Gwyneth Paltrow Bombs on a Sub-Par Episode of ‘SNL’

Saturday Night Live ignored politics for this week’s cold open to focus on the explosive Gayle King interview with singer R. Kelly.

After Leslie Jones, as King, introduced Kelly as “Robert Kelly, also known as R. Kelly, also know as individual who #1s,” Kenan Thompson came on as Kelly to smack down the wild interview’s greatest hits.

After Thompson’s Kelly asks King to call him “victim” and denies having a harem of young girls, the show mashes the interview with his bizarre “Trapped in the Closet” epic to give us insight on Kelly interior monologue.

“It’s 10 o’clock in the morning/and I’m talking to Oprah’s friend/If I can just get through this/everybody’s gonna love me again,” he sings, before returning to the interview.

The show took its shots at Kelly’s accusations – after noticing the news camera at one point, he says, “y’all keep your camera out in the open like that? Y’all are some freaks.” – and reinforces how Kelly’s performance in the interview pointed back to his own guilt.

As Thompson stands up and begins a tantrum, referencing Kelly’s losing his cool and doing the same during the interview, he says, “Why would I do these things? For 30 years. I gave y’all, ‘Trapped  in the Closet,’ ‘Feelin’ On Yo Bootie,’ ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number,’ and so many other clues.”

In the end, the sketch was a typical cold open regurgitation of current events, playing off the details of the event but adding little to the perception of it.

First time host Idris Elba raved about his excitement at hosting, talking about how 20 years ago he was the doorman down the street at Caroline’s comedy club, where he sold weed on the side, and the challenge of getting roles in New York with his British accent. He then talked about how his sister worked at Bad Boy Records, and how his proximity to stardom inspired him to continue on as an actor. Not the funniest monologue, but it was endearing.

First up, a game show parody with Thompson as host, “Can I Play That?” was billed up front as “Actors’ Least Favorite Game.” The show is a take on political correctness and social media, as Thompson mentions a role, and the working actor contestants – Elba, Cecily Strong, and Beck Bennett – have to declare who could or couldn’t play that role. He starts with Will Smith playing the father of the Williams sisters, and asks if he can play it. Bennett says yes, but he’s wrong, as Strong buzzes in and says he can’t because he’s not black enough. When Elba reacts with surprise, Thompson gives away the true premise of the sketch, noting that the answer is correct because the show is produced by Twitter. After that, the answers start to make more sense, and the sketch takes a skeptical view of all factions of social media warring, from racists to the overly PC. (Thompson gives Twitter an advertising tag line: “Twitter: one mistake, and we’ll kill ya.”) When Elba says he could play a blind person, the others react with embarrassment, as Thompson responds, “God took their sight, now you wanna take their job.” Elba suggests that this is what acting is about, becoming someone you’re not, and Thompson replies,”Not anymore, no. Now it’s about becoming yourself, but with a different haircut.” The sketch is a solid take on the difficulties of navigating PC standards, as when Thompson mentions the role of Caitlyn Jenner in a biopic about her life. Who could play her? The answer is no one. “It is an impossible movie to make,” says Thompson. “I dare someone to try.”

A parody commercial for a chicken restaurant called Bok Bok’s takes on the hysteria surrounding the Momo Challenge as Kate McKinnon plays perhaps her creepiest character ever, Bok Bok, the chain’s mascot who looks just like Momo. With her crazily upturned smile and nostrils, Bok Bok made me want to run into traffic. But fear not, says the announcer, as he assures viewers that Bok Bok is not trying to steal your children’s souls. The sight of suburban mom Heidi Gardner screeching a blurred out “Oh, fuck!” in fear and abandoning her children with a sprint was the perfect button for this sketch.

Elba and Mikey Day play PowerPoint trainers from Microsoft, training three different teams of two on the program. While two of the teams are computer savvy, McKinnon and Aidy Bryant play receptionists who are less familiar with the whole “computer” thing, and freak out at their failure to understand even the most basic aspects of the program. The pair break down in tears, apologizing profusely and confessing to personal inadequacies that fall far beyond any computer mishaps, as when McKinnon tried to shut a radio by pouring water on it, and burned down her house. The sketch was a fun occasion for Bryant and McKinnon, always a solid team, to play off each other and spiral down into ever more ridiculous examples of personal failure, accompanied by some truly bizarre and incompetent PowerPoint graphics.

Next, Elba plays Bruce Banner as a man shopping for a shirt who grows increasingly angry when he realizes he bought it at the wrong price but now can’t get his money back. When he gets angry, he transforms, a la the Incredible Hulk, except he transforms into “an emboldened white lady,” played by Strong, whose aggressive protests win any confrontation. He is, the show tells us, “The Impossible Hulk.” Now, the simple problem of a disagreement over a refund provokes hysterics, as Strong immediately calls the police to report “an act of aggression” on store cashier Melissa Villasenor and security guard Thompson, and later asks to see Ego Nwodim’s manager even though she’s complaining about a house party being too loud. A take off on some of the white women, like Permit Patty or BBQ Becky, who’ve gone viral after reporting non-whites to the police for minor infractions, it was a funny, unique take on the topic, given a slight twist as Elba/Strong turns her rage to a white police officer at the end.

