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Highlights from the Steve Carell Hosted Thanksgiving 'Saturday Night Live'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 18, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | November 18, 2018 |


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Cold Open — Kate McKinnon returns as Lauran Ingraham to essentially round-up the political news this last week — the midterms, Trump’s belief that people are voting multiple times by wearing disguises, Marcia Fudge, and Facebook — and in doing so, McKinnon establishes a pretty fun go-to for weeks when there are a lot of political stories, but no major one with which to focus. It certainly beats the Donald Trump/Alec Baldwin cold opens. I am beginning to wonder, however, if SNL has become the Kate McKinnon show this season. (Score: 6 out of 10)

Steve Carell Monologue — Carell takes questions from the audience, and they all think it’s a great idea to reboot The Office. Ed Helms, Jenna Fischer, Ellie Kemper and even Carell’s wife, Nancy Walls, demand that Carell do the reboot, which in and of itself makes for a fun, small The Office reunion. Also, holy shit: Carell is a super silver fox these days. (Watch Here) (Score: 7 out of 10)

Clueless Dad — Carell plays a clueless Dad who wakes up his kids and offers to take them to Disney World only to be the last to learn that his wife is cheating on him and that several of his kids aren’t his biologically. Oof. I kept waiting for the punchline, but the punchline never arrives. (Watch here) (Score: 3 out of 10)

A Message from Jeff Bezos — Carell plays Bezos to deliver a message about his new Amazon headquarters, which is basically a long troll job on Donald Trump. I would love nothing more than if this were actually a message delivered by Jeff Bezos. (Score: 7 out of 10)

Thanksgiving Dinner — A group of friends sing that famous Thanksgiving rock song — you know the one — and while it’s not a particularly good sketch, everyone gets into it and their enthusiasm ratchets it up a notch. (Watch Here) (Score: 4 out of 10)

RBG — Kate McKinnon may be the biggest star of SNL but Chris Redd is low key it’s MVP of late, delivering another excellent rap song (alongside Pete Davidson) about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. (Score: 8 out of 10)

NASA Livecast — While students from around the nation are watching a live telecast of astronauts on a space station, an airlock breach causes all the monkeys to freeze and, uh, shatter. Oh, and a frozen cosmonaut repeatedly bangs her head against a shuttle hatch. It’s incredibly dumb but kind of funny. (Bring the kids in for this one, Mat) (Score: 6 out of 10)

Weekend Update — There is nothing particularly aggravating or maddening about this week’s “Update.” It’s just bad. It’s not because of Jost’s smirk or Che’s condescension. It’s just not funny. The jokes are weak. There’s also a segment with “Denver Riggleman” — the Congressmen who is into Bigfoot Erotica — that goes on forever, and it is terrible. This may be the worst “Update” of the season and that is saying something. (Watch here) (Score: 2 out of 10) (I gave it one point for the Sour Patch Kids cereal joke). (Watch, here, here, here, and here)

Guardian Angel — During a 1950’s slumber party, a “guardian angel” shows up and sings a song from Grease, I think, but the guardian angel is actually one of the girls’ fathers. Meh. The best part of this sketch is how bad a singer Carell is. (Watch here) (Score: 3 out of 10)

RV — Carell plays a lame Dad in a lot of sketches tonight. In this one, he quits his job and moves his wife into an RV and she tries to pretend like she loves living there. There’s a dog in this sketch. That’s the best I can say for it. (Watch here) (Score: 2 out of 10)

Alien Thanskgiving — During a Thanksgiving dinner between Earthlings and an alien race, the humans learn that the corn on the cob … you know what? It’s not worth explaining. I just saw a local commercial for Big Al’s Fireworks Outlet that was funnier and better produced than this sketch. During the live performance of this sketch, near the end, they forgot to do the green-screen graphics, so there’s just a shot of Pete Davidson looking through a black hole (they fixed it for YouTube, sadly). (Watch here) (Score: 2 out of 10)

GPYaas — A GPS navigator with a drag-queen mode, where directions are given by Drag Queens. It’s dumb, but I didn’t completely hate it (it may have also regnited by Cecily Strong crush). (Score: 4 out of 10)