Charli XCX, one of the biggest pop stars of 2024, played double duty on “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday, November 16, for the show’s seventh episode of its milestone 50th season.

Typically, musicians serving double duty on the show don’t excite me, as they’re not as well experienced in the acting and comedy aspect as I’d like from a host of a sketch comedy show. But Charli XCX seemed capable of holding her own with the ‘SNL’ cast on Saturday. The show wasn’t great – but that’s all in the writing – but she was charming and game for anything.

Here are the highlights and lowlights from the episode: 

Best:
The single funniest moment of this week’s ‘SNL’ was Sarah Sherman on Weekend Update as Peanut the Squirrel’s Widow. It’s the perfect Update character for the wacky Sherman, who always gets laughs playing against Update anchor Colin Jost. Her impression of a squirrel crossing the road and seeing a car is among the heaviest I’ve laughed at the show so far this season. 

Worst:
I understand that ‘SNL’ is trying to get into the mindset as to how the country has once again elected Donald Trump as President and, while doing it it’s sufficiently showing the Trump Bros as the imbeciles they are, but it’s also something many of us simply do not want to see right now. Case in point, the Banger Boyz podcast, poking fun at the Nelk Boys (who I, thankfully, had never heard of before Trump recently appeared on their podcast). We see this type of person too often in the real world, and I really don’t want to spend part of my ‘SNL’ experience with them. 

Best:
I enjoyed some of Colin Jost’s pokes at President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet choices, particularly that of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General in which he said: “On Wednesday, Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Gaetz said the same thing he does when he sees a teenage girl, ‘I’ll do it!’” and “Gaetz, who was created when Frankenstein raped Dracula, was chosen for Attorney General after Trump remembered that his original pick was found dead in a jail cell (picture of Jeffrey Epstein on screen).” 

Worst:
‘SNL’ stumbled into a viral hit during the Ariana Grande-hosted episode with the “Domingo” sketch featuring bridesmaids singing about a bachelorette trip to the tune of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” telling the story about how the bride-to-be cheated on her fiancé with the suave Domingo. The sketch wasn’t all that great, but it blew up on TikTok, and when something gets that much traction, you know ‘SNL’ will beat it into the ground. And, four weeks later, they’ve done so again with the bride being pregnant and not knowing who’s baby it is set to the music off Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go.”  I’m sure we’ll be seeing this crew again. 

Best:
Viewers were shocked earlier this season when a new Digital Short featuring The Lonely Island boys led by Andy Samberg appeared on the show. While the Sushi Glory Hole song was certainly more shocking and delighted fans of the show, I think the second Digital Short this season, which aired this weekend, was better. Samberg and Charli XCX teamed up for “Here I Go,” a humorous song about a couple who will call the cops on anybody who gets near their property, from Girl Scouts to dogs being walked. 

“Agatha All Along” premiered on Disney+ on September 18th and concluded its run on October 30th. The show continues where Disney+’s critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated 2021 series  “WandaVision” left off. For three years, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) has been trapped under a magical spell in Westview, N.J.. It begins with Agatha trying to solve the murder of an unidentified woman in the woods. She starts investigating the town until she stumbles across a goth teen named Teen (“Heartstopper” heartthrob Joe Locke). He helps her to realize who she is. Realizing she has lost her magical powers; she immediately becomes obsessed with regaining them. The way for her to do this is to travel down the Witches’ Road. At the end of the road, awaits whatever your heart desires. To do this, though, she must assemble one of every kind of witch since the road will have an obstacle for every kind of witchcraft. Agatha assembles a potions expert, Jen (Sasheer Zamata), a witch of divination, Lilia (Patti LuPone), a protector witch, Alice (Ali Ahn), and a green witch, Sharon (Debra Jo Rupp). They join forces to each gain their heart’s desire that lies at the end of the Witches Road. 
 
“Agatha All Along” has so many things going for it. It has such a cast that delivers truly outstanding performances. Hahn, the show's star, shows us why the Emmy she lost to Julianne Nicholson for “Mare of Easttown” years ago should have her name engraved. We get to see so much more of her comedic villain. She provides so many laughs with her sarcastic wit and unwillingness to hold back anything she thinks. As a fan of the Netflix series, “Heartstopper,” I was so thrilled to see Locke here as Teen. Locke is someone who is going to have a long career in the business. He finds a way to make Teen charming, mysterious, sweet and potentially dangerous simultaneously. LuPone, as Lilia, is the central standout from the other witches in the cast. Anytime LuPone is on the screen, she finds a way to draw you in. She leaves you intrigued with what is to come next for her character even when she is not the main or central focus in the episode.
 
One thing that makes “Agatha All Along” intriguing is how it continues to find ways to continue the trend “WandaVision” set of telling stories in different time periods with varying production designs. We get to visit a house by the beach that looks like a house that almost made the cut to be in HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” we get a castle where Hahn becomes the iconic Wicked Witch of the West and Teen becomes Maleficent. We get a ‘70s recording studio and the writers make it all fit into the obstacles that the witches must face as they travel down the road.  
 
