Emmy Episodes: Saturday Night Live

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the second year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Saturday Night Live: Season 42, Episode 21 “Dwayne Johnson/Katy Perry” (B)

I know I fast-forwarded through this season, going from episode seven to twenty, but I had all the context I needed to see that this show was parodying itself. Opening with Baldwin’s Trump playing “Hallelujah” on the piano surrounded by Kellyanne, Pence, and his whole family was a great throwback to what I’m sure was the show’s most powerful moment of the season, with Trump announcing, “I’m not giving up, because I didn’t do anything wrong, but I can’t speak for all of these people.” Dwayne Johnson is an affable guy, and apparently he’s on his fifth time hosting. I didn’t find his bit about running for president with Tom Hanks, though I did appreciate the cameo return of David S. Pumpkins. I think the child-molesting robot skit fell flat, somewhat obviously given its nature, and some of the other sketches like the threesome/fivesome and the wrestler revealing personal info in a video, weren’t nearly as strong as they do. His prescription story commercial was probably the best sketch of the episode. Johnson isn’t Emmy-nominated, but this episode was the selected showcase for cast member Vanessa Bayer. When it comes to physical comedy, it’s hard to match her getting watched dumped all over her at least a dozen times during the Jurassic Park ride. Farting a lot during the filming of a period movie and serving as an incomprehensible meteorologist weren’t the best showcases for her talents, unfortunately. This episode wasn’t all that even, and the single best line, as always, came from Weekend Update, referring to our country’s leader as President-for-now Trump.