Best, Worst of Michael Keaton's 'SNL'

by Julian Spivey
The fourth episode of the milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” saw “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” star Michael Keaton return to host the show for the first time in 10 years and his fourth hosting stint overall (1982 & 1992). At 73 years old, Keaton is the sixth oldest host in ‘SNL’ history (interestingly, he barely surpasses Jean Smart, who just hosted the season premiere a few weeks ago).
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The show didn’t give Keaton much to do in his appearance. He appeared in nearly every sketch but rarely in the lead role. Nothing during this episode thoroughly disappointed me, but much like the Ariana Grande-hosted episode the week before, there weren’t many highs. 
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Photo: NBC

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Best
The show had another strong political cold opening this week, thanks to the contentious Fox News interview between Vice President Kamala Harris and Fox News anchor Brett Baier earlier in the week. The big surprise of the sketch was Alec Baldwin, the show’s all-time leader in host appearances, cameoing as Baier and properly mocking Baier’s ridiculous attempts at talking over Harris and being an all-around doofus of an interviewer. The real highlight was seeing ‘SNL’ legends Baldwin and Maya Rudolph as Harris playing off each other for the bulk of the sketch. The sketch also found a way to shoehorn James Austin Johnson’s former President Donald Trump and Dana Carvey’s President Joe Biden into the sketch in comical ways, like mocking Trump’s awkward dance party from a town hall appearance earlier in the week. 

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Worst
I’ve been clamoring for an appearance from Please Don’t Destroy all season after they curiously didn’t appear in the show’s first three episodes after being in nearly every episode of season 49. After appearances from The Lonely Island in a Digital Short two weeks ago and the debut of a Dan Bulla short last week, I wondered if PDD shorts were a thing of the past. I was happy to see the return of PDD this week, but it wasn’t quite the same, with the group opting to play it more like a short film than their in-office bits that are often among their best work. John Higgins and Martin Herlihy played friends about to skydive, and Ben Marshall and Keaton portrayed depressed professional skydivers scaring the duo. There were certainly some laughs, but I expected better from the first PDD moment of the season. 

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Best
I didn’t know what to expect when the “Forbidden Romance” sketch opened with an image telling us it was 1955. There was an obvious “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” situation between a white man (Andrew Dismukes) and a black woman (Ego Nwodim) and their respective families (Keaton, Heidi Gardner, Kenan Thompson, and Devon Walker). But I just about lost it when Dismukes’s character said he had a song that explained how love between a white man/black woman could work, despite the worries of their families and broke into Train’s 2009 song “Hey Soul Sister.” Yes, poking fun at a 15-year-old song might not be the timeliest thing one can do comedy-wise, but it’s about time somebody hammered that horrible, horrible song, and this was the perfect way to showcase its idiocy. Dismukes has become a legend among this cast for these outlandish scenario sketches. 

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Worst
TikTok bits were more prevalent on ‘SNL’ a few years ago when the video social media app was newer and becoming popular. So, it was a little surprising on Saturday night when the show returned to the idea with a mix-match of TikTok video parodies. Some moments were funny, though not really laugh-out-loud funny, but it just seemed too easy of a bit and rehashing old territory. 

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Best
There aren’t many recurring characters from this iteration of ‘SNL,’ so who knows if this particular one will be a one-and-done one, but Ego Nwodim’s conspiracy theorist game show host Uber driver would make a perfect recurring bit. Nwodim has proven adept at creating these funny, out-of-the-box characters – most of whom usually appear as Weekend Update guests – who always crack me up.