Saturday Night Live Season 42 Episode 4 Tom Hanks Recap

Tom Hanks took over hosting Saturday Night Live for the 9th time last night and proved yet again why he’s America’s favorite actor.

Saturday Night Live has been killing it in recent weeks and Tom Hanks episode is no different. With great performances from Hanks and musical guest Lady Gaga, the show was everything we hoped it would be. That’s not to say it didn’t have it’s stranger moments. It definitely did.

But the great sketches far outweighed the bad ones and we will be giving our rundown on each and every sketch featured in the show!

Cold Open

Tom Hanks as Chris Wallace proved that this episode of Saturday Night Live was going to be great. Most cold opens start without having the host featured but it was amazing seeing Tom as Chris Wallace.

“They’re ripping babies out of vaginas!” The greatest thing about the cold open debate was that it was pretty much just a word for word replica of the actual debate. Or, at least the jokes were things Trump actually said.

They covered most the main topics and brought light to some of the stranger things that Trump and Clinton said but the best part was when Baldwin’s Trump said “No one has more respect for women than I do” and the entire planet laughed.

“I even have the best Baldwin brother, Stephen Baldwin.” Alec shamed his own family member and it made it so much better. It continued to show how great SNL is with political humor.

The Monologue

9th time host Tom Hanks is America’s dad, and his monologue reflected that. He spoke to the nation as our father and gave us tips on what to do next. “Remember when you went through that depression?”

“You’re a lot gayer than you used to be and that’s cool,” Tom said in his wonderful gray sweater. This year has been great for creative opening monologues and this one was one of the bests. They’re doing great and playing to the strengths of the host and it makes for an all around better show.

Black Jeopardy

Playing a Trump supporter named Doug, the sketch featured a Jeopardy scenario where his answers were exactly what the Afrian-Americans playing with him also agreed with.

“Skinny women can do this for you.”

“Not a damn thing.”

The ‘Final Jeopardy’ category was “Lives That Matter” and Darnell (the Jeopardy host) just laughs and looks at Doug and says “Well Doug, it was good while it lasted.” It was a great way to show the weird racism that plagues our country despite similar opinions and upbringings. It was one of the funniest sketches SNL has featured as of recently and will definitely continue to be one of the best of the season.

Halloween Block Party

This sketch made little to no sense. In fact, it should have been cut from the live broadcast. It is about a neighborhood trying to set up a block party for the kids in the neighborhood.

Tom Hanks and his family want to be paid to sing and do a performance at the party and it turns into a love triangle between the mother, father and their 22 year-old daughter. Singing to Don’t Stop Believin’, they end up talking about Dracula being a virgin and sleeping with a virgin witch.

It was strange all around (especially since their neighbors decide to give them the money they asked for in the end) but it did give us a moment of Tom Hanks trying to impersonate Journey.

Overall though, the sketch was pretty terrible (and you can’t even find it online anywhere unless you’re watching the whole episode).

Funny New Comedy

Everyone’s favorite new thing about award season is trying to figure out what television show is actually a comedy and what’s not. With Transparent and Orange is the New Black, it’s hard to even know if you’re supposed to laugh or cry.

So SNL covered that with flying colors by making Broken. They say “It’s 30 minutes so that means it’s a comedy!” and it’s great because with shows like Transparent, which are classified as comedies when they are clearly not, a lot of shows lose the chance to win the recongition they deserve.

The digital short was so funny and followed a family of adjunct professors who all were diagnosed with depression on the same day. It is just the trailer for the show but it’s absolutely hilarious.

Haunted Elevator

This one was obviously giving an ode to “Tower of Terror” but it was extremely strange in the beginning. The set up took a little while but the pay off for the ending joke made all of it worth it.

David Pumpkins made absolutely no sense and just had dancing skeletons beside him and that was all. At first, it was stupid and it ended with him asking “any questions?” and it didn’t really make much sense.

“David Pumpkins is his own thing and the skeletons are part of it.” It’s later revealed David Pumpkins is featured throughout multiple floors because there was only so many ideas for 100 floors of frights and it ends with a great button!

Lady Gaga

Per usual, Lady Gaga’s performances were amazing and showed just how great of a performer she really is. Singing her new songs “A-Yo” and “Million Reasons”, she showcased some of the better songs from her album Joanne.

The album has the feel of Miley Cyrus meets Dolly Parton with that Lady Gaga spin we’ve come to know and love. And her look is to die for in both performances she gave. Especially that pink hat. And, she even gave us her quintessential Lady Gaga performance by sitting at the piano and singing her heart out.

Weekend Update

Weekend Update has been doing the same thing week after week. They point out the election news we’ve known and then try and make some jokes. But really, that’s the news anymore so they’re doing what they can.

The best joke was when Jost finally called out the idea that the media is against Trump. Especially since a Trump presidency would make them a lot more money than Clinton in office. Just imagine the coverage on Trump.

In the same over used jokes, Leslie Jones came out to talk about her hacking. What was great about it was she instantly started hitting on Jost like she normally does. However we do hope they retire the hacking jokes soon.

“The only person who can hack me is me and my firewall is a crazy bitch with a shovel” was the best line in the entire update. The Girl At the Party showed up and it didn’t really hit that well and then that was the end of Weekend Update.

Cockpit

“I’m Sully,” started off the second best sketch of the night. Captain Hubbard (Baldwin) was flying with Sully and he thought he was first in command. So every time they made an announcement, he would respond with “and I’m Sully”.

Then Danny (Kyle Mooney) comes in to thank Captain Hubbard for the service he did in the Army and Sully gets mad about it because no one wants to meet him. So then he tries to make it seem like he continues to save the plane. “We are going in the Hudson.”

A Girl’s Halloween

A Girl’s Halloween was a great example of the terror of a normal Halloween and how it can go oh so badly. Focusing on three girls having a night out, it compares their preparation at 8:00 P.M to them at 4:00 in the morning when they are drunk and trying to eat.

It was just an easy sketch that ended up being extremely funny. Definitely one of the better of their girl-type digital shorts!

America’s Funniest Pets

Tom Hanks as Ron Howard was something no one knew we needed until this sketch. It was great. It was literally just funny pets and Hanks pretending he’s Howard. That’s all and it was the best ending to the episode.

The French co-hosts made an appearance as they normally do but it was the impersonation that made this great sketch a very fitting end to Tom Hanks’s 9th hosting gig!

New episodes of Saturday Night Live air every Saturday at 11:30pm Eastern Standard Time. Check back here on Culturess for the recap of each episode after they air!

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