Dua Lipa disses Young Spicy while falling in love with ‘The Anomalous Man’
Did pulling double duty as host and musical guest pull Lipa away from sketches?
Despite being off for the past few weekends, the shockwaves from Ryan Gosling’s break-filled Saturday Night Live episode have continued to ripple through pop culture. There were in-depth interviews with Heidi Gardner about breaking during the now-infamous “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch. Then Gosling and Mikey Day showed up to a Fall Guy premiere as their SNL characters. And people were still talking about the sequel to the iconic “Papyrus” sketch.
It was easy to lose track of a new episode of SNL on the way. (If the Gosling episode was the season premiere, it would’ve been the perfect close to Season 49.)
But SNL stormed back for its final three-episode run of this season, with a very capable Dua Lipa performing double duty as both host and musical guest.
Over the past few months, I’ve come to realize that Lipa knows her way around comedy thanks to her going day drinking with Seth Meyers (and then getting a tattoo with him). I’m not sure if the SNL writers realized this, though …
There are two kinds of SNL hosts: Hosts who are written as the stars of their episode’s sketches. And hosts who are written as supporting players in their episode’s sketches. Lipa fell into the latter category.
Don’t get me wrong, this was a funny episode. And Lipa was good in the small parts she was given. But she wasn’t given a lot. Maybe the musical guest half of Lipa’s week at SNL took up the majority of her attention?
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COLD OPEN
Community Affairs Cold Open
With the exception of several bits around Kristi Noem, SNL skipped over sketches about politicians and led off the show with a very careful attempt to address the student protests going on at universities like Columbia. This one was pretty much a showcase for Kenan Thompson, putting him in the role of a father who is adamant that he’s “supportive of y’all’s kids protesting,” that support doesn’t extend to his own daughter, Alexis Vanessa Roberts.
- “I bounty hunt whenever possible”: Hey, as Kenan’s character says, Columbia isn’t free. Gotta make money to pay tuition somehow.
THE MONOLOGUE
Ah, the classic “let’s talk to some audience members” SNL monologue. Hard to go wrong with this approach. Gets the cast involved early. Gives us a chance to see Bowen Yang in a ridiculous mustache right off the bat.
