Wow! Honestly, I think she could be really good! She's got good banter with her audiences and she's allowed her comedic chops to show here and there (like the Graham Norton bit where she pretended to be an Adele impersonator). SNL are usually pretty judicious about who would be a good host from the music world, and nine times out of ten as of late their hunch has paid off (Toby Keith, Drake, Chance the Rapper, Miley Cyrus, and Jon Bon Jovi have all been surprisingly great, and that instinct goes back to the early days with Simon and Garfunkel's respective hosting turns - Frank Zappa, not so much, but they can't all be winners). I think this could be a fun episode if they give her good material. Knowing SNL, it's never all good or all bad, but she could do wonders with good stuff.
SNL hasn’t really been coke-heavy since the early 90s. Far as I can tell it’s mostly been weed since ‘95 or so.
And thanks for the tip-off! I didn’t watch the whole short so I missed his cameo. I was kind of hoping that he’d be the quarantined out-of-his-element reporter in the CBC skit like he was in the hockey and League of Legends skits.
Fun fact: my dad almost represented Roland Orzabal as a literary agent. He's a schmuck so it didn't work out, and now Dad hates Tears for Fears, but Smith seems OK and I love this song. Ninja Sex Party did a really good cover of it a few years ago.
I’d totally forgotten that he was facing cancer. What a loss. Was just listening to some tracks from the first album the other day and I can definitely say I’m a fan.
Trying to remember who all the most recent double-duty hosts were and how good (or not) they were. I honestly can't think of a ton of really bad ones as of late, and going back a little earlier, I've been pleasantly surprised by a few I've stumbled on in my many YouTube SNL binges (Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Toby Keith, Adam Levine), even a few that weren't hosts but pulled off really solid cameos (Arcade Fire, Travis $cott, The Weeknd, hell just last night Megan Thee Stallion was really good in her duo of sketch appearances. Better at not obviously reading off the cue cards than Chris Rock, even). As of late, the obvious pick for best double-duty host is Chance the Rapper, and if he gets one more go, I'd be willing to put him over previous title-holder Justin Timberlake.
(The biggest non-cast member example, obviously, is John Mulaney, also an integral part of that era who'd be doomed to being a beloved figure to SNL loyalists and obscure to everyone else if it weren't for his stand-up)
Even more than that, YouTube has made it so cast members who did get plenty of time to shine in their days but never reached the levels of fame people like Amy Poehler or Kristen Wiig did are getting their long-overdue recognition in hindsight (see: the entire mid-to-late 2000s gang, for my money the best SNL cast ever, and yet the one whose brilliance on SNL was only really recognized after big solo projects i.e. B99, The Good Place, Last Man on Earth, Barry, etc.). Kenan might've been doomed to the same fate if he'd left already, but he's stuck around long enough to finally get his second wind and be acknowledged as the all-timer he is.
I'd say the majority of cast members have at least something to offer, and while I'd love for things to balance out more, it's hard to think of a cast member the last few seasons who hasn't had at least one or two sketches to show what they're particularly good at. It takes a frustratingly long time sometimes (it took them until right before going remote to figure out what to do with Melissa Villaseñor, and now she's finally living up to what fans like me know she's capable of), but there are only a few cast members as of late that I think came and went before we really got a chance to see what they could do (Luke Null, bless his heart, HAD the opportunity with the "Dark End of the Street" skit, but it got cut. Showbiz). There are also a plethora of people who reached their full potential AFTER SNL, knowing full well it's a comedian's warm-up for a longer career if they play their cards right (off the top of my head: Gilbert Gottfried, Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Rob Riggle, Jenny Slate, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey, and Damon Wayans, every single one of whom hit their stride after their SNL careers. Hell, some of them hit their career peaks by coming back as guests!).
I think people give modern SNL too much shit. The current cast is great and they’ve got some exciting new hires this season. The quarantine episodes were great for giving cast members like Chloe Fineman and Melissa Villaseñor to tailor bits for themselves and what they do best, so I hope they keep going in that spirit.
Looking forward to Bieber being mediocre in a cameo. He wasn't the worst host in the world, but he wasn't even a tiny bit good enough to pull double duty. He also was easily the least-funny part of the 200th Digital Short (couldn't that have just been Usher or Will Ferrell? They've been in as many Digital Shorts - aka none - and they're at least funny).
Two very interesting guests, one significantly more promising than the other, at least to me (I'm not a huge Bill Burr fan, I'm afraid, but I'm sure his fans are very excited).
Next time you can go to a bar and they’re doing celebrity trivia, we now know “Endorsing Biden” is the answer to “What’s the common ground between The Rock and Frank Ocean?”
I love R.E.M. I'd give this about an 8. I feel like we all have at least one R.E.M. song we have some deep personal connection to if we love them enough (mine is "The Great Beyond," which my mom played for me when I was 10 and blew my mind).
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