While the acting and production are top-notch, I find some issues in the writing. It is difficult not to compare it to “WandaVision” since it’s a spin-off of that series. While “WandaVision” was very accessible to all viewers, “Agatha All Along” appears to require fans to be somewhat immersed in the Marvel universe to fully follow everything going on. Nothing is wrong with that because this is a show set up in that universe. The problem is that the writers try to bridge that gap, but sometimes, they answer the questions much later than they should have, leaving viewers with questions and potentially taking them out of what is happening.  

The show also has so many mysteries that the writers set up. It definitely makes for a very dramatic and thought-provoking show. However, the show seems to focus on so many mysteries so close together, leaving the viewer feeling they might have missed something. At one point, I looked to see if I had missed an episode. It would have benefitted the show for some of these plot points to be given more attention when it was closer to their payoff. You can provide some breadcrumbs without giving half of the piece of toast. The show lacks the sophisticated storytelling of its predecessor, “WandaVision.” The show also leaves you questioning the relationship between Agatha and a witch who occasionally shows up named Rio (Aubrey Plaza). The show just revealed it will be submitted as a Comedy Series at the Emmys, signaling more seasons to come. Now that the writers know they have more time to tell the story, I hope they find ways to flesh things out more rather than pack what felt like too much into nine episodes. 

“Agatha All Along” was an entertaining show full of terrific performances and lavish production design, but it failed to be a true success due to some unfortunate writing issues. 

by Julian Spivey
The post-election episode of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by comedian Bill Burr, was a disappointment of the highest level. 

Many viewers had a hard week and are uncertain about where this country and the world are headed, and we needed some laughs. 

I was dreading the episode but I thought there would be enough laughs to outweigh the obvious election-related portions of the show. What I saw instead was a cast and writing staff that likely phoned it in as much as many of us did at our jobs this week and a host who made things worse with a tone-deaf monologue. 

There wasn’t much to discuss regarding the best of the week in SNL. 
​
Here’s the worst of the worst. 

The cold open featured much of the cast jokingly sucking up to the former and future President of the United States, saying they’ve been on his side the entire time and they didn’t mean any harm with their past jokes. The cast did yeoman’s work, but it felt almost like they were lined up for a firing squad, begging for their lives. 
​
Much of the talk in America this week has been about the treatment of women in this country, so to see Bill Burr on the stage saying misogynistic bullshit about how women need to whore it up next time they run for President was the exact opposite of what many of us wanted and needed to hear. I understand that Burr is a comedian who gets a lot of laughs offensively poking fun at serious topics, and that’s all well and good most of the time - but read the room this week. It was dreadful. 

Bowen Yang seemed to have fun as a douchebag who talks about inane issues in his life while complaining about the boring important issues in other’s lives during a trauma support group. That’s going to be America in the next half-decade or longer.

Ashley Padilla as a woman among friends at dinner trying to tell a funny joke and bombing and then attempting to repeat the joke was a huge waste of time. The show barely featured Padilla in the first quarter of the season, and based on what I’ve seen, I’m not sure I want to see any more from her.

What exactly was the bald guy musical? Maybe bald guys would dig it?

Season 50 of ‘SNL’ might be a celebration of the show, but the show is going to do what it always does – have good episodes and bad episodes. That should be expected. But I didn’t quite expect one of the worst episodes in the show’s history.

I sincerely hope ‘SNL’ puts more effort into next week’s episode, which will be hosted by pop singer Charli XCX, who also serves as musical guest. I usually worry about the quality of episodes hosted by the week’s musical guest. 

by Julian Spivey
The fifth episode of the milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” saw comedian John Mulaney return for his sixth hosting stint on the show he wrote for from 2008 to 2013.

Mulaney has returned to host an episode in almost every season since his debut in April 2018, and it seems like he’ll give the likes of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin a run for their money in terms of most hosting appearances.

While Mulaney is the most frequent host of this era of ‘SNL’ and one of the funniest comedians alive, his episodes of the show seem to seldom live up to my expectations because I know how funny he is. Saturday night’s (November 2) episode was no different.
​
Here are the highs and lows of the episode: 

Best
This may have been a return for John Mulaney and the final episode of ‘SNL’ before the Presidential Election featuring the show’s highest-profile cameo in years, but my favorite thing about the episode was the debut of new Weekend Update characters played by Marcello Hernandez and Jane Wickline as “The Couple You Cannot Believe Are Together.” Hernandez plays the loud, obnoxious frat boy type, which he’s so great at, and Wickline, in her second WU piece in only five episodes on the show, is the quiet and shy nerdy girl. I’m not sure this couple would work in the real world, but it made for some fun laughs on Saturday night. I’ve been impressed by Wickline’s WU work thus far, which showcases what seems to be a type of Gen-Z nervousness that comes off as quirky and humorous to me as an outsider of that generation. I wonder how people of the generation feel about it. 

