Saturday Night Live Season 42 Episode 10 Casey Affleck Recap

This week’s Saturday Night Live is their Christmas special and they have Casey Affleck hosting with music guest Chance the Rapper.

Saturday Night Live‘s Christmas special was this week, and it delivered us a Christmas gift in a very weird way. While host Casey Affleck did a great job, some of the sketches themselves were just questionable.

Cold Open

We’ve returned to the Donald Trump talking to Kellyanne Conway featuring Putin and a whole bunch of other random guests. It is as if the new SNL regular is to have a ton of cameos and have the audience scream when Alec Baldwin returns as Trump. (It is great, don’t get me wrong, but we just know it is coming if you’re doing a Trump sketch. It isn’t new.)

While we don’t want the political sketches to end, the continual set up of the same thing is getting a little old.

Monologue

Casey’s monologue was pretty great. It was the normal set up, talk about your movie and why you’re there, then crack some jokes before starting the show. The best part? Alec Baldwin and John Goodman kept showing up. Casey finally said, very sarcastically, “Oh wow Alec Baldwin and John Goodman. Wow.”

There was also a bit about him not singing, and then black Santa came out to tell Casey that it was okay. It sounds insane but it was actually pretty funny.

Dunkin’ Donuts

If you’re from Boston or a small northeastern town, this sketch will mean a lot to you. Or maybe it will mean a lot to everyone, who knows, but it was just great because I know people like that. Seeing the man yelling about smoking, and everyone just acting like small town USA was great.

There is just something so real about this sketch, and it worked with Casey as the host. He is famously from Boston and to they are using that to their advantage. It worked and made us laugh.

Robot Presentation

My big question for this sketch is just…why? It was pretty terrible and honestly, it had nothing to do with Casey Affleck. The sketch was just bad. It was about a robot who was gay. Casey’s character asked why as the robot was meant to be for work, and everyone shamed him for it.

It just didn’t need to exist. The sketch did nothing to help the show out and just tried to make Casey’s character be wrong when the whole sketch just kind of sucked.

Jingle Barack

This is the best thing that Saturday Night Live has done for a while. It gave us a rap about Joe Biden, Casey Affleck as Jesus, and Chance the Rapper, Leslie Jones, and Kenan Thompson as a rap group.

Basically it was just an 80’s rap video about Obama’s last Christmas before Trump comes next year. And it was great and you just have to watch it.

Christmas Miracle

Mrs. Rafferty was back and this time, she met Krampus, except she didn’t know that was his name. The sketch is the same set up as usual. Two people have a wonderful experience with some supernatural thing and Mrs. Rafferty’s experience was terrible.

It wasn’t the best version of the sketch, but it was pretty funny. She just got ramped in the boob by Krampus’s wife, and then a little guy followed her home. There was also an element where the church was into people sleeping together. Again, it was weird.

Chance the Rapper

Chance’s performances were pretty amazing. They captured the essence of his album and made the audience want to go out and buy his album. His songs are catchy and just fun to listen to. Weirdly enough, he was a great choice to have for the Christmas episode.

He was fun and looked like he was genuinely enjoying himself on stage, which is all the audience wants out of a good musical guest.

Weekend Update

Finally, the Weekend Update we wanted. They called out the Russian hack and Donald Trump and didn’t hold back. The thing about Weekend Update is that when it is good, it’s great. When it’s just okay, well, it is almost impossible to watch.

But the jokes were on point and didn’t have to tear down people unnecessarily. They even pinpointed why Hamilton being as popular as it is has led to a very ironic election cycle: “Because of Hamilton, a black guy is being recast as a white guy.”

New York Now

Again, the small town sketches work for them. The sketch shows a Long Island Nativity play that is supposed to be ‘very funny’ when, in reality, they just steal a bunch of jokes from funny movies.

It is great because it is just community theater productions in a nut shell. They think they are being revolutionary and doing great work, but it is just illegal and really strange.

Hillary Actually

The best sketch that we didn’t know we needed. The iconic scene from Love Actually has been parodied from here to eternity. But we never thought we needed Hillary Clinton pleading to electoral voters to change their votes.

Image Courtesy of NBC

At the end of the day, we will know what happens with the electoral college this week, but at least we got this amazing sketch out of it.

Mrs. Claus & the Elves

The elves that make me super uncomfortable are back and this time, it was even more awkward than normal. They try and stick a Hershey’s kiss up one of the elf’s butts, and it is just a very uncomfortable experience.

This sketch happens way too frequently for it to be this uncomfortable anymore, and yet here we are. I’m still not really okay with it.

Christmas Bar

The final sketch of the night was pretty funny. Just a bunch of people apologizing and being shy and Casey Affleck getting stabbed. It honestly didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was really funny. They were at a bar in Brooklyn, and Kyle Mooney hits on Vanessa Bayer.

She is talking to him and then Casey steps in and wants to talk to her. It just becomes a shy battle between everyone at the bar.

Overall, it wasn’t an exceptionally great episode, but it served its purpose. We laughed and got into the holiday spirit and, at the end of the day, that’s all it is about.

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!

Home/TV