SNL Scorecard: Jake Gyllenhaal / Sabrina Carpenter
Two weeks ago, Saturday Night Live wrapped up Season 49 with a season finale featuring a big-name actor who has hosted twice before, and a young up-and-coming pop star making her show debut. That it's taken me two weeks to tie a bow on this SNL season is not, as you might expect or hope, a result of me taking a fortnight to gather my thoughts, heal my sides from laughter, and collect myself from what was a mind-blowing 90 minutes of television. No, it's simply down to the fact that I was on vacation and had minimal time to even watch the episode, let alone compile notes on it.
In fact, the season finale was pretty much perfectly on par with SNL's 49th year: solid overall, few lowlights, more than one highlight, but on the whole not memorable, as a result of some pretty weak writing. When SNL announced the hosts and musical guests for the trio of closing shows, I remarked to my siblings that the choice of finale felt underwhelming. We were, after all, coming off of far-and-away the two strongest episodes of the season, and with the 18th and 19th episodes due to involve my pop queen Dua Lipa, my indie beloveds Vampire Weekend, and comedy icon Maya Rudolph, the Jake Gyllenhaal-Sabrina Carpenter tandem just didn't move me. By those own metrics I handicapped the episode with, I would at least say it exceeded my expectations, though not by more than the last two simply didn't meet them. Just as he did a little over two years ago, Gyllenhaal proved a gamely host, willing to tap into goofy and showman sides of himself we don't often see. And, to my enjoyment, we were mostly treated to high-energy performances from the cast in an array of wonderfully weird sketches. But, for one last time at the end of a season in which this has been the mantra: this was just an okay episode, and I can't help but feel like there was a great episode in there that better writing could have uncovered.
One note in case you forgot- I know my rankings can seem a little arbitrary, and truthfully there have been times where even I will look back at scorecards and think "Now, why did I rate (x) an 8.5, if (x) from this other episode was only a 7...?". So, both to hopefully clear up my scoring system for any curious readers, but also really to help keep myself consistent, here is the rubric to reference:
10/10: Perfect, no notes
8-9.5/10: Very funny-to-hilarious, definite rewatch
6-7.5/10: Pretty funny-to-funny, but won't necessarily be a rewatch
4-5.5/10: Not BAD, but not particularly funny or memorable
1-3.5/10: Terrible/poor taste, to simply bad/unfunny
Here's the sketch-by-sketch breakdown of the 20th and final episode of the season:
Sketch of the Night
"Beautiful Girls": 8/10
This wasn’t the funniest sketch of them all, maybe, but this was easily my favorite of the night, and one of my personal faves in a while. Partially because it was hilarious, partially because it was an homage to a scene from Singin' In The Rain, an old family favorite. But mostly because I'm a sucker for sketches that are a production. I Ioved the commitment to old-school revue, and the twist with Kenan getting hooked by the end.
The Good
“Scooby-Doo": 7.5/10
This perhaps didn't hit the novel heights of "Farewell Mr. Bunting", which sure feels like it's spiritual forefather. But still, a great reveal after a long buildup, and and a delightfully chaotic denouement that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
“Fast Fashion Ad": 7.5/10
Simple and to the point. SNL excels at mock ads, but it's rare these days to see one that has barbs at a contemporary hot-button issue, and still manages to be very funny.
“Weekend Update": 7.5/10
Great jokes overall from Michael Che and Colin Jost again in a year in which we became accustomed to that. Their misses were few and far between, which made Kenan's and Marcelo Hernandez’s appearance as cockroaches feel a little like it overstayed its welcome, despite it being a lot of fun. Unfortunately, what could have been an all-time finish to Weekend Update with the delightful return of Joke Swap only resulted in the most awkward finish to the segment that I think I have ever seen. I hope this doesn't spell the end of Joke Swap forever, but uhhhh I kinda can't blame Lorne Michaels if it does.
"Snake Eyes": 7/10
This was such a great 10-to-1 sketch. It's been fun to see James Austin Johnson carve a role out for himself in the show beyond just his terrific impressions, and this was my favorite original bit of his yet. (Sassy Southern accents, especially when done well, is a never-ending source of humor to me.) This one ended a little too abruptly and bizarrely, otherwise it could have placed higher on the night.
