Saturday Night Live: Timothée Chalamet celebrates end of actors’ strike

Saturday Night Live recap

The Dune star makes a memorable second appearance as host in a mixed episode that allowed the actor to be one of the first leads to indulge in “shameless self-promotion” again.

“Saturday Night Live” begins with the third “Republican Children’s Presidential Debate,” in which the field of prospective minor candidates makes poor arguments before being interrupted by Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson).

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He zeroes in on the pitiful competition, including Tim Scott (“We like Skim Scott and his girlfriend… there’s not much chemistry between them. They make me and Melania look like Taylor and Travis…”) and Vivek Ramaswamy (“He’s a…”) I’m a lot like me, except for one thing that’s very important to my horrible, horrible base: White!”); Rags on the series’ casting with Ego Nwodim as Ramaswamy (“Poor Ego, you don’t like it, she doesn’t like it”) and John Higgins as “Meatball” Ron DeSantis (“Even SNL doesn’t think it has a coincidence. If if they did, there would be someone like Paul Rudd there”); and rambles about his own deteriorating mental health (“I say things like: I’ll beat Obama! That’s not right, but I say it, it’s fun”) and legal troubles (“They say I committed fraud – that’s true “Not true. I’ve done a lot of other things – adultery, betrayal, a lot of cheating, maybe.”)

It’s a great achievement from Johnson – especially his continued breaking of the fourth wall – even if it makes Trump seem cooler than he actually is.

Timothée Chalamet is hosting for the second time. To celebrate the end of the actors’ strike, the Wonka star enters “a world of shameless self-promotion” to the tunes of “Pure Imagination” before being interrupted by Marcello Hernández to rap about being a babyfaced grown man. It’s (intentionally) creepy, but Chalamet shows surprisingly good mic skills.

The hip-hop theme continues in the next skit, where Chalamet brings back his SoundCloud rapper SmokedCheddatheAssGetta from his last performance. He joins luminaries Mary J Blige (Punkie Johnson), Rick Rubin (Johnson) and Cornel West (Kenan Thompson) on stage at the Museum of Hip Hop for a panel discussion. The superficial and confident SmokedChadda shows his ignorance of the genre and makes a fool of himself by forcing West to put him in his place with a beating. A welcome return to Chalamet’s most memorable final game.

Britney Spears (Chloe Fineman) promotes her new memoir “The Woman in Me” and features the celebrities who auditioned to read the audiobook version, including Martin Scorsese (Chalamet), Steve-O (Mikey Day) and John Mulaney ( Sarah Sherman). , Jada Pinkett Smith (Nwodim) and others. Some are spot on – Johnson’s Werner Herzog and Michael Longfellow’s Bill Hader – but most are not. Fineman plays a number of celebrities alongside Spears, including Julia Fox and Chalamet. The latter is the only thing she succeeds in.

Next up is a phone call between Heidi Gardner’s gym member and a couple of muscular idiots at Shred Zone. She just wants to know if she left her bag at the gym, but the employees are too stupid to hear even the most basic parts of the conversation. Totally forgettable and full of dead air.

In a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, Chalamet’s young warrior sings a sad ballad about his once small horse, now a world-destroying giant horse. Another follow-up to a sketch from his last hosting gig, this one isn’t as successful simply because it doesn’t make sense without that context and the show overestimates how memorable this sketch was.

After the first appearance by musical guests boygenius, it’s time for another significantly shortened weekend update. The only guest is Krystal (Gardner), “your colleague who is very busy doing seemingly nothing.” On the verge of a nervous breakdown, she makes a complete mess of the desk by throwing around paperwork, electronic devices and cold Chipotle before revealing that her job is to run Spears’ Instagram account.

At a sleep clinic, a patient named Kayla (Sherman), who suffers from sleep paralysis, undergoes a new computer-assisted therapy that triggers her night terrors while she is awake. The sleep demon haunting her dreams is “Australian YouTube twink turned indie pop star” Troy Sivan. Kayla is just as confused about the “gay famous” star as anyone who isn’t part of Generation Z, but the show explains things well while successfully conveying our rapidly changing ideas of celebrity. The young genius women join in by playing Sivan clones and showing off their tiny red panties.

In a new “Please Don’t Destroy,” Ben, John and Martin try to dissuade Chalamet’s failed would-be window diver from committing suicide by encouraging him to play them some of his “super gurgling” songs that he records with his unfortunately named band Hamas . More focused than most of PDD’s shorts, it feels a little rushed, but there are some genuine laughs throughout.

At a home for unwanted girls, a sad young orphan (newcomer Chloe Troast) sings her soul to the moon (Chalamet), revealing that she is actually a violent, 27-year-old flat-earth woman who is fighting the Covid-19 pandemic triggered. Chalamet is great as the increasingly horrified Moon, while Troast makes a big impression with her surprisingly Michael McDonald-esque singing.

The show ends with Chalamet playing himself as he records a sleep story about the splendor of nature for the Calm app. It begins as a calming story about a young gardener before becoming an angry tale about her hatred of a local dog who constantly pooches in her garden. Chalamet’s disbelief at the material leads to arguments with the sound engineers. This film is a little too unfocused, but it gets a big bang at the end when Alec Baldwin returns to the show as Chalamet’s replacement. Afterwards, Chalamet once again celebrates the end of the actors’ strike, honors the craftsmen who can now also work again, and wishes Leonardo DiCaprio a happy birthday.

Although there were a few stinkers throughout, this is the second strong episode in a row. Chalamet’s performance and energy were a little more restrained this time, much to his advantage, and he was given some entertaining material to work with. Baldwin’s appearance suggests that SNL is looking at Chalamet as a regular host for years to come, and this episode proved he has what it takes.

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