SNL Scorecard: Timothée Chalamet
Just two days before his stint on Saturday Night Live, Timothée Chalamet was announced as an Oscar nominee for Best Actor for the second time in his young career, this time for his depiction of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. It remains to be seen whether he will win a couple months from now-- he's not the current favorite --but one thing is for sure: we've never seen an Oscar campaign quite like this one.
Timothée has been front and center at just about everything the last couple months, starting with an incredibly viral appearance on College GameDay on conference championship weekend in December. He's on your favorite talk show, he's dropping impressive music knowledge on podcasts, he's popping up at European soccer matches and discussing his favorite soccer teams on English radio shows. All of that felt like it was merely leading up to the absurd and delightful culmination that was last night, his appearance as Saturday Night Live host...and musical guest. Yes, musical guest, and yes, merely singing Bob Dylan songs.
The unexpected 'double duty' announcement was the epitome of a win-win for the show: it kept Chalamet front and center on the public conscience, but also got more eyeballs on SNL's 50th season, and hinted at the sort of original thinking that made this show great (and frankly, has largely been lacking in recent seasons). It won't shock you to hear that the author of these scorecard pieces is in fact a huge SNL nerd, and as such, I've eaten up all the extra content that's been coming out in anticipation of the 50th anniversary special: behind the scenes videos on YouTube, a 4-part documentary series on Peacock, the motion picture Saturday Night, about the night of the show's series premiere. All of that (well, the latter two in particular) has served to remind me that the show did not always take the formulaic shape it has for most of my lifetime: it used to almost be more of a variety show, with multiple musical acts, with comedy that ranked from live-action to pre-taped to animated, with bits that were surreal, and others that were just good old-fashioned bodily humor.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying, this last episode felt like a reminder of what makes Saturday Night Live truly unlike anything else on television. Not because it was the funniest episode of any-- it ranks pretty highly amongst this season, but I think there are plenty funnier even in recent memory. But rather because from the monologue to the musical performances down through every ensuing sketch, it felt like the most deeply original show we've had in years. Whether it was inspired by an amiable host that clearly was a bit of an SNL nerd himself, or the fact that this was the last live show before their 50th anniversary extravaganza in a couple weeks, it seemed as if the writers decided this week to say, "You know what? Anything goes. No bad ideas. Let's just throw it all out there, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work." And it didn't all work! But it was all fun, and certainly different, and for that I'm grateful-- and based on the online reviews I've read, I'm not the only one who feels this way.
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 12th episode of the season:
Sketch of the Night
"New Barista Training": 8/10
I can’t explain what prevented this from being an absolute smash- it felt like the crowd took a little while to warm up to the joke, the ending was a little sloppy…I dunno. Whatever it was, it felt like this landed like just a good sketch, but I personally thought it was great. So many different jokes from different directions, and great energy from the host and cast. When Kenan came walking out as the comedian at the end, I lost it.
The Good
“Founding Fathers Cold Open": 8/10
I sort of figured this was the setup when the sketch began, but once Lin-Manuel Miranda popped out, I’ll admit, I kind of wanted to see a “Hamilton”-inspired sketch. OKAY YES, I LOVED HAMILTON, OKAY? I’M A MILLENNIAL, SUE ME. That said, and you should know this about me by now, I will never complain about a sketch that basically just lets James Austin Johnson’s Trump go bonkers for 5 minutes straight, attempting (successfully) to get the cast and guest star to break in the process. Times are bleak, but I’ll take wins where I can get them, and getting JAJ’s spot-on parody of Trump is nearly always a win.
“Medcast": 7.5/10
Actual, LOL-inducing punchlines were few and far between, and at least live, the timing at the very end was weird, as the applause cue came on early and drowned out Heidi Gardner’s last lines. But I absolutely loved the premise of this one, and Andrew Dismukes as the Theo Von-lookalike doctor was hilarious.
“Dog Run": 7.5/10
This was one of many really clever ideas that yielded a totally wild sketch. I love seeing an original idea with so many different cast members getting a chance to commit to the craziness. Kenan Thompson’s cameo at the end brought to mind the infamous “You can say that again”/Tell me about it” scene from underrated classic They Came Together that made my little brother laugh so hard he couldn’t breathe.
