For those of you who watched Saturday Night Live last weekend, hosted by Dakota Johnson with musical guest Justin Timberlake, did you happen to get a look at Bowen Yang’s face during the Bee Gees sketch? The sketch was terrible, and I said to Jacek midway through – check out Bowen, he wants to die. And then Duana a few minutes later texted me because she was actually watching at the same time and I responded “Bowen wants to die” and she wrote back in all caps because she’d just made the same comment to her husband seconds before.
Maybe that’s not what Bowen was really thinking, maybe he really enjoyed working with Justin Timberlake, maybe we were just projecting how we were feeling about that sketch onto Bowen because Bowen is our favourite, the one we have imaginary conversations while we’re watching on the couch. But given the kind of excellent comedy we know Bowen is capable of, our interpretation of his face is more about the fact that he deserves better. And I say this because I am confident that we will not be saying to each other that Bowen wants to die this weekend, when Ayo Edebiri hosts SNL for the first time.
Like I said earlier this week, Ayo is a comedy writer herself. She’s familiar with a comedy writers’ room. So it’ll be interesting to see whether or not they were banking sketches for Ayo’s week like they did, for example, earlier this season with Nate Bargatze. You know the “Washinton’s Dream” sketch that’s now considered one of if not the best SNL sketches of the last decade? That sketch was originally written for last season, for another host, a dramatic actor – and they ended up filing it away, pulling it back out when they found the right person. That wasn’t a one-off, this happens a lot on SNL, where they save material for who they think is best suited for it. This is why the writing can seem so inconsistent, super sharp and funny one week and flat and uninspired the next.
Hopefully then, with Ayo, the good sh-t is coming out. I already liked the promo but might just be because it checks all of my boxes. Specifically my Friday Night Lights box!
They even brought in the background music!
But also? That leather outfit she walks in with is fire. Can’t wait to watch her this weekend. Here she is arriving for rehearsals yesterday.
And here’s JLo, the musical guest, last night ahead of her performance. This is a very “JLo at home in NYC” fit. Also attached, JLo out in New York today in blue.
