‘SNL’ Recap: Host Will Ferrell’s Willingness To Get Weird Saved This Week’s Episode

HOST: Will Ferrell
MUSICAL GUEST: King Princess
EPISODE: SNL Season 45, Episode 7
DATE: November 24, 2019

BIG PICTURE: SNL overdosed on celebrity cameos this week, and the sum of it all wound up considerably less than its parts. Ryan Reynolds and Tracy Morgan appeared for a mystifying monologue, with Reynolds then returning for a more sensible Weekend Update gag, and the Democratic Debate sketch saw the return of Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, Woody Harrelson as Joe Biden, and Larry David as Bernie Sanders, plus Rachel Dratch as Amy Klobuchar and Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg. The end result offered some laughs, but was hardly funny enough to justify the menagerie, which basically describes the whole episode. Host Will Ferrell was his usually game self, but the material just didn’t match his enthusiasm.   

MONOLOGUE/HOST: You’re not going to find a more engaged, ready-to-play SNL host than Ferrell, who dealt in several familiar themes tonight. Sketches saw him as repressed, unhappy family man in awkward situations, angry man who’s not given his due, and clueless degenerate just try to do his job. Ferrell sank his teeth into all of it, but the writing often left him adrift. 

An appearance in the mystifyingly short and haggard cold open against Alec Baldwin’s POTUS found him as EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, but with few actual lines. It was hard to tell if the sketch was just severely underwritten or if there was a cue card mishap, but he hit the stage and it ended pretty soon after.

His monologue wasn’t much better, as a joke about his becoming tongue-tied at the sight of Reynolds in the audience was beaten into the ground. His Tom Steyer in the debate sketch was sufficiently weird as he seemed incapable of blinking, he made a believably offended dwarf in a Wizard of Oz sketch, and his ventriloquist in the 10-to-1 made for the funniest moment of the night. He also played an English teacher crashing his students’ party in the throes of a midlife crisis that, while the video sketch itself broke no ground, showed why Ferrell is an expert at spinning unfulfilled men into laughs.

NOTABLE SKETCHES/PERFORMANCES: Save for the 10-to-1 sketch, the best SNL had to offer was mild chuckles. The debate sketch’s highlights included Rudolph’s Harris scavenging for viral moments and Harrelson’s Biden answering a question about his stance on marijuana by putting himself into the Harold & Kumar films. A Thanksgiving in the 1600s sketch found Ferrell as the native American equivalent of a racist grandpa who gets his news from an actual fox, and his ventriloquist in the 10-to-1 couldn’t’ see the boundaries he was crossing.

WEEKEND UPDATE: One surprising aspect of this week’s episode was how SNL failed to capitalize on an explosive news week. While Colin Jost did call out Devin Nunes for some outrageous lies, the jokes overall weren’t WU’s best.

This week’s Update also had only one desk piece, with Alex Moffat returning as The Guy Who Just Bought a Boat, then bringing Reynolds on as his friend, The Guy Who Knows the Owner. Moffat went all in on the character’s sleazy double entendres for Thanksgiving – which he called Spanks-sniffing – talking about the “holiday sleazin’” and “Green Bean Asserole,” and how making a great mac and cheese can lead to “rack and squeeze.”

THE 10 TO 1 SLOT: SNL saved the weirdest for the end, with Ferrell playing a lounge act ventriloquist whose puppet harped on the fact that Ferrell’s hand was up his butt, increasingly making it sound like a crime. Audience members Kenan Thompson and Cecily Strong finally screamed at Ferrell to remove his hand from the puppet’s butt, and it all seemed innocent until Ferrell used a boat load of lube to get the puppet up again. This was one of the few LOL moments of the night.

SNL returns in two weeks with host Jennifer Lopez and musical guest Dababy.

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

Stream the Will Ferrell SNL Season 45 Episode on YouTube