The “Weekend Update” segment of NBC’s Saturday Night Live had a genuinely surprising moment last night — did anyone else know Leslie Jones’s age? — but perhaps the biggest laugh came from a silly throw-away sorta-pun that followed a where’s-this-going set up. Co-anchor Colin Jost set up the premise by explaining that New York’s Staten Island has a deer population problem, which he blamed on a landmark anti-abortion case for animals. Genuine laughs weren’t exactly plentiful last night so I won’t spoil it. See the clip above.
Elsewhere on the Weekend desk — as with last night’s episode in general — the visiting characters were mostly B- or C-list, including Kate McKinnon’s sad-sack Russian woman (after Jost answered her sneeze with a God Bless You, Kate’s Olya snapped, “He never has and he never will”). Leslie Jones, visiting the anchor desk to rant about following one’s dreams, casually dropped that 48-years-old bomb — seriously, I might have guessed close to half that — but the routine wasn’t up there with the best of her high-volume tirades, and her flirtation with Jost (favorite yoga position? “Downward Facing Colin”) is wearing thin.
Even worse was the episode’s reappearance of Beck Bennett’s baby-man character, apparently a hold-over from his improv days that usually shows up when there’s a void to fill. The gimmick: He’s a 52-year-old man with an infant’s spastic body movements. Somewhere along the way he must have gotten a laugh from this.
At least a bit more self-aware was Drake’s opening monologue, which, while hardly stuffed with belly laughs, poked some fun at his own meme-filled life. Rapping a lament over how his life is forever turned into clickable web moments, Drake probably didn’t spur any new memes here, but you never know. Check it and let us know if you think it’s web-worthy.
Source: Deadline
