‘SNL’ Gives Joe Biden Sensitivity Training: “I’m A Hugger, A Kisser, And A Little Bit of a Sniffer”

Given the spotlight turned on Joe Biden over the past week, it’s little surprise that former cast member Jason Sudeikis returned to play the former veep and likely presidential candidate, touching and hugging and just being handsy old Uncle Joe.

Here, when campaign aides Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson explain that perhaps some sensitivity training would be in order to cure him of his space-invading habits, they bring in a trainer played by Kate McKinnon, who Biden greets by placing his forehead onto hers and keeping it there for an uncomfortably long amount of time. When admonished, he notes that “the nose to nose thing should be OK,” since he did 23andMe “like Lizzy” (Warren), and found he’s 1 percent Eskimo.

The rest finds Biden trying to grasp the new rules of interpersonal communication. When he asks if he can shake a woman’s hand upon meeting her then give her palm a little tickle, McKinnon, to his surprise, recommends no tickling at all. “Really, even on her birthday?” Biden asks. He also wants to know if he can do the lift from Dirty Dancing.

This was a superficial, if amusing treatment of Biden’s interesting week. As Sudeikis hasn’t been a regular presence back on the show, it was fun to see his Biden pulled out of retirement. Of course, with Biden likely running for president, it’ll be interesting to see if Sudeikis becomes another celebrity pseudo-regular like Alec Baldwin or Robert De Niro.

Kit Harington hosted, and after a brief look at his career prior to Game of Thrones – he was in Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, so that’s something – they went the audience Q&A route. The crowd wanted to know how Game of Thrones ends, including Harington castmates John Bradley and Emilia Clarke, the latter of whom asks, “Do you remember in season six when we had sex? Did you know they filmed that?” Pete Davidson dressed as the Night King and Harington’s wife, GOT actress Rose Leslie, also made appearances, with Leslie asking, “What are we going to do for money now?” noting that they saved nothing. “You kept telling me, I’m the king of the north, we can order Uber Eats every night.”

The first sketch was a look at a local pageant, the 19th annual Nephew Pageant, where woman paraded their nephews before a crowd and told why they were proud of them. “Why celebrate nephews?” asks host Aunt Patty, played by Aidy Bryant. “Well, they’re fun little scamps and they’re not yours.” Harington plays last year’s winner, Joshua, standing to the side in a sash and crown. This gave the cast a chance to play people with an expectedly awkward bearing on stage, as Strong portrays a stiff midwesterner and McKinnon introduced her nephew by saying, “He’s quiet in church and he taught me emojis, my nephew Louis.” There were some fun performances here, but the concept wasn’t strong enough for anything more than a few light chuckles.

Next, a Game of Thrones parody looked at the prequels, sequels, and spin-offs to come now that the show is ending. These include “Castle Black,” a “sexy, moody drama about forbidden love,” that finds Harington’s Jon Snow and Heidi Gardner’s blue zombie arguing about letting the world know about their love; a cartoon called Aria, modeled after MTV’s Daria; and Sam (Kyle Mooney) and Gilly (Strong) in a sitcom called The Queen of Kings Landing. They also have kids shows, like the animated Hodor’s House, and Game of Thrones: SVU, with a special appearance by Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T dressed as GOT characters and basically re-enacting the punchline to John Mulaney’s classic SVU joke about Ice-T’s naiveté at the scene of sex crimes.

Bennett, Gardner, and Jones are in a cruise ship lounge, ready to watch a Frank Sinatra impersonator. But when performer Harington comes out, he’s dressed suspiciously like Michael Jackson. And when he tells his band, who he calls “The Rat Pack 5” to play “My Way,” they launch into “Billie Jean.” We start to realize that Harington is a Michael Jackson impersonator whose career went south after the recent documentary on the singer, which is confirmed by Harington. This was a fun chance for Harington to get silly, accompanied by a strange bit of business with Jones as a woman intruding on Bennett and Gardner that went nowhere. (Ed. Note: This sketch is nowhere to be found online, presumably because of music rights.)

