Scarlett Johansson Hosted 'SNL' and It Was Awful

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | March 12, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Saturday Night Live | March 12, 2017 |

Cold Open — With the threat of nuclear winter already at a low hum, how can SNL outsize the threat that Donald Trump poses? By staging an alien attack. And what would happen if aliens attacked Earth? Donald Trump, naturally, would continue to tout his “landslide” election victory, spread fake news, and brag that he’d win the popular vote now that California has been destroyed. OK idea, terrible execution. (Score: 4 out of 10)

ScarJo Monologue — Could this really be Scarlett Johansson’s fifth time hosting? Not a lot going on here: Kenan shows a a 5-timers clip that feature only scenes with Kenan in it, and then repurposes a Subway commercial for her 5-timers song. It’s gonna be a long night, folks. Watch here. (Score: 3 out of 10)

Good Day Denver — Cecily and Bobby bring back their overly enthusiastic morning talk show hosts to talk about an “animal photographer,” who is mischaracterized by the graphics department as an animal pornographer. Lots and lots of double entendres and bad wordplay. Eh. Watch here. (Score: 4 out of 10)

Fire Island — A commercial for two Logo shows, one about partying gay men in a beach house and one about hippy, sad lesbians. Lots of obvious, boring stereotypes here, so that’s fun. Watch here. (Score: 3 out of 10)

Translator — Scientists introduce a new technology that allows them to translate the thoughts of pets into words. The joke here is that we learn that the dog loves Donald Trump and brags about his record and accomplishments. All the scientists hate the dog, but the dog ends up highlighting liberal hypocrisy. There’s some good here, and some bad. (Score: 5 out of 10)

Olive Garden — A commercial director coaxes absurd reactions out of actors for an Olive Garden commercial. It gets increasingly absurd for seven long minutes with no real payoff. Watch here. (Score: 4 out of 10)

Complicit — ScarJo plays Ivanka Trump in a commercial for a new fragrance called “Complicit.” It’s not great, but it’s the best thing of the night, so far. (Score: 6 out of 10)

Shud the Mermaid — I don’t remember if they’ve done this exact sketch before, but I know they’ve done a hundred different iterations of it: A guy stranded on an island has to choose a wife among four Mermaids, two hot and two repulsive (Kate McKinnon and Scarjo). A few funny insults, but not particularly noteworthy. Watch here. (Score: 4 out of 10)

Shanice Goodwin Ninja-Rivals — I know they’ve done the Leslie Jones Ninja sketch before, and this one is just as dumb and silly and occasionally funny as before. Watch here. (Score: 4 out of 10)

A Sketch for Women — On International Women’s Day, all the women took the day off, so Becks and Kyle wrote a sketch for the entire female cast, which is naturally all about how great the men are. This one kind of works. (Score: 6 out of 10)

A Funeral — After a middle-aged man dies, his family learns about his secret life as a performer of terrible songs when two of his friends (ScarJo and Kenan) show up to perform some of the songs they wrote together. This one is bad. Watch here. (Score: 3 out of 10)

Weekend Update — “Weekend Update” was not good (although, Jost had a great joke about the travel ban), but the show was so bad that “Update” was basically the best part of the show (one of the new guys also does a great Al Franken impression).

Here, Pete Davidson does about 4 minutes of what is basically an “Update” within “Update,” and at least he’s better than Che.