I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but Saturday evening livethe popular late-night comedy variety series, is actually turning 50 — this season’s 50th on NBC, and also next year, when the series will actually have been on the air for half a century. (If only this could be expressed through some sort of one-note recurring character with an appropriate catchphrase! Oh, I just remembered one: simma nu!) As for the presenters, the show’s sheer longevity puts it in a potentially strange position for those who are not five-timer club veterans (or aspirants), nor one-and-doners who are now too famous, not nearly famous enough, or otherwise unavailable (death, prison, etc.) for a repeat performance. I doubt Michael Keaton has thought about his occasional relationship with at any point in the last fifty years Saturday evening live something like an Up documentary series-esque look at his long-term career, but it’s still possible to read it that way. He presented in 1982 as an emerging comedy actor; in 1992, shortly after his second (and best!) Batman film won the summer box office; in 2015, after what probably should have been his Best Actor Oscar Birdman; and now, nine years later, actually its shortest hosting gap ever. Most will assume he’s taking a victory lap for the successful sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuicealthough he also has a movie called Goedrich opening in semi-wide release this weekend. (If releasing a smash hit with a sequel, followed by a barely promoted adult-oriented drama isn’t a career snapshot of 2024, what is?)

In other words, Keaton has checked in SNL about once every ten years since the start of his film career; his skipping the 2000s fits perfectly with his relatively reclusive presence in films during that period. His periodic drop-ins underscore the sense that he might actually have joined the cast sometime in the early ’80s; he did stand-up as a young man, and later on SNL the appearance indicates that he may be playing more character roles and Second Weirdo than he is longing for starring in sketches built around an idea of ​​his movie star persona. Betelgeuse is never actually the main character in the film Beetle juice films, no matter how much different cast members want to show their affinity for the role. (Mikey Day and Andy Samberg actually did a different version of the monologue that the show put together for Keaton’s previous appearance; in 2015, Bobby Moynihan and Taran Killam sang a song imploring him to “play Batman” and “Beetlejuice” with them ) In his days as a leading man, Keaton specialized in playing guys who seemed sharp and cunning. Although he still plays the lead role today, he is also a great supporting player, as he can come across as a man whose mercurial thoughts will take him to another level completely.

So while Keaton’s presence in this episode was the kind of sideways approach that inevitably prompts some viewers to say he was barely in it or disappeared for a long time, I have to assume this is partly a choice. (I admit, I also tend to assume that anyone who talks about a host disappearing for a long period of time is usually just talking about the fact that the host rarely appears on Weekend Update or during the songs. Those segments in fact, represent about a quarter of the Anyway, he got his showcase in the final sketch as a customer at a Mexican restaurant and briefly shared a memory and a connection with the server, played by Heidi Gardner, who reminds him of his long long-lost love Beth . It was an ideal showcase for that Keaton thing, where his mind seems to rush to distraction. Just an odd bit of performance for him and Gardner, who so often plays women whose barely buried emotions flare up at the slightest provocation come to the surface.

Before that it was not a great evening full of comic variety. Despite three or four decent skits and two Billie Eilish songs, the whole thing felt a bit like support for big moments that never materialized.

What was going on

If any of these sketches had been just a little more deftly surprising, instead of revealing their play almost immediately and then executing it well, this episode probably could have been a notch higher in the ratings department. Andrew Dismukes sets interracial marriages back decades by magically writing and performing ‘Hey Soul Sister’ several decades earlier, it’s very funny. (Just ask Ego Nwodim, who almost broke down several times.) Nwodim plays a conspiracy theorist taxi driver whose game show may or may not be streamed on WhatsApp Live is also very funny, with satisfyingly interlocking parts: Nwodim plays a character, Keaton offers a strange character. backup, Yang does the normal response, and Sherman adds some extra spice by really digging into the ridiculous questions.

Really, although perhaps the most inventive part of the world was a recurring feature: the TikTok Scroll; it also competes for the best repetition SNL sketch of the past five years, and I say this as someone without even a TikTok account. There’s just something so cheerfully format-breaking about the fast-paced style that nevertheless maintains an old-fashioned show-within-a-show by including the entire cast or close to the cast… it’s the rare recurring piece that they do twice could do so often and I’m still happy with it, although perhaps the fact that it happens on average about once a year is one of the reasons why it works so well. Chloe Fineman constantly seems like an anchor of the scroll – I feel like she and Bowen Yang are the whisperers of the show’s digital culture – but it’s also so elastic that it allows room for guest stars, political micro-bits, impressions, genre parodies, lame meme shout-outs and random nonsense. If real TikTok were like this (by which I mean, populated almost exclusively by SNL people), I might be as hooked as the invisible POV characters in these sketches.

What was out

I appreciate the characterization work that goes into Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner who play a pair of boundlessly enthusiastic Shop TV hosts trying to come to terms with their growing disgust at the visual allusions of what their guest is selling on air; they’ve done the accents, they have to move their dialogue back and forth, they add a little intro with their over-it cameraman dressed as Minion… but it’s all in service of such a lame joke for Keaton, and one they’ve done before with other hosts. Likewise, Day jumped to the other side of the “Hey, stop that, man!” formula to play a movement-coached Michael Myers in “Halloween Rises,” and he put his back into it. But it’s still just a movie set sketch where someone does it wrong and calls the guy “cut” and blah blah blah, you know? Maybe it was the prominent placement that both sketches had, one as a lead-in and one as the actual anchor of the last half hour, or the time they took up, but they felt like a drag on the entire show.

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

Take a bow, Sarah Sherman! She returned to Update for a funny Victoria’s Secret commentary that managed to stay on topic, still feature Jost singing, and also got super dirty. Then she jumped into “Think About It” with perfect normie zeal.

Next time

John Mulaney and Chappell Roan are giving everyone on the internet plenty of opportunity to be super cool and normal!

Stray observations

• • Without much fanfare, and perhaps still one or two interruptions too many, the Kamala Harris interview parody had quietly been the best political opening yet this season. Sure, a low-stakes match, but at least it felt like a draft and not a parade.
• • Please Don’t Destroy is back! They never went anywhere either, but they are back on camera with a video that takes them out of their office. I generally prefer their live sketches to their video pieces, and indeed their skydiving seems like it could have been a live sketch at a different pace. That said, if the plan is to make four or five PDD videos this season, and have them go to locations further away than “in the office, screaming”, that’s fine!
• • It’s the ’90s, Colin. If Michael Che says that two or three more times per update, it might be really funny, because this isn’t the ’90s. Although Jost has become a seemingly exasperated company man, over the past two years Che has alternately seen the employee muster the energy to finally quit and the smug lifer. Maybe it’s not a good idea to have the same people updating for ten years?!
• • Emil Wakim had the standard “stand-at-the-desk” introductory bit, but he was funny and got into trouble when one of his jokes died.
• • This is a stray observation Goedricha movie I saw: Single-season SNL player Chloe Troast has a single scene as a gal who sells Keaton a ticket to a live show at a jazz club. I was happy to see her.
• • The last time Keaton hosted, the musical guest was Carly Rae Jepsen, trying to create a kind of Jesse hypnosis. (The paper is one of my favorite movies.)
• • Where the hell was…? This is the part of the recap where I ask where the hell a certain cast member was. The TikTok feature kind of invalidates that, because it almost always includes everyone. But it’s a little strange that TikTokker Jane Wickline was in so few episodes with a TikTok sketch.