Pop star Sabrina Carpenter hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time ever, but it sure didn’t feel like it.
Carpenter was the musical guest last year when Jake Gyllenhaal hosted, and at the 50th anniversary special, she performed with Paul Simon and appeared in a sketch. Whether it’s because she’s done the show both as a musician and a comedic performer (her song performances are often a mix of both) or not, Carpenter seems perfectly at ease in Studio 8H, like she’s always been there.
That served her well on an episode that started badly with a retread of a sketch that’s been done a few too many times (keyword: Domingo), and a monologue that, despite Carpenter’s charm, didn’t seem to connect with the audience.
But after that, Carpenter’s quicksilver timing and ease, plus a diverse set of sketches, put the episode over the top. She sounded just like a 12-year-old boy in a sketch about preteens hosting a podcast called “Snack Homies” with President Trump (James Austin Johnson) as a guest, sold a provocative neck pillow in a funny Shop TV sketch, performed a pretaped “Grind Song” with Bowen Yang, and was thrown out of a window as the host of a girlboss seminar. She scared a coworker (Ashley Padilla, quickly becoming a critical “SNL” utility player) on her birthday and played a singing and dancing washing machine alongside new cast member Veronika Slowikowska.
It also didn’t hurt that Carpenter’s two playful and well-sung musical performances, for “Manchild” and “Nobody’s Son,” were showstoppers. Her love of the show was evident: she performed the former wearing a “Live from New York” T-shirt and panties with “It’s Saturday Night!” written on the back.
The best argument for inviting Sabrina Carpenter back sometime might be that she held the show together with no outside guests or surprise cameos, which hasn’t happened on “SNL” in a long time. The only exception was a short film from “Please Don’t Destroy” writer Martin Herlihy at the end of the show that may have been about racism and Frankenstein’s Monsters (yes, plural).
We’ll keep this short because the less said about this week’s cold open the better. Chloe Fineman and Andrew Dismukes returned as Matthew and Kelsey, a couple that has struggled in the past with trust issues from Kelsey’s frequent trips with her friends that usually end with a passionate affair with a guy named Domingo (Marcello Hernández). This time, they’re celebrating Matthew’s 30th birthday, but for some reason, Kelsey has flown in her girlfriends (including Carpenter) to sing some pop songs in bad karaoke style about a recent weekend they spent in Nashville. This time the songs are modeled after Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia,” Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” and Alex Warren’s “Ordinary Song.” The ladies went to Nashville and of course Domingo is still around. “This is strike six,” Matthew cries haplessly. “Babe, it won’t happen again,” Kelsey promises. Let’s hope so. The Domingo sketches need to be put to rest.
Carpenter’s monologue was largely about dispelling (but not really) the notion that the singer is overly sexualized, or as she described it, a “Horndog popster.” “There’s so much more to me,” she said, “I’m not just horny. I’m also turned on.” She made hay of the controversy over her “Man’s Best Friend” album cover by joking that it was cropped and revealing that Bowen Yang and Martin Short both originally appeared on it, with Yang pulling her up by her hair and Short pushing her away from a buffet line. The monologue started to fizzle when Carpenter went to the audience for some interaction to prove she can have chemistry with anyone or anything, only to come back to the stage for an awkward bit with Kenan Thompson, who said he wanted a Cameo video for his niece. Carpenter has charisma to spare, but the monologue was too disjointed to go anywhere.
Best sketch of the night: Does making plans to see “Plans” also scare you?
Mock horror movie trailers have done well on “SNL” lately and the streak continues with “Plans,” a Blumhouse horror film featuring Ben Marshall and Carpenter as a couple horrified to realize that plans they made back on Fourth of July have suddenly come to fruition with a cousin and her husband. As their terror grows, they remember that the cousin (Sarah Sherman) talks about marathons (“The way I see it, losing toenails is a badge of honor”) and the husband (Dismukes) likes to show off 11-minute YouTube videos. They’re going to end up at a crowded ramen restaurant and then a bad interactive play. For anyone who’s ever regretted saying yes to socializing, this might be your worst nightmare.
Also good: The neck pillow monologues
The Shop TV sketches wouldn’t work so well if Padilla and Mikey Day didn’t do such a good job infusing their characters Bev and Rhett with such practiced professional panic when things go awry, as they’ve done before. Carpenter appears as Virginia Duffy, a crafter who’s designed an ergonomic pillow that looks just like a giant vagina, which comes in different colors. “Why would you bring the pink one?” asks an exasperated Rhett. By the time the faux fur lining is added and Rhett tries on the neck pillow, culminating in an unwanted baby sound effect, Shop TV has done it again. Bonus points for Johnson as Tim Tucker, who appears at the beginning of the sketch with a trick-or-treat pail in the shape of Jesus Christ’s head. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, walk with Christ down the Halloween street,” he chants.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Did you see ‘Saw’? He did not
New cast member Tommy Brennan discussed moving to New York and growing up in Minnesota, but it was the return of Hernandez’s Movie Guy character, who wants to talk about scary movies but has seen absolutely none of them. “Everybody saw ‘Weapons!’ I have to tell you, I was not one of those people,” he says. Movie Guy expresses that horror movies often tell you what they’re about: with “Scream,” “everbody scream!” With “Smile,” “everybody smile!” How about “Saw?” “Everybody saw! But not me, I did not see.” He goes on to touch on why Stewie from “Family Guy,” “Shrek” and others are also scary (even if he hasn’t seen them). “‘One Missed Call’ … is this a movie about my mother?”
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