The last (and first) time Lady Gaga appeared on Saturday Night Live as both host and musical guest, Barack Obama was president, with plenty left to go in his second term; Seth Meyers, Taran Killam, and Vanessa Bayer, among others, were still in the cast; and there were about two major Netflix original series in total, one of which starred a triumphant Kevin Spacey. (Gaga herself alluded to these sorts of changes when she sheepishly mentioned her SNL-aired collabo with R. Kelly. To be fair, no one knew anything bad about R. Kelly back in the 2010s unless they looked up his name in any capacity.) Hell, Gaga herself had yet to do A Star Is Born, House Of Gucci, Joanne, Chromatica, or multiple albums with Tony Bennett. Her most recent film at that time? Machete Kills. (Also her first.) (Also a movie that even I, a Robert Rodriguez devotee, would struggle to say much good about.) In what might feel to some older folks (ahem) like a few blinks of an eye but was actually a bunch of years, she made a real play for achieving the kind of Madonna-like longevity to which she nakedly (figuratively and occasionally literally) aspired to from the start. I’m not even a particular fan of Gaga’s music, but I have to hand it to her, well into a career that can be quickly steered out of a Joker 2 ditch: She can sell the hell out of a middling song, an underwritten movie role, some intentionally running mascara, or an inexplicable sketch about luggage you can ride.
That latter sketch, which took the majority of its protracted runtime to get its bearings and then lose them multiple times, was probably the most nonsensical and least successful of the night, not counting the cold open. Somehow, through sheer force of someone’s bizarre will, it was also the episode’s leadoff sketch, and in retrospect, that feels right. It was less of a concept or observation than a baffling, unexpected contract: If you go with this extremely silly sketch where Marcello and Gaga and a sometimes-real, sometimes-fake dog ride motorized luggage through green-screen backgrounds and also the actual SNL backstage area, in a kinda-sorta riff on the ends of various romantic comedies that haven’t been in fashion for many years at this point, the rest of the show will be nearly as silly but also mostly make sense.
Indeed, if you wanted to attempt to follow some kind of vague narrative thread throughout the episode, there were a number of shorter bits poking at the self-melodramatizing habits of the young and self-involved, like a new brand of Easy Run Mascara, a Bowen Yang/Lady Gaga duet about cold-quitting catchphrase-y slanguage that smooths expression over into a kind of generic online mush, and the slightly different cultural baggage that awaits when you’re old enough to don Little Red Glasses. In other words, there’s probably a timeline from donning that easy-run mascara in your twenties, being told to quit it with “slay” already at 42-plus-2, and cheerfully reporting that you were “ahead of the curve on gay marriage, and that’s where it stopped.” I doubt any of this loose continuity was particularly intentional, but in an episode that saw Gaga dropping back into the show in her late thirties after being a relative fixture in her late twenties, it’s still neat to think about, lending a bit of pop-star auteurism to the proceedings. Moreover, all of those sketches were funny, punchy, and just the right mix of ridiculous and grounded in some kind of recognizable satire; if only the political material ever felt this effortless!
At the same time, the episode also left room for the kind of variety-show energy you might expect from Gaga. A sketch where she and Bowen traded weirdo banter in between bars of a song, not too far removed from the old Muppet Show bit where various couples would rotate through the foreground of the stage to trade Borscht Belt-style quips and cracks. A little later, Gaga and Heidi Gardner donned roaring-twenties-style costumes and accents as two particularly fixated funeral planners. And in a sketch that has not yet been uploaded online in a possible attempt to make my fellow Upstate New York-raised Friendly’s devotees suspicious that I hallucinated it, she performed a heart-removal ritual at the home of the conehead sundae.
In other words, words she mercifully has forbade us from using going forward: slay, Gaga.
What was on
Honestly, almost all of the show’s traditional sketches at least kind of worked for me. If the episode lacked anything, it was an instant-classic standout to stick on the Best of Season 50 highlight reel, but the hit rate was strong enough to consider most of them. That consistency even extended to the musical performances, which were almost more impressive for catching the eye whether or not the ears are fans of these particular songs. The second number, “Killah,” which took a tour of multiple backstage hallways before landing on a gorgeously colorful redressing of the main music stage, made especially good TV. Say, I think this Lady Gaga might be going places!
What was off
I can’t stay (or get) mad at the motorized-luggage thing, whatever the idea was there, nor at adorable li’l Pip, star of the latest menacingly cuddly-adjacent Dan Bulla short, even though that piece (funny as it was) took up perhaps too much screentime. Besides, what are some funny but slightly belabored sketches against that largely tedious cold open? I actually like the idea of Mike Myers pinch-hitting as Elon Musk (despite Colin Jost’s tongue-in-cheek complaints about job-stealing Canadians); he plays him with exactly the derisive lack of dignity that the show has trouble assigning to folks like Marco Rubio or even Trump himself, who too often has morphed into a funnier, more self-effacing version of his own self-image as a truth-teller. Johnson still gets in some OK digs at how Trump brags about objectively terrible, failing people and policies with carnie-barker shamelessness, but that simply doesn’t feel sharp enough right now. It maybe that his impression (at least on the show; obviously he was doing Trump before he joined SNL) was simply cemented in a between-term version of the man that no longer fits quite the same. I’m not suggesting that someone else needs to take over, but at very least the show could ease up on sketches where Wacky Trump lightly berates Voice of Reason Marco Rubio. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they should probably try out a sketch that just focuses on Musk’s loathsome antics.
Most valuable player (who may or may not be ready for prime time)
It feels like it has to be Bowen, right? He dueted with Gaga in two different sketches, clearly having a ball doing so, and dweeby writer types everywhere probably owe him thanks for putting across the message about detoxing language. He deserves this; it’s his day. (That said, wouldn’t it be fun to find out his music fandom includes some total right-field choice? Like if his top three were Gaga, Charli, and Mudvayne?) Heidi, Sarah, and Ego were all stellar as usual, too.
Next time
Terrifying uncertainty must give way to blind guessing! Assuming there are 20 proper episodes this season, six remain. The last three will likely be on 5/3, 5/10, and 5/17. Would it be safe to assume the other four will be on 3/22, 3/29, 4/12, and 4/19? Or will they do another set of three in a row before May? In any event: Rachel Zegler? Jack Black? Seth Rogen? No idea.
Stray observations
• The joke in that “Wonderful Tonight” bit that felt most Muppet-y in construction if not remotely Muppet-y in content was Bowen’s line about how he “came into some money recently.” It’s the kind of set-up where the obvious punchline only feels slightly less than inevitable for a split-second’s worth of “wait, will that get by S&P?” Wonderful!
• Hey, did you guys know Michael Che has condescending thoughts about many sports and especially women athletes?! My, if only this could be exploited for an endless series of “ironically” hacky jokes over the course of a decade-plus! What mischievous comic nirvana could be achieved!
• While I’m complaining about Weekend Update, I’m all for jokes goofing on Colin Jost’s marriage to Scarlett Johansson, but there’s a point past which “why, this millionaire earns humiliatingly less than this other, even richer millionaire!” maybe aren’t super-relatable or original. It didn’t help that Mikey Day’s bit as “Lord Gaga” stretched an obvious joke way too thin before arriving at that material. Having every Update guest who talks to Jost take some shots at him has gone from amusing tradition to obligatory time-filler. I’m just really ready for a new Update team in Season 51, you guys.
• Fact check! The service at Friendly’s is rarely that efficient, even when making a conehead sundae out of a freshly extracted heart.
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