Best, Worst from Jack Black's 'SNL'

by Julian Spivey
In the early 2000s, actor Jack Black was among the most popular hosts of the legendary NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. He hosted three times in short succession and looked to be on a fast track to joining the “five-timer’s club.” Then, 20 years passed without him hosting the show, until Saturday, April 5, when the 55-year-old returned triumphantly to the famed Studio 8H.
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Here’s the best and worst of Black’s return to ‘SNL’ … 
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Photo: NBC

Best:
James Austin Johnson’s impression of President Donald Trump is perfect. It’s always been great, but many times I’m so sick of the real-life Trump that I don’t want to see his impression on the show. This week was worth it, with Johnson mocking the President’s recent tariff announcement and all of its idiocies, including imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands, which only have penguins. My favorite joke of the cold opening was about McDonald Island and how Trump envisioned Big Macs in hula skirts with the hilarious, “Get me to God’s Country, right? Remember that?,” mocking the previous week’s dumbass musical guest Morgan Wallen’s Instagram caption after walking off the show during the goodnights segment. I also enjoyed the new slogan, “MAGDA,” meaning Make America Great Depression Again. It’s a wild and sad time for America right now, but at least Johnson’s terrific take on the President can make us laugh about it for a while. 

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Worst:   
Jack Black was excited for his ‘SNL’ return and brought tremendous energy to the show. But many of the sketches throughout the evening were pretty average. They weren’t outright terrible, but not as great as I had hoped. Many featured one joke repeated over and over throughout the sketch, like the dinner sketch early on in which a group of friends who hadn’t seen each other in years attempt to one-up one another, while looking goofily into the camera as an eagle screeched sound played behind it. Then there was the post-Weekend Update sketch, in which Black played the frontman of a cover band doing a show where anyone in the audience could bring their instrument on stage and join in the jam while playing Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and every single person who did so was a bass player until the entire stage was one big bass fest. 

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Best:
The Weekend Update guests this week were excellent. It was maybe the best 1-2 punch of Update guest characters the show has seen all season. Marcello Hernandez and Jane Wickline brought back their couple you would never expect to be together duo, where Hernandez is an outgoing, bro-y jock and Wickline a shy and quiet nerd. It’s an excellent showcase for Hernandez, who’s fantastic at these hyper-outgoing characters, but it works because he plays off the Wickline character. My favorite moments were when he described “Doctor Who” as an “Aussie in a port-a-potty” and how he got his girl a clarinet because “don’t my baby look like she’d go stupid on a woodwind.” The second guest was Ego Nwodim, playing off of the White House Correspondents Association cancelling comedian Amber Ruffin’s White House Correspondents Dinner performance, and how she could do it without being political. Nwodim played it as a Def Jam comedian, to the noticeable giggles of Update co-anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost. Thinks got really out of hand when she opened it up to crowd participation when she said: “These men ain’t what?” and multiple people in the audience shouted, “worth shit,” a word that isn’t supposed to be said on NBC. This led to the excellent Nwodim ad-lib: “We finna get fined for that. Y’all gonna have to pay for that. Lorne gonna be mad at y’all.” Unfortunately, the show has censored this segment on online replays. 

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Best:
Seeing Elton John and Brandi Carlile as musical guests was fantastic, especially given the horrible musical guest from the episode the week before. Elton John and Carlile were promoting their recent album collaboration, Who Believes in Angels? with the performances “Little Richard’s Bible” and the title track. Unfortunately, the performance of “Little Richard’s Bible” was a mess on the show; the mix in the studio must have been wonky, which made the lyrics almost impossible to hear. You should check it out on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music, as it’s a good rocking number. The piano playing by Elton John during the performance was terrific as ever. The performance of “Who Believes in Angels” was much better, as you could hear the vocals. Carlile and Elton John’s voices played brilliantly together.