‘SNL’ Recap: Sam Rockwell Drops An F-Bomb on Live TV

The exasperation of Mika Brzezinski, as channelled through Kate McKinnon, is a work of art. Saturday Night Live smartly brought back the best new impression of last year, McKinnon and Alex Moffat’s take on newscaster couple Joe Scarborough and fiancee Brzezinski, for the first cold open of 2018, and it might have been the best cold open of the season but for one surprisingly deflating factor.

An episode featuring a slew of awkward takes on current events opened on McKinnon and Moffat, opening a Morning Joe segment with a tepid rocker that, it turns out, is one of musician Scarborough’s. Talking about a live gig, Brzezinski says, “I come because I have to.” “You come because I tell you to,” Scarborough replies, as Mikey Day’s Willie Geist looks on in disgust. Moffat and McKinnon play the couple’s strange on-camera flirting to its breathy, inappropriate max, and it’s a joy to watch.

After Chris Redd plays an Africa expert who can’t get a word in edgewise over Scarborough, Fred Armisen appears as a hilariously flippant Michael Wolff, author of the new Trump book Fire and Fury. Asked if there were facts he didn’t include, he reveals that Trump would hold baby races, featuring babies of different races, and would bet on the black one. Asked about the book’s truthfulness, Armisen’s Wolff could care less, telling Geist, “You got the gist, so shut up.”

Another gross flirtfest, where Brzezinski utters the line, “You gonna feed me my meat?” is followed by the introduction of Steve Bannon. After coming on as Death, the normal SNL depiction of him, he drops the death cloak to reveal that it’s Bill Murray. He and Wolff argue about Bannon’s statements to the author, and Murray’s timing is strangely off. He gets a few moderately funny lines in, but the bit – depicting Bannon as a breezy, charismatic Murray-type, talking about future endeavors such as a skincare line called Blotch – takes the energy out of the cold open. The one line that gets the audience roused – a fully Murray line if ever there was one – is, “it’s time for America to slide down the Bannonster.”

The cold open ends with Leslie Jones as Oprah, saying she’s qualified to run for president because she’s a celebrity. As she reminds us, “There’s only one job in the world more powerful than being president. Being OPRAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!”

In the monologue, host Sam Rockwell talks about being known as “that guy in that movie” for 30 years, and how last week’s Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe win for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri will finally make him a leading man. This is followed by a clever song and dance routine (Rockwell can dance, can’t sing) that finds him fending off karate assassins while twirling various female members of the cast backstage, with a few funny lines along the way. Dancing with Cecily Strong, he goes in for the final kiss when Strong says there’s no kissing in sketches anymore – they had an HR meeting about that. Jones then appears in a slinky red dress, saying, “You know I didn’t go to that meeting.”

The first sketch parodies a classic PBS Kids show from 1990, “The Science Room with Mr. Science.” Rockwell is Mr. Science, while Strong and Day play his two kid helpers who, from the first shot, clearly don’t want to be there, acting frightened. Ten seconds in, this sketch was already giving me an uneasy vibe. After asking a series of questions about an experiment that the kids get wrong, but seem desperate to want to get right, Rockwell asks them the #1 rule about the science lab. Strong responds nervously – “Don’t touch me under my clothes?” Oy. “The answer is to have fun,” Mr. Science replies, adding, “that was really upsetting.” Yes, it was. As the kids clearly know nothing about science, Mr. Science blurts out, “you can’t be this fucking stupid.” Oops. The sketch ended with Rockwell getting so angry he punched one kid in the face, and cut to a commercial so he could get his anger under control. Judging by the laughter, this sketch seemed to work in the studio. Sitting at home, I can’t imagine why. This was an ill-intended train wreck, and Rockwell’s accidental F-bomb did nothing to make it more interesting or watchable.

Next came a video with Pete Davidson and Rockwell as rappers Lil Pump and Sam Rockwell, paying tribute through hip-hop to one of the best character actors in the business, Stanley Tucci. The video that followed was endlessly clever, and never quite funny. Did you know that Tucci is married to Emily Blunt’s sister? I did not.

The next sketch parodied an E! red carpet rundown where the hosts, Strong and Rockwell, and guest commentator Kenan Thompson try to keep up with the times with only positive, empowering commentary on the red carpet fashions. Melissa Villasenor is also there, as the plainly-dressed head of a woman’s shelter who knows and cares nothing about fashion, presumably because this would be E’s clueless version of trying to be politically correct. The superficiality of the E! Network is always a ripe and easy target, and SNL nails it here as usual, as the hosts spew positive, empowering-sounding nonsense, clearly out of their depth in trying to make observations of substance. They boo when they find out Eva Longoria’s new baby will be a boy, and Thompson, viewing her red carpet look, observes, “The hair, the makeup, the jewelry, I wanna say…all went to college?” At the end, McKinnon appears as Frances McDormand, wearing a dress she first wore in a production of The Crucible.

Rockwell appears next in a commercial parody called My Drunk Boyfriend. The premise – when your drunk asshole boyfriend is out of town, you can buy a fake boyfriend doll who acts like your drunk boyfriend. Ummm….OK.

