SNL Scorecard: Paul Rudd / Omicron Variant
Last weekend was the weekend for Saturday Night Live's annual eagerly-anticipated Christmas show. Its last episode before the holiday almost always brings a big-name host, several big-name special guests, and lots of eyeballs, and for most of last week, all indications were that this would be another big, celebratory affair. Beloved actor Paul Rudd would be joining the "Five-Timers Club" in his fifth stint hosting the show, and he'd be joined by at least the beloved hyperpop artists Charli XCX as musical guest, and rumors persisted of other star cameos.
And then, in a scene straight out of March 2020, things changed drastically and swiftly as a result of COVID-19, specifically the current wave of the Omicron variant. Mere hours before the live show, SNL's social media pages posted a message stating that out of an abundance of caution, there would be no live audience for this Christmas show, and reports surfaced on the Internet that multiple cast and crew members had tested positive and would be quarantining.
Saturday Night Live has responded to the pandemic in multiple ways as it progressed. At its outset in America last year, they-- like most everyone --shut it down immediately, scrapping several planned shows entirely. Then, about a month or so later, they finished out Season 45 with three completely virtual and pre-taped "At Home" shows. And from fall 2020 to spring 2021, almost the entirety of Season 46 was back live, back in 30 Rock, but with only a small studio audience of first responders and medical professionals. Thus far this season, it had been business as usual, a full (vaccinated) studio audience present. As such, the move to go forward with this episode, but with a very limited number of personnel available and zero fans present, both was unprecedented, and made for quite a strange and frankly, sad viewing experience; it was a far cry from even the high-energy (albeit partial capacity) Kristen Wiig/Dua Lipa Christmas episode last season, let alone the full on brilliance of Eddie Murphy/Lizzo two Christmases ago.
I wasn't sure whether to even do a scorecard for this particular episode. After all, it didn't seem fair to hold an episode with only a few new sketches and a couple cast members involved to the same standards as all previous shows. But at the same time, bizarre as it might have been, it was a new episode altogether with some new content. So what I've settled on is a general recap piece with an overall episode rating only, not the usual sketch-by-sketch breakdown.
Right off the bat, it was clear just how different this episode would be from others. In lieu of a standard cold open followed by monologue format, the show opened with Tom Hanks entering the Studio 8H stage-- a poignant callback to his appearance on the first of the "At Home" episodes in Spring 2020 --and discussing the COVID outbreak throughout the cast and crew and its effects on this episode. He was then joined by Tina Fey, Kenan Thompson and Rudd himself to do a bit of a pseudo monologue. It was a bittersweet but fun introduction to the show, which mostly focused on Rudd's bittersweet induction to the Five-Timers Club. The funniest part by far though was the video message from Steve Martin and Martin Short:
From there, the show progressed to be a medley of new pre-taped sketches and reruns of old holiday favorites, with the sole exception of Weekend Update, which was new. Tina Fey, the consummate professional, subbed in for an absent Colin Jost and though her banter with Michael Che wasn't quite as electric as hers with Amy Poehler or his with Jost, they still bounced off each other naturally and strung together a pretty solid Update! I was sad we didn't get the annual 'joke swap' between Che and Jost, but it was kind of fun having the vibe of this Update be "yukking it up with friends," especially when those friends are Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd and Kenan Thompson.
All three of the new sketches, too, were actually quite good! I don't think it's a stretch to say these pre-taped bits would have stood out even had this been a normal episode. The first one, wherein Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant play grandmothers with one thing and one thing only on their mind ("grandCHILDren"), felt like a vintage bit from those two.
"Christmas Socks," both a parody of the worst Christmas song ever and a crash course in absurdist humor, was hilarious. It was a perfect blend of Kyle Mooney's usual delightfully dumb humor and the type of over-exaggerated 'nice guy' Rudd has played so perfectly in many a comedy.
And I really hate that "An Evening With Pete" wasn't screened for a live audience, because I would have been fascinated to hear the sort of reception it got. It had moments of hilarity, but it actually was more a brilliant piece of referential art than it was pure humor. I was really impressed by Pete Davidson's acting chops in this one. Many have speculated that this felt like a farewell sketch for the young star, and though there have been no official reports to match (and we've seen several instances of what felt like farewells in recent years), it's hard to blame them based on the tone of this one.
Really my only complaint about this episode, apart from the obvious complaint that it sucked to not have an audience nor most of the cast, was the choices of old sketches to re-air. Steve Martin's Holiday Wish is of course a classic bit, as is Dick In A Box, and it was fun to see the less commonly known Martin Short and Paul McCartney sketch from Christmas 2012, as well as Eddie Murphy's frantic elf from the show just a couple years ago. But there were so many good ones just from the last few years alone (to say nothing of all the famous Christmas episodes before it) that the latter two, as well as Jimmy Fallon's Now That's What I Call Christmas, felt like somewhat odd choices to re-air. And the vastly overlong "Global Warming Christmas Special" from the 90s was a particularly bad and weird choice; the humor pretty much started and ended with Hanks' Dean Martin and Mike Myers' Carl Sagan impressions.
All in all, as perhaps could have been expected, it was a weird, uneven, completely unique episode of Saturday Night Live, and at the same time, surprisingly funny overall. As sad as I am for Paul Rudd, who is probably the nicest guy in the entire industry, that he was robbed of a normal and exciting hosting experience for his fifth time on the show, perhaps it was only fitting that this is the week that the long streak of first-time hosts came to an end. Where someone unfamiliar with the ins and outs of SNL might have been daunted by the abnormally large task at hand, Rudd handled it with aplomb, the constant professional.
OVERALL SCORE: 6.50
As we enter Christmas Break, here is where the Season 47 episodes stand thus far-- 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.:
Rami Malek/Young Thug - 6.95
Billie Eilish - 6.95 (tiebreaker goes to the Rami Malek episode for having a higher 'Comedy Only' score)
Simu Liu/Saweetie - 6.83
Jason Sudeikis/Brandi Carlile - 6.83 (tiebreaker goes to the Simu Liu episode for having a higher 'Comedy Only' score)
Owen Wilson/Kacey Musgraves - 6.64
Kim Kardashian West/Halsey - 6.63
Paul Rudd (COVID Christmas) - 6.50
Kieran Culkin/Ed Sheeran - 6.25
Jonathan Majors/Taylor Swift - 5.88
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