There’s no denying that Chris Rock is a comedy legend, but that’s not because of the time he spent on “Saturday Night Live” from 1990 to 1993.
The former cast member, who rocketed to stardom post-”SNL” with his blistering stand-up comedy, returned this week to host for the fourth time. This time out, he made the biggest impact in his barbed and topical monologue and in a couple of pre-taped pieces — not in the live sketches, where he seemed slow to react or have difficulty reading lines off cue cards.
Even with those issues, Rock still managed to sell the first main sketch of the night, about a Christmas mall elf giving parents the uncomfortable choice between a white Santa (James Austin Johnson) and a Black Santa (Devon Walker) for their kids. It was similar in vibe to the video “Grandpa’s Magic Car,” about a Herbie-like 1950s car that has human-esque qualities but also happens to be racist. Rock’s brief appearance in a video about a tedious office Christmas party also worked well.
Less successful: a Secret Santa sketch that pivoted on the gift of making Rock look like a “Simpsons” character; one about two men from the same building (Rock and Kenan Thompson) accused of sexually harassing employees; and a late-in-the-show sketch about a man hijacking someone else’s blind date with Ego Nwodim’s character.
The biggest surprise, one that perked up an otherwise mixed bag of an episode, was Adam Sandler showing up as the patient in a surgery sketch. He bleeds all over cast members Emil Wakim, Sarah Sherman, Nwodim and Bowen Yang as well as Rock while breaking the fourth wall and commenting on the show. It was unclear how much of that was improvised, but it sure seemed like Sandler was having a good time trying to make Rock break character.
Musical guest Gracie Abrams gave two solid performances in her “SNL” debut with songs “That’s So True” and “I Love You, I’m Sorry.”
Nancy Grace, the host of YouTube’s “Crime Stories With Nancy Grace,” has been an “SNL” mainstay since long before YouTube even existed. She was previously played by cast members Ana Gasteyer and Amy Poehler, but now Sarah Sherman has taken over the role and given Grace a hugely exaggerated drawl and a more manic demeanor. In the show’s cold open, she called Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a “Mordoror” and chastised America for making the suspected killer a sex symbol. Grace mocked Mangione for looking like “Dave Franco with Eugene Levy’s eyebrows” and revealed that she wants a “ghost gun” like the one allegedly used in the crime because, “Every night I wake up to JonBenet’s spirit screaming, ‘You used me!’” Because it’s on YouTube, her show kept getting interrupted by ads for supplement pills.
When Chris Rock started his monologue, the comedian sounded out of breath, as if he’d run up flights of stairs at 30 Rock to get to the stage. But he settled in before too long after congratulating producer Lorne Michaels on “25 great years of ‘Saturday Night Live’” — on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. From there, Rock bore down on targets including Mangione (“If he looked like Jonah Hill… they’d already have given him the chair”), Mike Tyson’s boxing opponent Jake Paul (“Is this what the white man has reduced himself to? Who’s he going to fight next, Morgan Freeman?”) and President-elect Donald Trump’s amazing year (“It could happen to a nicer guy”).
The monologue got thornier as it went, with Rock speculating on American presidents who could be considered rapists (“You know how many rapists are in my wallet right now? A cup of coffee in America costs seven rapists”) and about which Latinos Trump might deport. “J. Lo’s gonna marry Ben [Affleck] again just so she can stay in the country,” he said. “I know she’s not Mexican… but Trump doesn’t know that.” If it lacked the thoughtful sharpness of his best stand-up, the monologue was at least a reminder that when he gets in a groove, Rock takes no prisoners.
Best sketch of the night: The office Christmas party starts at 5:45 p.m. on a Tuesday
The lameness of office holiday parties is well-trod comedic territory, but this pre-taped sketch hit all the right notes on why keeping employees who only know each other through work together after hours is a bad idea. From the laptop-music fail to the revelation of OnlyFans accounts to “The soggiest food you’ve ever seen… so wet,” the video used awkward zoom-ins and a wide variety of characters to get its point across, the high point being Rock and Nwodim playing a married couple who get into an argument about the husband’s “work wife.” Best detail? The 45-minute Secret Santa with a giant white board chart that seems to never end.
Also good: The surgery is terrible, but stay for the bleeding
What started off as a sketch about a hapless assistant named Leslie (Sherman) messing up a gallbladder procedure morphed into something completely different when former “SNL” cast member Sandler was revealed to be the patient under the sheet. After a few moments of technical difficulties, Sandler was able to get a blood squirter working and doused everyone else, including his former castmate Rock. It was one of those moments that got funnier the longer it went on, with Sandler riffing and nobody exactly sure what to do next. It’s hard to fake that kind of spontaneity and in Sandler’s (bloody) hands, the sketch went from a potential miss to something with real viral potential.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: How many bald jokes is too many bald jokes?
New cast member Jane Wickline performed a clever and funny song about why people don’t speculate about pop singer Sabrina Carpenter’s sexuality. But as smart as it was, it couldn’t shine quite as brightly as Andrew Dismukes’ head as he played a hairless man reveling in a months-old case from England in which calling a man “bald” could constitute sexual harassment. Dismukes advised “Weekend Update” co-host Colin Jost that “My eyes are down here” and recounted the time he was on a jury with 11 other bald men and they were described as looking like a carton of eggs. This could have been just a string of bald jokes, but Dismukes has a way of playing this type of character with absolute seriousness. Let’s just say he did a good job getting into the character’s, uh, headspace.
