“We’re hideous.” The sketch was sweet, though slightly stilted-the A-listers seemed hesitant to fully celebrate anything. “John and I were never supposed to be on TV,” he exclaimed. (When Mulaney walked onstage, Martin exclaimed, “Oh, Megan Mullally!”) A sketch is never easy to pull off with so many people, but Conan O’Brien-who isn’t a five-timer-livened it up with a passionate speech about former writers claiming the spotlight. A glut of alumni appeared to toast and tease Mulaney, including Steve Martin, Candice Bergen, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, and Elliott Gould. In another timeline, this episode would have been a celebration of Mulaney joining the Five-Timers Club, an elite group of performers who have hosted the show five times. Meanwhile, SNL kept “Weekend Update” noticeably short-with merely a few surface-level swipes at the conflict in Ukraine-and didn’t invite out any colorful characters. The original cast (L to R): Laraine Newman, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, and Chevy Chase. But the jokes largely revolved around lengthy verbal bits about specific monkey observations, rather than the mannerisms that might have helped the premise. In “ Monkey Trial,” Mulaney played a courtroom judge who’s also a primate. The cast mustered the energy to deliver “Subway Churro,” but elsewhere strained to reach the silliness necessary to sell the more absurd sketches. It was also a refreshing approach for SNL: a tonal shift that acknowledged the vulnerability required to address the current moment. “Welcome to my world, homie.” It was novel territory for the comedian. “Ah, I want to use those but I can’t, because they could kill me,” he quipped as his son, before replying as himself. Discussing a product recall that had affected his infant son’s favorite type of pacifier, he noted the need in his little boy’s eyes. But this monologue had a new air of openness. In his stand-up specials, he’s discussed his addiction, his now-former marriage, and his childhood, forgoing emotion in order to be clever. My least favorite kind of intervention.” As a comedian, Mulaney is typically personal in a way that doesn’t sacrifice his privacy. “In December of 2020, I went to dinner at a friend’s apartment,” he told the audience last night. Mulaney then delivered a candid opening monologue about his recent personal upheaval: rehab, divorce, and the birth of his son. The intro recalled McKinnon’s moving cold open-also sung somberly-shortly after Donald Trump’s surprise election in 2016. SNL invited the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York to open with an emotional performance of the song “Prayer for Ukraine.” When Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong stepped in to solemnly utter those famous words “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night,” the camera zoomed in on a table set with candles spelling out Kyiv. Rather than try to tease a punch line from the tragedy of war, the episode opened by making space for something more poignant. SNL’s struggles with how to approach-let alone laugh about-the darkness of recent times sowed doubt about how it would engage with two difficult subjects, if at all. But between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Mulaney’s recent stints in rehab for drug addiction (which he has discussed publicly), that assurance felt fragile in the lead-up to last night’s episode. The former SNL writer’s grandiose musical numbers and irreverent adoration of pop culture make him a guaranteed bright spot whenever he appears. As the Awards’ exec producer, Hugh has collaborated with Steve Carell, Sarah Silverman, Keegan Michael Key, Bill Burr, Wanda Sykes and Oliver Stone - who’s just not that funny.John Mulaney’s Saturday Night Live episodes have become something akin to tradition since he first hosted in 2018. Since 2015, for a record six years in a row, Hugh has executive produced and written The Writers Guild Awards, hosted by Lisa Kudrow, Patton Oswalt, Chelsea Peretti and his SNL pal, Ana Gasteyer. As an accomplished classical violinist, Hugh opened for Jon Stewart at Carnegie Hall, proving to his family that all those years of violin lessons finally paid off. Fink was creator/executive producer of the irreverent Comedy Central series, The Showbiz Show with David Spade. He co-wrote the NBC Muppets Movie, Letters To Santa: A Muppets Christmas, where he got into an argument with the actor playing Kermit, who refused to do a joke in the script on the grounds that “Kermit wouldn’t say that.”Īs a comedian, Hugh has made multiple appearances on Conan O’Brien, Late Show with David Letterman, as well as his own Comedy Central Half Hour Special.
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