"Summer of Trump Cold Open": 7/10
I've said it a million times, and I'm sure I’ll say it again: it's hard for a political sketch to fail when it’s centered around JAJ riffing as Donald Trump. The actual writing itself here was somewhat weak, but there were enough funny asides from JAJ to make this an enjoyable sketch.
“Dad Has A Cookie": 7/10
This one was stupid enough that it almost didn’t work, but thanks to the buy-in from all involved, it was a ton of fun, even if it still just felt like an off-brand I Think You Should Leave sketch.
“NYPD Press Conference": 6.5/10
There wasn't much to this sketch other than a joke about how many 'character actors' have gotten attacked in NYC, and it feels a little weird for Jake Gyllenhall, a very famous actor, to be leading the laughs about that. But, thanks largely to the interplay with the other cast members, this still managed to be a decently funny skit overall.
"Bike Trail": 6/10
Nice and silly, and it "worked" as a 10-to-1 sketch because of Gyllenhall fully committing to his hapless character. But I wish "Snake Eyes" would have been the last sketch of the night, so I'm going to just going to remember it as if it is.
"Monologue": 5.5/10
I love that it’s become a tradition for Jake to sing in every monologue he does on the show. Unfortunately the writers of this evidently didn’t really think of anything other than “Jake should sing again!!!”, and the few jokes they did come up with he kinda stumbled over. It's fine, this was a lot of fun at least, just not particularly good.
"Canceling a Flight": 5/10
The original form of this sketch was so good, one of the best of its season a couple years ago. It's hard to understand why the second iteration of it was so much worse. After all, the format of it would, on the surface, seem to lend itself to replay value. But, while far from disastrous, this time around it just did not feel well-executed. A combination of weird timing errors and weak punchlines made this one aggressively "meh."
Musical Performances
Sabrina Carpenter: 6.5/10
Sabrina Carpenter has been in the music business for some time, despite her young age, but has only recently broken through. What a breakthrough it's been though: fresh off opening for Taylor Swift on her record-setting stadium tour, she's skyrocketed in popularity by dropping one of the most ubiquitous earworms we've heard in a long time.
Anybody with any concept of who Carpenter was knew which song she was going to open her SNL debut with: the aforementioned earworm "Espresso." I was eager to see it performed live for the first time, and having seen it, my reaction was "1.5 thumbs up!" The set design and choreography was great, but her vocals a little hard to hear, and her theatrical facial expressions were cute but a little distracting, as was the backing vocal track. Overall, a decent performance of a silly but irresistibly catchy song. Her second performance of early hit "Feather" was trending to be an even stronger performance...untiol she sort of needlessly transitioned into the outro of "Nonsense." Her original coda of this track in each different performance went viral even before "Espresso" did, so I understand her wanting to replicate the trend on a TV audience for the first time, but it wasn't her best, and disrupted the flow she had established with the earlier track.
OVERALL SCORE: 6.75 ('Comedy Only' score: 6.77)
At the end of season 49, here's where all 20 episodes of the season stood-- keep in mind the episode's overall score factors in the musical performance, so what I considered the funniest isn't necessarily the top-rated overall, etc.:
Ryan Gosling/Chris Stapleton - 7.65
Kristen Wiig/RAYE - 7.44
Adam Driver/Olivia Rodrigo - 7.41
Ayo Edebiri/Jennifer Lopez - 7.29
Ramy Youssef/Travis Scott - 7.18
Josh Brolin/Ariana Grande - 7.08
Maya Rudolph/Vampire Weekend - 7.00
Nate Bargatze/Foo Fighters - 6.82
Shane Gillis/21 Savage - 6.75
Jake Gyllenhaal/Sabrina Carpenter - 6.75 (tiebreaker goes to the Shane Gillis episode for having a higher 'Comedy Only' score)
Dua Lipa - 6.67
Timothée Chalamet/boygenius - 6.54
Bad Bunny - 6.54 (tiebreaker goes to the Timothée Chalamet episode for having a higher 'Comedy Only' score)
Dakota Johnson/Justin Timberlake - 6.50
Kate McKinnon/Billie Eilish - 6.38
Emma Stone/Noah Kahan - 6.21
Jacob Elordi/Reneé Rapp - 6.17
Sydney Sweeney/Kacey Musgraves - 6.12
Jason Momoa/Tate McRae - 6.00
Pete Davidson/Ice Spice - 5.75
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