Timothée Chalamet (and ‘Hamilton’?) return to ‘SNL’

The good news: After David Chappelle “hosted” an SNL episode that was barely an SNL episode last week, Timothée Chalamet returned to host the show for a third time. And, unlike Chappelle, he knows what it means to be a host. You’re going to do some stunt work. You’re going to wear some crazy costumes. You’re even going to have to fart in someone’s face.

While Chappelle’s episode last week set a record for fewest actual sketches in an episode of SNL, it felt like Chalamet’s episode had a million of them. There was something for everyone.

Now, the bad news: Chalamet has set a very high bar for himself as an SNL host. I ranked his last gig at No. 4 for Season 49. Out of the three times that the Complete Unknown actor has hosted the show, this weekend’s outing was probably his weakest. (If you were expecting the return of fan favorite bits like Chalamet’s rapper character or the continuing saga of Tiny Horse, you were out of luck.) Every episode can’t be a home run, though.

I do wonder if Chalamet’s attention was divided this weekend considering that he was also the episode’s music guest … which was kind of adorable. He didn’t do anything crazy. He just played Bob Dylan songs. At the end of each set, he was super proud of his performances and walked around fist bumping the band members. It was cute.

COLD OPEN

Founding Fathers Cold Open

After SNL went with cable news for its cold open last week, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the show this week. What I definitely didn’t expect was a Founding Fathers sketch … that also featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton … and then interrupted by James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump.

Johnson’s Trump is seamless at this point. Whether or not audiences want to see any Trump content on SNL is another story.

• “Oh look at Lin, look at how bad he wants to do a rap”: Wow, Miranda and Hamilton are quite the throwback. A different world. Seeing him on SNL instantly brought back memories of a monologue that didn’t age very well …
• “Got plenty of Zuckerberg options”: Johnson’s Trump making a joke about SNL not having anyone to play Pete Hegseth struck a weird cord considering how the show has shied away from having pretty much any current political figure portrayed by a cast member. Bowen Yang’s JD Vance is nowhere to be seen and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was played by Alec Baldwin once.

THE MONOLOGUE

This was Chalamet’s third time hosting SNL. He’s done musical monologues the previous two times he hosted, playing piano with Pete Davidson and rapping with Marcello Hernandez and Punkie Johnson.

Chalamet kept this monologue music free (there’d be plenty of time for that later as the episode’s musical). Instead, the actor tried to give the acceptance speech he’s never been able to give … only to lose out to Kenan Thompson.