Paul Mescal is one of those actors where it’s hard to tell how well known he is, outside of the kind of people who read and write for pop culture blogs. Sure, he’s currently starring in the certified #1 non-musical film in America, capably playing the role of Not Russell Crowe and earning a well-deserved Oscar nomination for the heartbreaking feature Aftersunwhich was both the best film of 2022 and grossed slightly less in North America than the Pierce Brosnan-directed fantasy film The king’s daughter. He also starred in a streaming TV series based on a popular book. Ordinary people watched Normal peopleRight? Still, his debut appearance on this week’s telecast was a bit immature Saturday Night Live– There’s something strangely careless about this serious actor getting goofy, as if even those familiar with his work have the power to look at Paul Mescal and wonder: Wait, who is this guy again?

It’s not that he hosted too soon; He is very talented and as he implied in his monologue, he hasn’t had a chance to show his brighter side yet. He was certainly extremely charming and played his sketch parts with the sometimes painful sincerity that he brings to his more serious acting. But many sketches uninspiringly placed him on one side or the other of the “this guy is acting weird” premise. In the sketch in which Mescal plays a boy who comes home from college and is surprised that his parents (Heidi Gardner and Emil Wakim) take the purchase of a single earring as a personal insult, or in the sketch in which he has one Plays man who is on trial and whose lawyer (Andrew Dismukes) has real Lionel Hutzian plans to win the case, he was the one who suffered from the strange behavior. In the sketch where he played an actor working his way through a co-star’s hackneyed improvisation in a pasta commercial, or a Spotify listener with a deeply strange artist at the top of his Wrapped data, he was the one which was strange, if not particularly memorable.

None of these sketches were completely terrible. Some of them were actually pretty funny. But it never felt like Mescal really played a role, except perhaps in that part of the pasta commercial, which had the misfortune of not being as well-constructed, concise, or laugh-out-loud funny as some of the other sketches. In the Earring sketch he did a good job as a straight man, but he didn’t exactly make sense as a character ten years younger than his actual age, and in the decidedly weirder Spotify sketch, Mescal was overshadowed by Bowen Yang’s latest collection of nonsense. (And Yang, as hilarious as he can be, is starting to give Melissa McCarthy’s weaker companions a run for their money when it comes to mashing up a bunch of crazy tics and selling them as a package out of pure conviction.)

While the host’s exact notoriety doesn’t usually play that big of a role in the show – this balancing process is one of the most fun things about watching week after week, year after year – this may have been a case where that was the case SNL I had trouble figuring out what level Mescal was, other than “obviously talented” and “nice accent.” In the fake advertisement for an instant musicalized re-release of Gladiator IIthere was a glimpse of the opposite effect: In short, and for the purposes of this one opening act, Paul Mescal, the established star who can get laughs just by good-naturedly sending up his signature role and trying to do that Evil Vocal run. It was a very silly, not particularly clever piece. Plus, it felt more like what Mescal was probably going for than almost anything else in the somewhat fun, somewhat off-kilter episode.

What was going on?

Aside from the opening sketch with the earrings, which Heidi Gardner and Emil Wakim just totally sold, I liked the all-male pirate revue, where a gaggle of bachelorette party ladies (basically Domingo Minus Domingo) get confused by the level full of historical details about what they think would seem like a poor excuse for a strip show. (Well, except for Ego Nwodim, who’s really into the educational content.) And after all the weird guy sketches, it was fun to see a very old-school, 90s-style sketch that was just a vehicle for Chloe Fineman served Timothée Chalamet and James Austin Johnson’s current old man Bob Dylan’s paths cross. Some people obviously don’t like Fineman’s Chalamet, but I like him, and Johnson’s Dylan is caricatured in a much more nuanced and loving way than about 90% of the Bob Dylan impressions ever done (possibly Chalamet’s own?).

What was going on?

I’m trying not to pay that SNL Cold opens a lot of minds; They’re just so rarely better than OK, they’re more of a bonus when they’re good than a detriment when they’re not. And in theory, the obligatory political impressions of the week would be converted into “Church Chat,” thereby reinforcing the church’s profile SNLHot new leading lady Dana Carvey provides soothing relief from Trump’s exhaustion. But I have to ask: Has Carvey’s “Church Lady” really caught on since he stopped using it during his first appearance on the show in 1991? Oddly enough, “Church Chat” hasn’t really kept up, as the idea of ​​a gleefully ranting and smugly judging arbiter of sinfulness has become more prevalent in the culture (albeit in different forms than the televangelists of the 1980s). have fallen victim to the same mission drift as many of the more likeable ones SNL political and politically-adjacent impressions: Should we laugh at the holier-than-thou church lady’s fussy attitude, or do we find it cathartic when she rightly calls someone like Matt Gaetz hell-bound? The sketch could easily go either way if it were funnier, but as much effort as he seems to put into his other roles on the show, Carvey’s heart doesn’t seem to be with this particular character. (You know who did the best Church Lady dance at the end of the sketch? Sarah Sherman. You know who doesn’t really have a Matt Gaetz either and hopefully won’t need one in the future? Sarah.) The same goes for Carvey Podcasting- Buddy David Spade shows up as Hunter Biden, relying on a physical resemblance and not much else. If we’re doing these reunion-lite performances week after week, shouldn’t Spade be allowed to play to his strengths? And shouldn’t a new Church Lady sketch be a lot funnier than a mildly amusing ad featuring the Delicious Dish girls promoting Capital One?! It could be fun to see a major recurring character like this return regularly in Season 50, especially considering how few the series currently has on the roster. But if that’s as good as it gets, perhaps it’s best to limit the typical characters to those 60-second sellouts instead. Speaking of Carvey, it’s shocking that they somehow avoided having him go on that Dylan/Springsteen sketch as Paul McCartney.

Most Valuable Player (who may not be ready for prime time)

Between her panicked mother of a college freshman, the excited mother of a freshman football player, and the proud, wine-drunk mother from last month’s Cut sketch, Heidi Gardner really corners the market SNL Mothers, and she should be recognized for that.

The next time

Chris Rock joins the, er, four-timer club, while Gracie Abrams remains in the popular singers and film directors club.

Crazy observations

• • I only knew Shaboozey from “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and his performance in it Cowboy Carterbut I liked his renditions of the hit single and the song I didn’t know. Also, I’m not sure I remember the crowd actually being as boisterous in the middle of the song as they were during “Bar Song.”
• • Please Don’t Destroy got their contribution this week. Over time it went in a funnier direction, but one video per month still seems fine.
• • Little Pleasure, Part One: Jane Wicklines Gladiator II Song about how the troops coming over the hill with torches must be her husband’s friends, interrupted by a predictable but completely abrupt cut.
• • Little treat, part two: Definitely not octogenarian James Austin Johnson’s Dylan makeup was pretty darn good.
• • Many people make way too much of it SNLis unable to stay as current as some sort of daily broadcast or, more recently, exhaustively updated social media feeds. It’s actually good to choose what you want to joke about in your fake news segment! However, when Colin Jost found out about the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO, there were about 200 better jokes about it in the above feeds. I enjoyed Jost and Che analyzing whether certain jokes were clever or not. After all, it’s the 90s.
• • If you feel like these recaps don’t cover enough about Weekend Update in general, don’t worry. At some point this season I’ll probably write a whole thing about the Jost/Che dynamic and how it comes down to flattering the audience and treating them without complete contempt.