SNL Recap: Dan Levy/Phoebe Bridgers

I am deeply saddened to report that this weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by love of my life Dan Levy, was disappointing.

I know. I’m devastated too. I am still in the depths of my Schitt’s Creek obsession (I’m not saying that I rewatched all their Emmy acceptance speeches last night but I’m also not… not saying that), and I think he is an incredibly gifted writer and creative. But, tragically, SNL was not his moment.

Part of this was just the accident of timing. Saturday night was, apparently, the night before the Super Bowl. Full disclosure, I don’t care about the Super Bowl at all, and I have a suspicion that neither does Dan Levy or a number of the cast and writers at SNL. But alas, it was the thing to talk about this weekend.

I don’t think any of the Super Bowl sketches required in depth knowledge of the sport or the competition, but I still found myself incredibly underwhelmed by the Pre-Game Show cold open as well as the Super Bowl Pod sketch (except for Kate McKinnon appearing as Dr. Fauci because, as previously discussed, she is a national treasure and needs to be in every sketch). I did enjoy Hot Damn, featuring Dan Levy and Cecily Smith (another icon who is not used enough), as Broadway actors turned bar tenders at a sports bar. While this was pandering to my exact demographic, I still wished they’d gone a little bit farther with the bit. John Mulaney has just set the bar so high for what SNL can do in terms of musical sketches, so it was a bit of a let down when they didn’t scale up the fullest extent possible.

The other sketches of the night, including Universal Tram, Lifting Our Voices, It Gets Better, and Wedding Friends, were pretty much all middle of the road. I laughed a bit, I checked out a bit. That is, except for the Zillow sketch.

I don’t want to spoil the spoof on a Zillow commercial, featuring Cecily Strong as a real estate agent, but it was comedic gold. It also briefly gave us the duo of Dan Levy and Bowen Yang, who, based on their comedic chemistry in the short sketch, should (a) probably be in many more sketches together and (b) be inspiring some illicit fan fiction any day now.

And, because I know you care so much about my opinion on the musical acts, I liked Phoebe Bridger’s performances a lot, but was not a fan of the guitar smashing. Go ahead, cancel me, I dare you.

In conclusion, I love Dan Levy deeply, but at the end of the day, he is a writer and a director and not a strong sketch actor. His rightfully Emmy-Award winning role on Schitt’s Creek is literally tailor made by him for him, and his delightful, albeit trope-y, gay best friend role in Happiest Season wasn’t much of a stretch. His SNL performances were sadly lackluster, and the sports-focused episode that continued to demonstrate the writing team’s struggles to find roles that showcase their cast didn’t help. Hopefully next week (is there a new episode next week? idk, man), will be a bit funnier. In the mean time, I hope you’re excited for me to review a bunch of Golden Globe nominated ~dramas~ cause I’m sure that’s gonna be a good time for everyone involved!