Saturday Night Live: Dua Lipa impresses in otherwise weak episode

Saturday Night Live kicks off the final run of episodes for Season 49 with a televised roundtable discussion on Columbia University student protests over Israel’s war on Gaza. Two white parents discuss the struggle of supporting their children’s activism with their fear over the aggressive nature of the demonstrations. The third parent, Alphonse Roberts (Kenan Thompson), initially expresses full-blown support for the protests, until the host suggests that his daughter is taking part in them, exclaiming, “Nu-uh! Alexis Vanessa Roberts better have her butt in class!” When questioned on the disconnect, he explains: “I’m supportive of y’all’s kids protesting, not my kids. My kids know better!”

Somehow, SNL found a way to address the Israel-Palestine protests while saying absolutely nothing about them. It’s almost impressive in its way.

Dua Lipa pulls double duty as host and musical guest. The English-Albanian pop star explains the meaning behind her new album, Radical Optimism: “It’s like looking on the bright side of any situation.” She attempts to put this theory into practice by asking audience members to step forward and announce their problems. She manages to flip the perspective on the various examples – including a guy whose wife left him because he called her “mom” during sex and another man whose doctor told him he had to stop drinking – right up until she’s confronted by South Dakota governor and admitted puppy-killer Kristi Noem, for whom there’s no help.

In the first sketch, Lipa and Ego Nwodim play “two baddies from Task Rabbit”, hired to record sexy producer tags for the latest single from rapper Young Spicy. They start on the right track – “Ooh, Young Spicy got that heat” – but soon start saying less than flattering things about his sexuality (“Young Spicy in the closet for sure”), treatment of women (“L-L-Let go of my arm, Psicy, that hurts!”), and predilection for underage high school students (“Take a seat, Spicy, my name is C-C-Chris Hansen”). A carbon copy of a previous sketch starring Ana De Armas, the jokes this time out are a little darker and sharper.

The Anomalous Man is a black-and-white drama set in Victorian-era London. Lipa plays an admirer of a brilliant, but grotesquely disfigured playwright (Sarah Sherman in full-blown Elephant Man-like prosthesis). The two strike up an unlikely romance, which comes to an abrupt end when she catches him sending filthy sexts to one of his many booty calls. A very slow burn setup with a lukewarm finish, it nonetheless makes for a nice change of pace, as it’s been a minute since we’ve seen one of Sherman’s body-horror sketches.

On a Greenville Morning Show, the square Southern hosts’ inane chitchat about local cicadas turns into a discussion about the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud. It’s not long before the hosts are halfway to donning blackface and saying the N-word. It says something about how out of touch and hopelessly caucasian current-day SNL is that instead of directly sending up the newsworthy rap beef, they have to resort to making fun of dorky white people.

Next, Lipa and Marcello Hernandez play a couple on a first date, hanging out at her apartment. Things are going fine until he notices her “wall of what looks like 500 naked toy dolls”. These are actually her collection of Sunny Angels, the popular “companions for lonely 25-year-old working women.” It turns out one of her “little boyfriends” can talk, resulting in Bowen Yang turning in a truly cringe-worthy performance as a horny, grape-headed naked baby doll. As the sketch drags on, it turns into a parody of Challengers (with Lipa donning one of Zendeya’s outfits from the film). A strong contender for worst sketch of the season.

A commercial for “big-ass aluminum tray of Penne alla Vodka” extolls the questionable virtues of the ever-present dish: “Beloved by none, but tolerated by all…because it’s not that good, but it’s not that bad either.” The same might be said of this sketch.

Troye Sivan (the “Australian YouTube twink” whom Timothée Chalamet played earlier in the season), introduces Lipa for her first musical performance of the night. Then it’s on to Weekend Update, where Colin Jost hits out at Governor Noem for revealing that she once shot an untrainable dog: “If a dog is untrainable, you don’t shoot it, you give it to President Biden.”

Michael Che, meanwhile, finally delivers an actual barb about the US position on the Isreal-Palestine war: “President Biden said the National Guard should not be called in to deal with campus protests, but I’m just happy he’s finally not sending military aid somewhere.” This is met with uncomfortable groans from the fickle audience.

Directing things back to Noem, Jost welcomes their first guest, her other dog, Cricket the Seventh (Hernandez). He claims that all this talk of her murdering pets is just “media spin”, despite the fact that she wrote about it in her own book. It becomes increasingly obvious that the poor pup is terrified for his life. A deservedly dark and mean-spirited takedown of someone who absolutely deserves it.

Later, Jost brings on the second Update guest, former child star and newly-turned-bad girl Jo Jo Siwa (Chloe Fineman). The musician, who looks “Mad Max on Broadway” tries to take credit for inventing “gay pop” while flailing about unconvincingly. The rare case of Fineman turning in a solid impersonation.

In the surprise turn of the night, Jost introduces a third guest: Jerry Seinfeld, aka A Man Who Did Too Much Press. The comedian, looking haggard and confused after weeks of nonstop touring on behalf of his new movie Unfrosted, tries to help others in his situation, before taking a call on-air from Univision to set up his next appearance. Welcome a presence as Seinfeld is, this feels like a missed opportunity, especially since the set-up seems to suggest he would talk about some of the controversial things he’s said recently. What we get instead is a halfhearted self-effacement that plays out more like self-promotion.

An expecting couple meets their new OB-GYN, the suspiciously named Fat Daddy (Thompson), who explains that before he became a gynecologist, he was the pit master at Fat Daddies BBQ Palace. He proceeds to poke and prod at his patient like she’s a piece of meat on a grill, down to tasting his fingers to get a read of her PH levels. If the earlier Challengers/Sunny Angels sketch is in the running for worst of the season, this ridiculous helping of silliness is up there with the best, even if it wraps up a little too abruptly.

Seinfeld returns to intro Dua Lipa for her second set. Then, we get a commercial for Teeny Tiny Statement Pin, the newest fashion accessory that allows red carpet celebrities to support any cause they wish – “Love is Love”, “Ceasefire Now”, “Free Ellen”, “We Have the Meats” – without attracting potentially unwanted criticism and distracting from their expensive outfits. This takedown of self-important celebrity activism/non-activism might have landed harder if it didn’t share space with that issue-dodging cold open.

The episode wraps up with a corporate-set sketch in which Lipa and Yang’s bosses try to come up with a catchy jingle for their flooring company with the help of pop-funk group Soul Booth (Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson). The group proceeds to lay out a funky track made up entirely of the company’s phone number. A complete clone of an unmemorable sketch from last season, the only thing that’s different this time out is that Lipa gets in on the singing (although just barely).

There were a couple of bright spots throughout, but on the whole this was one of the weaker episodes of the year. Dua Lipa was a fine host, more than holding her own, which is more than can be said for certain cast members. Meanwhile, Seinfeld’s surprise appearance left a lot to be desired. Hopefully, the show rights the ship for the final two episodes.