Worst
‘SNL’ has done mostly an excellent job at political cold opens this election season. I’d say the show is a solid 3/5 on them but the final political cold open before the election on Tuesday had few highlights for me, even if many people were thrilled to see Democratic candidate Kamala Harris make a cameo face-to-face with Maya Rudolph, who portrays her on the show. I thought there were some laughs in this sketch, mostly coming from James Austin Johnson as an exasperated Donald Trump and Dana Carvey doing his same old Joe Biden schtick that always gets me but felt the “Kamala, palmala, rom-comala, etc.” rhyming to be too easy for my taste. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s just better to let the show mimic and poke fun at the politicians than invite them on the air. 

Best
John Mulaney is one of the top five stand-up comedians in the business right now, and if you wanted to say he was No. 1 on the list, I wouldn’t gripe about it. So, when he returns to host SNL, you know you’re at least going to get a funny monologue, even if, for some reason, his sketches are often disappointing. I particularly enjoyed the bit about having 12 kids in the old days because half of them probably wouldn’t survive childhood. 

Worst
How did they even come up with putting rock & roll pioneer Little Richard into a ‘90s family sitcom in 2024? It would seem like a bad idea from the start, and despite some of Kenan Thompson’s best efforts, it didn’t work for me. 

Best
Chappell Roan has been the biggest surprise in pop music in 2024, coming essentially out of nowhere to be one of the biggest acts in the music business. While I would’ve liked to have heard “Good Luck, Babe” on her ‘SNL’ debut, it was terrific seeing her inclusive anthem “Pink Pony Club” performed live with all of its theatrics and, especially getting the live Studio 8H audience to sing back to her (which I hope wasn’t rehearsed – and I don’t think it was). 

Worst
‘SNL’ has a huge cast, and most of them are talented as hell, but the show is doing a horrible job at the moment of using and distributing them throughout the episodes. Some of this is certainly due to all of the political sketches in the first quarter of the season featuring so many cameos and being longer than the average sketch, but when you have an episode like this one that barely features some of the show’s MVPs like Ego Nwodim and Andrew Dismukes, it makes the problem stand out more than your average show. Hopefully, with the election over, the show can focus on letting its cast cook for the remainder of the season. 

Emilia Perez (Netflix) – Wednesday, November 13
“Emilia Perez,” directed by Jacques Audiard, is being heralded as one of the best films of 2024. The musical-comedy stars Oscar front-runner Karla Sofia Gascon as a Mexican cartel leader who enlists a lawyer (Zoe Saldana) to help her disappear from cartel life and transition to a woman. Karla Sofia Gascon won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival this summer. Saldana and Selena Gomez are also garnering potential Oscar buzz. 

Landman (Paramount+) – Sunday, November 17
Taylor Sheridan’s latest drama of the many he has for Paramount+ is “Landman,” premiering Sunday, Nov. 17. Based on the popular podcast “Boomtown,” it’s a story set within the world of West Texas oil rigs and the money and politics involved in it. I’m generally not the biggest fan of Sheridan’s worldview, but it’ll be impossible not to give a cast led by Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm a chance. 

A Man on the Inside (Netflix) – Thursday, November 21
Ted Danson is one of the greatest comedic actors in television history, and I’ll follow him to any new series he stars in. His latest is Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside,” in which he portrays a retired man who answers an ad to become a private investigator going undercover at a nursing home seeking out mistreatment of the residents. The series, based on the 2020 Chilean documentary “The Mole Agent,” was created by Michael Schur, who had such great luck with Danson on NBC’s “The Good Place.” 

The Piano Lesson (Netflix) – Friday, November 22
After being mesmerized by “Fences” (2016) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020), two other films based on plays by August Wilson, I’m entirely in on any film adaptations based on his work. The latest is “The Piano Lesson,” directed by Malcolm Washington, about a Pittsburgh family and their heirloom piano in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The film stars Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher and Danielle Deadwyler. 

The Madness (Netflix) – Thursday, November 28
Colman Domingo is having quite the moment in 2024. He will almost certainly receive an Oscar Best Actor nomination for his performance in “Sing Sing,” now comes the starring role in Stephen Belber’s Netflix limited series conspiracy thriller “The Madness.” In the series, Domingo stars as a media pundit who must clear his name after accidentally stumbling upon a murder. The eight-episode series drops on Netflix on Thanksgiving. 

The Agency (Paramount+ with Showtime) – Friday, November 29
"The Agency," from George Clooney and Grant Heslov's producing team, is an espionage thriller about the department in charge of training and handing out undercover agents. The incredibly talented cast stars Michael Fassbender as the lead and Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere, John Magaro and Hugh Bonneville in supporting roles. "The Agency" is based on the 2015-2020 French series "Le Bureau des Legendes." 

Senna (Netflix) – Friday, November 29
Ayrton Senna was one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers ever to live and one of the great tragedies in the sport’s history, as the most recent champion to die in competition. His life was featured in the terrific 2010 documentary “Senna. " Now, from his home country of Brazil, comes a biographical drama of his life and career. “Senna” stars Gabriel Leone as the three-time F1 champion.