In a digital short, Davidson checks out a VR game called Earthwar 3, where Harington plays the leader of a safe house. Or, Mikey Day is the leader of the safe house. There seems to be a dispute. Davidson just wants to shoot zombies, but there is workplace drama in the zombie-killing mission, and Harington and Day keep pulling him aside to engage in office gossip about each other. It gets so bad that once he finally makes it outside, even the zombies just want to gossip. I enjoyed both the infighting and Davidson’s building frustration here.

On Weekend Update, Alex Moffat unveils a new character, film critic Terry Fink. Terry watched every film set for release this spring, and, he says, he did it with “a little help from macrodosing.” While microdosing is the trend, Terry went big, and watched all these films while tripping on large doses of LSD. Unsurprisingly, this affected his reviews. He liked Captain Marvel, but had some issues with the ending when Captain Marvel “turned into a bat and had sex with my high school gym teacher.” And this: “With big ears and an even bigger heart, Dumbo is a terrifying journey through hell.” I enjoyed this character a lot. Moffat gives him an enthusiastic, optimistic sheen as he shares his insane psychedelic thoughts. When he starts to praise A Star is Born and Colin Jost reminds him the film came out months ago, he replies, “Oh Colin. You still believe in time?”

Thompson brought Charles Barkley back to the desk to talk the Final Four. This was a chance for Thompson to revive his rambling Barkley, who discusses his dislike of Minnesota – where “the only thing black is toenails” – and his gambling history. “Over my career I made $50 million – and I gambled away $60 million,” he says.

At Strong’s bachelorette party, the stripper is – surprise! – her fiancee Brian, played by Harington, entering covered in a trench coat. Music starts, and here’s surprise number two – he’s in a red bustier, velvet gloves and heels, and his idea of stripping for his fiancee’s party is an old fashioned burlesque act. “Prepare to edge as you watch me take off my glove,” he says to the shock of those in attendance. Harington dives in here, looking determined and a tad demented as he savors every edging moment of his slow reveal, including the fact that “I tucked.” Also – his burlesque name is Eva Braun for some reason. The sketch takes a weird turn with McKinnon suddenly appearing as Harington’s chain-smoking French burlesque teacher, who bumblingly identifies herself as “teacher, prostitute, ghost.” It’s not uncommon of late for SNL viewers to lament that the hosts aren’t given enough to do, and often take a supporting role to the cast. That is not the case tonight, as Harington dove right into whatever bizarre situation the writers sought to place him in. It’s rare that the best moments of an episode fall clearly on the host, but that is shaping up to be the case tonight.

A digital short — really a music video by the night’s musical guest, Sara Bareilles, for her song “She Used to Be Mine”— finds McKinnon playing British Prime Minister Theresa May, a wholly dejected and rejected figure in her home country. Lamenting the British public’s hatred for her as she attempts to navigate Brexit, this oddly touching and sympathetic look at a day in May’s life finds the public scowling at her, Buckingham Palace guards giving her the finger, and her ultimately dancing and making out with the ghost of Winston Churchill. A solid performance by McKinnon here as a down but not out May.

Bennett, Mooney and Harington play extreme office nerds who can’t stop talking like Game of Thrones characters at work, earning them the disdain of their co-workers. But it’s not just talking – they act out a battle, a very D&D sort of make it up as they go adventure, all to the consternation of their manager, played by Day. The three nerds give it their all here, leading to an embarrassing reveal for Day. ()

In the night’s final sketch, Jones plays a leading colorectal surgeon who also happens to have nails almost as long as her hands, causing some worries for patient Harington. This plays out for a minute but then an odd shift – turns out it’s Undercover Boss, and Harington is the man in charge of the medical facility – renders this sketch moot. It’s a weirdly old reference, and made the sketch seem like a bare concept with nowhere to go.

SNL returns next week with returning host Emma Stone, and musical guest BTS.

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

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