“The Golddiggers of the WNBA” found Thompson, Elba, and Chris Redd as “playaz” looking to get in on that hot WNBA swag. “The WNBA changed the gigolo game,” Thompson explains, as they hit the WNBA hotspots – in this case, the Doubletree Hotel Bar – seeking a hookup with a WNBA player to keep them in the manner they deserve. Or as Elba explains to Redd, “Each one of these women have been sitting on a contract worth sixty to ninety g’s a year. You play your cards right, some of that cheddar gonna end up in your pocket.” Thompson then fantasizes about the lifestyle this could provide. “Two-bedroom condo. Timeshare vacations in Orlando. Shopping sprees at Nordstrom Rack.” Of course, their plan has one slight snag in that nine out of ten WNBA players, according to Thompson, go home with another woman instead.

On “Weekend Update,” Colin Jost and Michael Che put Paul Manafort through the joke wringer, with Jost describing him as a man who looks like he was “born divorced,” and trashing the judge who said Manafort had lived an “otherwise blameless life” by noting of Manafort, “he’s being sentenced for another crime next week, and it’s a crime he committed while under house arrest for a third crime.”

Gardner returns to the Weekend Update desk as Goop representative Baskin Johns. who tends to get nervous when she’s reminded that Goop overlord Gwyneth Paltrow is most likely watching. As she introduces products and forgets what they are and why anyone needs them, Gardner gives a first rate performance of the slow melting down of a woman under pressure. When Che asks her about a certain ingredient, we see her cheery persona slowly seep away, to be replaced by an encroaching panic. But instead of the show letting her play it out, Baskin brings on her supervisor, and oh look, it’s Paltrow herself, now playing a woman who is also scared of Paltrow. There’s a certain meta presentation SNL gets into when they bring out special surprise guests that pulls me out of a scene – when they have a celebrity playing someone else commenting on them. It’s cheap and easy, and clearly meant to get a rise out of the audience by positioning this as some wild special treat meant to demonstrate humility on the part of the celebrity, i.e. “See, Gwyneth isn’t really a control freak because here she is making fun of herself on SNL!” Paltrow then repeats Baskin’s incompetence and the two struggle together, but the air has been taken out of the sketch, and Paltrow gets a nice product placement for her company. Blah.

Pete Davidson is a cast member who can’t really act, has become a fixture in the media for all the wrong reasons, and has many wondering why he’s on the show. But for me, Davidson is exactly where he belongs, adding real value to SNL with commentaries like the one here. Davidson’s Update commentaries bring a brutal honesty rarely seen elsewhere on the show, as with this take on the recent documentaries detailing the perversions and crimes of Michael Jackson and R. Kelly. Davidson makes the point that if people are going to eliminate the work of artists who turn out to be horrible people from their lives, then they should be complete about it, which he shows is close to impossible. Noting that Kelly is a monster, he says, “If you support the Catholic Church, isn’t that the same thing as being an R. Kelly fan?” And, “once we start doing our research, we’re not gonna have much left,” as he recalls the likes of Charlie Chaplin marrying a 15-year-old and Henry Ford’s being an anti-semite as he proposes that we can enjoy the work of problematic artists, but should have to admit what they did as we do so. “The full sentence should be, ‘Mark Wahlberg beat up an old Asian dude, and I would like one ticket to Daddy’s Home 3 please.'” Then he makes a real proposal which takes a more serious turn: that any time we enjoy the work of a predatory artist, we donate a dollar to a charity that helps sexual assault survivors. “I’ve already donated $142, and that’s just from the ‘Ignition (Remix)’ alone,” he says. Jost then prods him for a comment on his relationship with Kate Beckinsale, who is 20 years his senior, and he notes the “crazy fascination” people have with the age difference, then reels of a long list of male celebrities who’ve dated or married much younger women without receiving such scrutiny.

Jones also did a desk piece in this super long Update about planning her funeral. She will be naked, and if the funeral goes longer than 90 minutes, her casket will explode. Also, she wants to be put on a float out to sea, hit with a flaming arrow by Aquaman, then burned and turned into weed.

Next, Alex Moffat and Day played British football announcers welcoming a new member to the announcing team, Elba’s former player, who, it turns out, is crude, rude, and has no talent for announcing. Elba’s footballer provides no insight into the game, but rather talks about who he’d like to “smash” and who on his team cheats on his wife and has a “big knob.” The back and forth was the fun of this, as Elba got to indulge a raw side, and Day showed his talent for playing characters managing to carry on through challenging circumstances without succumbing to full-on exasperation.

Elba is a magician called The Great Rudolpho who’s using a substitute assistant in the wife of the venue’s owner. Jones is a woman with a clear lack of talent and an equal cluelessness about this. She wears the outfit meant for the normal assistant – “I guess we’re both size 2,” she says – and preens and gesticulates like she’s lost control of her limbs. For the magic itself, the tricks were built for a considerably smaller woman, and they do not go well. As Jones struggles in a water tank, we learn that the venue’s owner, Thompson, has actually hired Elba to kill his wife. This, too, does not go well, and by the end, the same might be said for this sketch.

The final sketch found Elba as an actor who just got a huge role – second lead on a new CSI – and Bennett as his actor friend who tries to be happy for him, but can barely conceal his jealousy, going outside to scream in frustration. Not much to this, but a few quick laughs from Bennett as he demonstrates his awful karate abilities, as he’s hoping to become a “karate actor.” ()

SNL takes two weeks off, returning on March 30 with host Sandra Oh and musical guest Tame Impala.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.

Watch the Idris Elba-hosted episode of SNL on Hulu