felt it wasn’t getting its money’s worth in the ensuing sketch about after-hours hot tubbing and happy singing stripper ghosts. SNL’s really leaning into the holiday spirit this year (Eddie Murphy and Lizzo are in-house for the actual Christmas show next week), with Chris Redd and Nwodim’s late-night soak interrupted by Cecily Strong and Johansson’s deceased 1970s pole dancers who sing an untroubled holiday song about how they died in that very hot tub. (Quaaludes, a game of chicken, and an ill-advised underwater staring contest with their boss all contributed.) The song itself is a low-key affair, with Strong—this cast’s polymath and stealth star—carrying most of the tuneful load. Here, too, the cosy predictability of the sentiment is undercut by some loopy weirdness, as the strippers—again, without fuss—tell their new friends that they’re headed back to hell after their once-a-year musical reprieve.
Strong soloed in her other standout musical number tonight, a filmed music video sure to pop up on the annual SNL Christmas specials for a while to come. The inherent cloying creepiness of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is transformed, in Strong’s little girl voice, into an even more unsettling tale of childhood voyeurism, as she witnesses her mom’s smooching play out into her parents’ fetish for Craig’s List Santa cuckold-murder roleplaying. Strong’s great, as ever, and the whole thing concludes with about as inclusive a message as such a scenario can achieve, with the little girl resigning herself to the knowledge that “We all each have a thing.”
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Weekend Update update
The best bit of tonight’s Update came from Che, who, halting a joke about 37 percent of Republicans supposedly thinking that Donald Trump is a better president than George Washington, veered away from any expected punchlines, in two separate directions. Che noting that, since—despite being a ridiculous and terrible person—Trump doesn’t actually own slaves is the sort of outside-in comic thinking that Che does so well. And putting Jost on the spot by asking him who’s a better comedian—“Colin Limbaugh Jost” or Bill Cosby—carries the logic of the joke to the end zone, Che’s offscreen, “The answer’s Cosby, by the way,” just spiking the ball triumphantly. That’s a good joke.
As for the rest of the Trump material, I’ll quote Tracy Jordan in saying, “I don’t want to go off on a rant here . . .” Still, here I go. Jost’s smirky centrism, as given its unfiltered expression on Update, marks SNL’s current political comedy more and more as this criminal shitshow of an administration slouches on toward authoritarianism. So many sketches of late (and virtually all of them tonight) regard dismissive sneering as hip both-sides virtue. It’s a stance, I suppose, although for a show that revels in its own largely overrated legacy as an irreverent truth-to-power comedic force on American TV, it’s not so much dispiriting as calculatedly glib. I’m put in mind of Jost smirkily hammering progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year for suggesting that, just maybe, mega-corporation Amazon’s exorbitant demands in exchange for opening a New York headquarters constituted unethical extortion of the city from one of the most lucrative companies on Earth. You know, since, just last week, Amazon announced a new New York expansion (with no such superfluous kickbacks). Back then, Jost’s glibness about AOC hating jobs for New Yorkers ignored deeper analysis in favor of lazy punchlines. Tonight, SNL had such Jost-ian fingerprints all over it.
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In a week where the House has officially set up Donald Trump to be just the fourth U.S. president to face a formal impeachment, Jost’s top-of-Update jokes all took the same smirky tack. Democrats will “lose twice in one year.” Congressman and Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is dumb for thinking that the legacies of those who continue to countenance the many things Trump’s done will ever matter. (Oh, Nadler’s also ugly.) Che threw in his own too-cool-so-give-a-shit jokes, too, although his dig at Democrats for still playing by the rules when “literally nothing matters any more” at least carried a little conviction behind it. And him urging broke former candidate Kamala Harris to rob a bank (“Do you want this or no?”), again, carried the bit with some originality. As for Trump—the 73-year-old world leader who, among other things, mocked 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg for getting the Time cover he’s photoshopped himself into in the past—we got a fat joke.
Here’s the part where—prepare to be shocked—I admit once more that I genuinely despise Donald Trump, just so those accusing me of that can move onto something else. Yup, hate the guy, in all his baby-caging, tax-cheating, treason-courting, sex-criminal bigotry. But that isn’t what this is about. I’m sure there are plenty more writers and performers on Saturday Night Live who can’t stand the guy, for a variety of reasons. For all its milquetoast political posturing over the years, SNL is hardly some secret haven for subversive right-wingers. I’ve gone into it before, but, for someone who’s now watched literally every episode of Saturday Night Live ever made, the real enemy of good, consistently insightful political comedy on Saturday Night Live is a flawed understanding of what it means to “satirize both sides.” Adopting the pose that nothing really matters and it’s too square to give a shit is, itself, a political stance—and a facile and harmful one. Marketing yourself as a cutting edge satirical force (which SNL has done from the start) carries far more responsibility to the craft of comedy—and courage—than SNL has traditionally shown.
