This week’s Saturday Night Live, the second Jack Black-hosted episode in as many seasons and his fifth official episode overall, featured a sketch that more or less encapsulates Black’s whole SNL deal, especially in these 2020s appearances. In his younger/hungrier days, Black rampaged through the studio with something to prove, evidently gleeful about getting to host the show and bring his brand of music-comedy bravado to a mainstream audience. (Obviously he wasn’t an obscurity during his 2002 and 2003 episodes, but the second one was literally the day after School of Rock opened, meaning all of his biggest hits were still ahead of him.) These last two years, his vibe on the show is more of a veteran cutting loose for grown-ups during several weeks of kid-movie promo. After all, it’s been nearly a decade since the man has made a movie you couldn’t comfortably show to a 10-year-old.
I wouldn’t say that career shift has dulled his comic edge, because he still seems up for whatever, up to and including slathering young people with Jergens in an attempt to seducing them into some fumbling form of partying. (Meta-commentary on his cheerful attempts to stay relevant with the youngs? Probably not, but you could read it that way!) Moreover, his trademark zeal has also long had a childlike side to it. This makes him the perfect host to appear in a sketch cutting back and forth between a group of female friends in a kitchen and the husbands who are somewhat improbably hanging out together for the first time the adjoining living room. It seems like a little awkward-masculinity riff that doesn’t necessarily require Black’s personal sensibility, until the boys absentmindedly break into a rendition of the Kansas song “Carry On My Wayward Son.” Soon enough they’ve made the transition from abnegating their own small-talk to a full-on air-guitar, ribbon-wand, costume-change performance.
There’s only the slightest glimmer of satire or commentary in this sketch, and barely any individual character work. It doesn’t have much of an ending or even much of a button, either. (“Someone from the other, confused party abruptly joins in the unusual behavior” is about as basic as it gets.) For that matter, the sketch doesn’t feel all that left-field in its silliness: Thematically and comedically, it’s not far off from from the concept of “Boy Dance Party” and “Carry On My Wayward Son” is exactly the kind of song that was proudly dragged back into the spotlight during Black’s 2000s-era Frat Pack heyday. (It’s in both the trailer and the final moments of Anchorman.) But through the purity of commitment Black and the especially similar-minded James Austin Johnson and Andrew Dismukes, the sketch became a tribute to the full-throated silliness that the Super Mario Galaxy star brings to the room. Like Johnson’s character in the self-defense-class sketch, it’s all skill and very little technique. It’s something that Black in particular is good at getting away with, and SNL has the resources to build a series of venues for him.
There was a messier version of this energy in Black’s obligatory five-timer monologue, which went back to the Five-Timers’ Club, with unofficial SNL spokeswoman emeritus (and part-time SNL UK shill) Tina Fey given the task of acknowledging more directly than ever that this bit is kind of tired but expected. That this was sandwiched between very “whoever’s around” cameos from Jonah Hill, Candice Bergen, and Melissa McCarthy somewhat diminished the self-satire, but it was admittedly fun to bring out Jack White for a recreation/spoof of the sporting-event version of “Seven Nation Army,” further highlighting the sense (whether accurate or not) that the Black & White thing wasn’t just a happy booking accident. White may not be as naturally gregarious as Black, but he’s got an inimitable personality steeped in rock-and-roll tradition while creatively tweaking that familiarity. Bringing him a little further into the episode with the monologue and a music video only felt right.
What this episode in particular was missing (as was last year’s to some degree, though not quite so obviously) were sketches that felt like significantly more than spirited run-throughs of familiar ideas. Black racked up some real classics in some of his 2000s episodes; this time, I’m not sure if he got anything as good as last year’s Indiana Jones guy on the game show or “Bass Lake.” But if you put him in that room, he’ll raise the energy levels to the point where just about anything seems to count as a pretty good time.
