You guys really gotta let go of ‘Endgame.’ PLUS: Trailers for ‘Coyote vs. ACME’ and ‘Clayface,’ ‘Miami Vice’ goes back to 1985, and you can ‘just take those scripts and turn them into’ a ‘Mandalorian’ movie.
The duo couldn’t stop at just one — or three — selections for their episode of ‘The Rundown.’
Those of us in the United States get Argentinian‑Style Steak with Chimichurri, Brazilian‑Style Garlic Sauce and Wavy French Onion Soup.
The comedian delivered a historically long monologue, leaving little time for sketches.
I told you all that Dave Chappelle shouldn’t host SNL again. But Lorne Michaels just didn’t want to listen. (Or, more likely, he’s not a Popculturology subscriber. At least not with his official NBC email address.)
Chappelle returned to SNL this past weekend, hosting the show for the fourth time. Unlike the previous three times he hosted, this gig didn’t come immediately after a major election in the United States. No, this time, it was synced up with Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration.
I didn’t watch this latest Chappelle episode live on Saturday night. We were in New York City for a wedding, which meant I was as physically close to an episode of SNL as ever before — but too close based on the realities of time to get this edition of Deep SNL Thoughts out before late Sunday night.
When I included Chappelle in my list of people who shouldn’t host SNL again in December 2023, I wrote the following:
Even if you could somehow get past the social issues, Chappelle’s SNL hosting gigs are lazy. They rely on retreading characters from Chappelle’s Show (a show that went off the air in 2006). Chappelle often doesn’t appear in sketches.
I couldn’t have predicted what would happen this episode any better.
After a 17-minute monologue ate up a huge chunk of time — if NBC wants a Chappelle standup special, just give him one — the comedian smoked his way through bits of the rest of the episode, skipping the live post-Weekend Update sketch before appearing in a pretaped sketch as one of his characters from Chappelle’s Show.
An episode would honestly be better with no host at all. At least there’d be more time for actual sketches. (This Deep SNL Thoughts is going to feel short since there were only five sketches, not counting the monologue and Update.)
SNL checked off a bunch of recent political bits with the cold open: Trump’s interest in Canada and Greenland, the TikTok ban, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent shenanigans. A pretty classic cold open that neither challenged or offended.
If you’re a comedian and you host SNL, there’s little chance you’re going to do a monologue that isn’t standup. Chappelle took that to the extreme this episode, performing a set that stretched on for roughly seventeen minutes for his monologue.
Seventeen. Minutes.
As I asked before, why not just give Chappelle a standup special, NBC? If you like Chappelle’s brand of punching-down humor, you probably enjoyed this monologue. If that’s not your kind of humor, you were probably hoping it would end with enough time for SNL to squeeze in a sketch or two.
You guys really gotta let go of ‘Endgame.’ PLUS: Trailers for ‘Coyote vs. ACME’ and ‘Clayface,’ ‘Miami Vice’ goes back to 1985, and you can ‘just take those scripts and turn them into’ a ‘Mandalorian’ movie.
The duo couldn’t stop at just one — or three — selections for their episode of ‘The Rundown.’
‘Project Hail Mary’ continues its wild run, falling just 15 percent from last weekend while ‘Mario’ lags behind its predecessor.
While the live-action movies struggle, Lucasfilm animation has never been better. PLUS: New trailers for ‘Focker-in-Law’ and ‘Hunger Games,’ Pixar’s leadership collapse, and ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ heads to NYC.
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