Jumping ahead to tonight’s cold open (which should be in the political comedy section below, but I’m rolling), the joke that there are different political opinions among American families isn’t the problem. It’s that the sketch equates the offputting stridency of both Trump supporters and Trump opponents as equally invalid, as if the things that each are responding to in this administration’s actions were irrelevant. I’m going to go ahead and say that that’s bullshit—when one family (which includes an interracial gay couple) is railing against Trump, their objections aren’t as worthy of mockery as the all-white Republican clan whose imperious dad calls Nancy Pelosi a “libtard commie.” The San Francisco liberals insisting on gender neutral pronouns are just as ridiculous, in the sketch’s metric, for caring about something as are the South Carolina conservatives for equating the Constitutionally provided mechanisms for attempting to remove a corrupt would-be dictator with “a coup.” That the black Atlanta family has a more battle-hardened and pessimistic view of the current situation is some more interesting shading, but Kenan’s dad pronouncing his certainty that impeachment is only going to guarantee Trump reelection comes off—echoing in Jost’s later Update material—as reinforcement of the “nothing matters” vibe. As for the sketch as a whole, I don’t know that Aidy as the Burl Ives snowman from the Rankin-Bass specials conceit ever finds a reason to exist, although at least things end up by pointing out the ridiculousness of the Electoral College ensuring that the politically engaged, if divided, people in more populous states’ votes won’t matter as much as “1,000 people in Wisconsin who won’t think about the election until the day of.” But even there, the joke’s on those rubes whose own brand of not giving a shit just isn’t as cool as SNL’s.
Oh, Kyle Mooney goofed around as an Entourage-douchey Baby Yoda, and Bowen Yang brought back his enthusiastically bitchy Chinese trade official Chen Biao. Yang is not messing around in his first season as featured performer, and bringing back his first big splash character for another enjoyable go-round is a good sign. Dunking on Trump and his own repressive government in turn, Yang’s Biao’s still reveling in his newfound power in the ongoing trade war, even as his flamboyant personality chafes at China’s rigidity. Not as surprising as the first time, but that’s how that goes, and Yang’s asides attacking Americans’ for resenting China’s lax views of intellectual property were pure Yang. Nobody needs your CBD lip gloss, Ainsley.
“What do you call that act?” “‘The Californians!’”—Recurring sketch report
Chen Biao, the dog-mindreader machine (see below). Also, Kenan Thompson’s Charlie, who once more giveth as he taketh away the laughs. On the plus side, Kenan. Playing the garrulous old drunk doorman of an office building, Thompson is in his wheelhouse, grinning and charming his way though as the sort of old school nightmare that the uptight white people (and Yang) of his workplace choose to find endearing. On the major debit side, this sketch once more uses Kenan’s charisma to disguise a particularly ugly little takedown of those pesky, oversensitive types, what with their demands for a harassment-free workplace, and human dignity and all. Again, the scales are balanced in the wrong place, making the point that fired executive Johansson’s drunken holiday party sins (slut-shaming, badgering her one non-white colleague about “where he’s really from”) are just small potatoes next to Charlie’s more open philandering, catchphrase come-ons, and openly swigging from a flask while he downloads porn on the company computer. Neither are acceptable, but the sketch posits that PC types are too permissive of charmingly exotic old black men’s inappropriateness while stridently overreacting to their boss’ piddling transgressions. Kenan can’t help but get laughs, but the sketch is garbage.
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“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
The Netflix show about the publicly unlikely marriage of Kate McKinnon’s zealously shameless Trump apologist Kellyanne Conway and incessant Trump Twitter critic George Conway (Beck Bennett) at least confirms in comic form what I’ve always suspected—for these two publicity hungry loudmouths, it’s all a sex thing. Here, the sketch is balanced correctly, in that it doesn’t ignore the charge that both of these GOP operatives clearly get from their seemingly incompatible online battling, while noting that the fact that one could remain married to someone so supposedly diametrically opposed to everything you believe in means that there’s a whole lot of grandstanding going on. (Both of them scream at a homeless person to get a job, an accurate representation of how, despite their equally lucrative and camera-hogging roles in their public squabble, they’re both terrible people.)
And then there’s the return of Johansson’s inventor and her unexpectedly right-wing pug. (Again, someone read some market research that said every SNL just has to have at least one dog in a sketch. Not a complaint, just an observation.) Once more, the joke is on those hysterical liberals, whose facile hatred of Donald Trump needs to be set straight by a Beck Bennett-voiced canine who spouts Fox News talking points with a disdainful authority the stammering Trump-haters just can’t respond to. And once more it’s sneering disdain masquerading as both-sides-ism, with the dog telling everyone, via translating helmet, that Trump’s just too canny for those silly Dems running around caring about the rule of law and such. The shittiness of the sketch isn’t that it’s pro-Trump (again, I imagine very few SNL-ers on the creative team would describe themselves as such), but its contention that all this impeachment stuff is just the futile protestations of those too unhip to know that nothing they do will make any difference. Remember—caring and trying are for suckers.