What was on
Along with the singing-husbands sketch, the best segment of the night was the “Words to Live By” music video, a parody of folksy-recollection country songs with the unfortunate snag of guys getting too distracted (or in one case, too shitty) to actually recall the secret-of-life wisdom they’ve supposedly received. Dismukes and Johnson don’t sing together more than a couple of times per season, if that, but they have a near-100% hit rate when they do; this one might have been slightly more predictable than “Lake Beach” but it was still rock solid, especially with Dismukes providing the crucial variation of a guy who can’t absorb life lessons from his son because he thinks kids are dumb as hell.
Also, I rarely include the musical guest in this category, but I got a particular kick out of White’s new song “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs.” I’ve been a White Stripes fan since college, but I’ll always feel particularly warm toward White as an SNL presence after he last-minute subbed in for a too-briefly disgraced Morgan Wallen in 2020 and absolutely tore it up.
What was off
Honestly, most of the sketches defied my meager on/off binary, instead falling into a middle ground of not quite as good as they should have been (self-defense) or not nearly as bad as the premise would indicate. For example: Some halfway interesting blocking, nice underplaying from Ashley Padilla, and full commitment to shout-whispering from Black meant that the standard “weird person bothers everyone” sketch that led off the night was much better than it should have been, while still taking up a lot more time than I would have preferred. The sketch with Black as an overzealous Airbnb superhost who literally won’t leave his guests alone had a similar problem, but more obviously and showily saved in the clutch by the appearance of Melissa McCarthy.
Most valuable player
Doesn’t it feel like there’s an extra spring in James Austin Johnson’s step when he doesn’t have to play Trump? Though I can’t say the NCAA sorta-political cold open was a whole lot better than a Trump bit, it earned some goodwill just for trying another approach, and Johnson was in his element for the first chunk of the show, where he killed in in multiple sketches in a row. Maybe the next time Black hosts should be an oops-all-music episode, with Johnson on hand.
Next time
Anthony Crispino voice: “You hear about this? They’re doing an all-Domingo episode… with Antifa?!” No, it’s Colman Domingo and Anitta for what will presumably be the last installment before a trio of May episodes.
Stray observations
• I’ve found Jonah Hill hilarious in so many movies, including but not limited to Superbad, and enjoyed his SNL appearances, too, which provided a Black-like energy during a time when Black wasn’t hosting at all. So it’s really not with malice that I ask why his face seemed frozen in a rictus grin for his entire appearance here.
• The self-defense sketch was the rare big-broad-super-accented-characters sketch where the supposed straight-man parts—the people taking the class, in other words, rather than the people teaching it—were much, much funnier (Chloe Fineman casually dropping that she’d like to use her gun less, for example, or Johnson’s example of the aforementioned “skill but not technique”).
• I may be writing more about this shortly, but after a couple of SNL UK episodes, where Weekend Update is still getting its sea legs but also doesn’t have such an outsized place on a nascent comedy-variety series, the U.S. edition feels especially bloated, in jokes and in guests. What if instead of a weird compromise where Kam Patterson appears to be performing “Black Snape” material that probably makes him cringe and then doesn’t do it particularly well for anyone who would love this material, they just… didn’t? What if instead of doing yet another non-joke about women’s basketball, Che just… didn’t? What if instead of using a non-news item to set up a pedophilia joke, Jost just… well, you get the idea.
• Sarah Sherman, however, can stay.
• As a huge loser, I have spent some of my always-diminished free time this week watching a selection of SNL cast members do various promotional videos confusingly affiliated with media brands. It’s a great way to really maintain those parasocial relationships in the show’s off weeks! For example, in a Vanity Fair video where the group quizzes each other on personal details, I was heartened to see that Chloe Fineman has consistently good recall for what I assume the others have mentioned to her in casual conversation. I was also impressed to find out that apparently Jane Wickline can make a pretty strong omelet under pressure.
Jesse Hassenger is a contributor to The A.V. Club.