"God - An SNL Animated Short": 7/10
Never in a million years did I expect the last sketch of the night to be an animated short. It seemed like the crowd was mostly just confused by this point, but I thought this was so cool and random in the best way! It’s good to mix it up with something entirely different now and then, and this was both entirely different and a decently funny bit about some of the absurdities of Creation.
"Monologue": 7/10
I remember being somewhat surprised by how nervous Timothée was on his first monologue, and then in turn, impressed by his extremely high-energy start to the show on the second time of asking. This, weirdly enough, felt like a middle ground of the three: much more restrained and personable than the last time we saw Timmy Tim, but also the host was much more confident onstage, and delivered on a solid awards show bit very well.
“AI Software": 7/10
It was one of the themes of the night- really funny joke at the center, but only a good sketch, not great. After the first couple scenes with Chalamet and Bowen Yang, I thought this was headed for sketch of the night. But it seemed like they didn’t totally know where to go with the artificial intelligence characters, and the humor tapered off and lost focus down the stretch.
“Weekend Update": 6.5/10
"What? It’s a dark Update,” said Michael Che to the audience after a joke that made them wince more than laugh. He was right- that sort of summed up this whole Update. Both the jokes from the co-anchors and the content of the walk-on guests were bleak; not unfunny, mind you, there were very funny moments. But woof. You could tell they were going through it. Ego Nwodim’s appearance was high-energy at least, and I actually did find Dismukes’ ‘puppet dad’ bit really funny, more so than the audience seemed to at least. But it did go on too long.
“Bungee": 6.5/10
The first sketch post-monologue had great energy levels, and a lot of funny individual elements. But I don’t know, it just never got to where I hoped it would get to. By the end, it mostly just felt like Timothée and the cast wanted an excuse to fly around on bungees for a sketch. And who can blame them? But this ended up being a lot more fun than funny.
“Oedipal Arrangements": 6/10
This is some Grade-A punnage, which I really admire. It was also deeply unsettling. I don’t know what to rate this, because I hated it, and it seemed like the crowd kinda did, too, but it WAS really funny. But oof…people were not on board. It feels like the writing staff (and maybe Lorne) thought they had a new classic SNL ad with this one, but the audience not buying in really hampered how enjoyable this was, I think.
“Grandma's Birthday": 5/10
A 10-to-1 sketch that goes on way long, and is practically all just fart jokes??? Sign me up!!!
Okay, okay, yeah this one kinda sucked. But I kinda loved it on principle anyway.
Musical Performances
Timothée Chalamet (feat. James Blake): 7.5/10
This was one of the most unexpected musical guest announcements that I can think of, and I was of two minds on it. Part of me couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the naked awards season campaigning. But on the other hand, I do, as the host himself said in the monologue, “love that SNL is still doing weird stuff like this.” And it was weird! But not in a bad way!
The very first appearance of the host as musical guest was performing the deep Dylan cut,“Outlaw Blues.” It was a pretty electric performance, but I’ll confess, I was a little thrown by the fact that Chalamet was doing Bob Dylan songs, but not in character as Bob Dylan. He has a perfectly nice voice! And again, the band was kickin’. Just sort of odd to me. And it got even odder— in a cool way —as that performance blended directly into one of another obscure track, “Three Angels.” As Timothée recited Dylan’s spoken word poem, James Blake and a backing choir carried the tune.
The closing performance of “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” was more along the lines of what I expected from Chalamet’s set. It wasn’t a full-on Dylan impression, but certainly a Dylan affectation. Nobody will confuse Tim for an ace vocalist, but he gave a nice, stripped-back performance of a beautiful song. I don’t know where his guest appearance ranks among musical performances in terms of quality, but it was far from a failed experiment, and it’s certainly among the most original!
OVERALL SCORE: 6.96 ('Comedy Only' score: 6.91)
Heading into SNL's break for their 50th anniversary special, here’s where the episodes stand-- 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.:
Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks - 7.46
Martin Short/Hozier - 7.39
Dave Chappelle/GloRilla - 7.38
Nate Bargatze/Coldplay - 7.27
Charli xcx - 7.21
Michael Keaton/Billie Eilish - 7.18
John Mulaney/Chappell Roan - 7.11
Timothée Chalamet - 6.96
Bill Burr/Mk.gee - 6.58
Jean Smart/Jelly Roll - 6.55
Paul Mescal/Shaboozey - 6.38
Chris Rock/Gracie Abrams - 5.50
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