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I am hip to the musics of today
Niall Horan, having broken away form the other televised talent show runners-up he was packaged with as One Direction, got the requisite swoony cheers from his fans in the audience (and a heart symbol hand gesture from Johansson) for his two songs. Inoffensive pop, inoffensive balladry, although the line in “Nice To Meet Ya” (“I want your number tattooed on my arm in ink, I swear”) always made me giggle thinking about prettyboy dummy Kyle’s unintentional Nazi anthem, “My Struggle,” on Party Down.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
With no scene-gobbling guests stars for a change, almost everyone got some decent screen time. (Save for Pete, who I can only hope is doing okay.) But this was a horserace between Kenan and Cecily, with Strong’s musical showcase just edging Kenan’s duet as hip-hopping Santa’s elves alongside Johansson. (The sketch itself played the people doing inappropriate things in front of kids card without enough laughs to bring it home, although the detail of husband Bennett’s surprising familiarity with gender-fluid musical performers at least got viewers Googling Todrick Hall, which is nice.)
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The MAGA dog thing was the actual ten-to-one, but, apart from the lousiness of it, recurring sketches don’t belong here. The sketch about Bowen Yang and Johansson’s Heimlich poster models being swamped with kitchen pro admirers was next-to-last, and, if it didn’t completely come together, the premise made it the rightful heir to the final’s spot’s conceptual comedy legacy.
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Stray observations
The Hallmark bridegrooms, asked to identify a menorah, try “Christmas fork,” and “Santa’s trident,” before Beck Bennett’s hunky ghost gets credit for “a dreidel.”
Kenan’s Atlanta dad, after Bennett’s Republican thanks God that NFL players aren’t kneeling to protest police violence any more, thanks his Lord for the three black quarterbacks who’ve beaten Tom Brady this year.
Yang, disappearing in the monologue, blasts SNL for killing off its first Asian cast member, predicting, “Twitter’s gonna eat you alive.”
Che, in the second timely Hallmark swipe of the night, mocks those “One Million” Moms, saying that, they really don’t need to worry about their sons who voluntarily watch the Hallmark Channel turning gay.
The Hallmark bachelors hail from the films Home For The Home-A-Days, Royal By Christmas Kiss, and Secret Santa: The Nice List.
Next week: It’s finally happening. Eddie comes back to SNL. Plus Lizzo.
Aidy Bryant dressed as a magical snowman opened NBC's variety show on Saturday saying that it's almost Christmas and "folks in America seem more divided than ever."
"But if we listen in to some dinner conversations tonight, I bet we'd find out we have more in common than we realize," Bryant's snowman said. "And now we can listen because I hacked into three Nest home cams."
The first holiday dinner "SNL" took audiences to was in San Francisco.
"I'm so happy everyone flew here for the holidays, and I'm even more happy that they did it, they're impeaching Trump," Cecily Strong's character said at the dinner table.
The next dinner was in Charleston, South Carolina.
"Well, they did it. They're impeaching Trump," Beck Bennett's character said. "I'm sorry, it's a disgrace. What crime did he even commit?!"
The final dinner "SNL" looked in on was in Atlanta.
"Dad, c'mon, you're going to rile everyone up," Chris Redd's character said.
"Well, I'm just asking, do y'all think 'Bad Boys III' is going to be good or what?" Kenan Thompson's character said to his family.
Redd's character said he'd rather talk about politics instead.
"Oh, you mean how Trump is definitely getting impeached and then definitely getting re-elected? I'm good," Thompson's character responded.
The sketch then bounced around each of the three dinners in the cities showing the differences between each.
"I just don't understand who on Earth could vote for Trump after this," the family in San Francisco said.
Then the family in Charleston could be seen saying "how could anyone not for Trump after this?"
The sketch then cut to the Thompson's character in Atlanta asking his family, "who do you think is going to get voted off 'The Mask Singer' next week?"
"SNL's" cold open then ended with Bryant's snowman.
"Now, those three families may seem different, but you see they have one important thing in common: they live in states where their votes don't matter," she said. "None of them live in the three states that will decide our election."
Climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg, who was played by Kate McKinnon, then appeared on screen to warn people about climate change.
"I also have a Christmas message," McKinnon's Thunberg said. "In 10 years, this snowman won't exist! Her home will be a puddle. Santa, reindeer, the North Pole, all of it, gone! The ice caps will melt and elves will drown."
McKinnon's Thunberg then wished the audience a "merry maybe our last Christmas to all."
Bryant's snowman and McKinnon's Thunberg then said the show's signature opening, "Live from New York... It's Saturday night!"