After a weak start to Update from Colin Jost, Michael Che took on the president’s comments this week about Haiti being a shithole, saying that at this point, his racist comments shouldn’t even count as news. “It would be news if Trump said, ‘You know what we need more of in this country? Haitians,’” he said. Then making the point that countries like Haiti and some in Africa that are poor are that way because they’ve been exploited for centuries by colonial powers, he noted that, “The President of the United States calling Africa a shithole is like telling a kid you molested, ‘Boy did you grow up to be weird.’”

Jones returned as Oprah, coming to the Update desk with Redd as her partner Stedman. The joke – Oprah says she needs to run to get white woman back on track, and Stedman serves as her hype man, blindly echoing everything she says. At the end, Jost asks Oprah is there’s anyone who can beat her for president. She mentions the one opponent she’s never been able to defeat – bread.

Aidy Bryant then came to the desk as herself to deliver commentary on the pay disparity between Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg for reshoots on their new movie. Bryant spoke about how woman are trained to be accommodating, while weaving in her own real-life Hollywood stories, including how she was offered a role as “fat ugly prison wife who brings inmate sex and cake.”

Update did a third desk piece, with Thompson returning as LaVar Ball, there to comment on his sons’ debut this week playing basketball in Lithuania. He loves that is sons are playing against 140-pound white guys, and all 61 people in the stands seemed to love it as well. He’s also launching a new business called Beats by LaVar. They’re not headphones. They’re actual beets, pulled from the ground with roots still attached.

A Peter Pan sketch features Rockwell as Captain Hook, convincing the Lost Boys to join his pirate crew. Once they agree to it, a realization hits him – this is weird. Hook breaks character, in a sense, to ask the boys whether in today’s climate, was it weird that a grown man is hanging around with a group of young boys. As they hash it out, with the boys trying to convince him to let them stay, the crew realizes, one by one, that it’s very weird indeed, and hurl themselves overboard. When McKinnon appears as Pan, her Pan dialogue makes it clear that Hook is being a creep, and he throws himself overboard.

In one sense, SNL’s writers could be commended for trying to tackle a difficult but overarching public discussion that has seeped into every aspect of pop culture and politics. But between this and the Mr. Science sketch, it’s appropriate to wonder if maybe they shouldn’t leave it out of sketches altogether, and save it for segments like the Bryant commentary, which can deal with it head-on. There were a few laughs here, but the attempted clever takes on the subject of adult creepiness couldn’t override the creepiness itself.

Next, on a similar theme, comes a digital short called “ATM.” Rockwell and McKinnon play a couple in a car, stopping at an ATM in a bad neighborhood. McKinnon expresses apprehension about stopping, and when Rockwell goes into a bank anyway, he encounters Thompson, and finds himself scared about using an ATM with a black man behind him. A discussion ensues, ending with Rockwell ashamed at his racist assumptions. He leaves, and the drama replays as tough guy Redd and his crew enter the ATM, leaving Thompson as the scared one (and rightfully so, it turns out). The sketch questions the morality of racism, but ends predictably with Redd and his crew mugging Thompson. Oh, and McKinnon, who passed judgment on the bad neighborhood, turns out to be a prostitute. So, the message here seems to be, “don’t be racist, because you’re wrong, until you’re right, and also, everyone sucks.” Maybe this sketch wasn’t the best idea either.

Next, middle-aged couple Rockwell and Bryant welcome their son, Moffat, home with his new gay porn star boyfriend, played by Redd. As they enter the house, Rockwell recognizes Redd immediately, but can’t remember from where. The sketch drags hard by the middle, but surprises when Rockwell remembers where he knows him from, and rather then an embarrassed attempt to hide it, launches into an appreciation of Redd’s work and all the gay porn he watches. In the same monologue, he then grabs his coat, announces he’s probably getting a divorce now and will have to resign as pastor, then leaves. All the air had been sucked out of the sketch by this point and this died in the studio, but Rockwell’s screed had me laughing harder than anything in the entire episode so far. This was a weak sketch, but Rockwell made the most of it.

Next, we find Strong leading representatives from the Department of Health on a tour of a genetics facility, hoping for funding. They have a concern about one project, though – a dog’s head on a human body. Rockwell, the scientist in charge, explains matter-of-factly that they spent $35 million making a “dog-head guy…because we could.” The dog-head guy solves a Rubik’s Cube and makes a phone call, and then eats a sandwich. A real dog in a trench coat with an actor playing his hands, the dog eating the sandwich was good for some serious laughs. After an entire episode spent trying, and mostly failing, to deal with some of the seriousness in the world today, this was pure ridiculousness, and exactly what the episode needed.

The final sketch was a fake Chantix commercial featuring Strong giving a real-person testimonial. The fake ad parodies the notices you sometimes seeing on commercials describing the people giving the testimonials as, “a real person, not an actor.” Described as such, Strong interrupts to say that she did, in fact, used to act. The rest of the ad has the announcer proceeding in a normal fashion for an ad of this sort, and Strong giving her acting credentials, arguing with the announcer that she is, in fact, a real actor, even if she’s not doing it for a living. Strong can’t stop doing voices and injecting characters into the commercial, to the announcer’s frustration. By the end, Strong is smoking a cigarette, promising that if cast in a role, she’ll do full nudity. A fun end to an uneven episode.

SNL returns next week with host Jessica Chastain and musical guest Troye Sivan.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. His greatest wish is to see Stefon enjoy a cheeseburger at John Belushi’s diner. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.

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