Saturday Night Live Recap: Dakota Johnson’s Third Time Isn’t a Charm

Saturday Night Live
Dakota Johnson
Season 52 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Boy, season 52 isn’t off to the most promising start, is it? Last week’s episode was pretty bad, but this one is even more disappointing in some ways. Jalen Brunson is an athlete, not an actor, so the bar for him was low; Dakota Johnson is a three-time host. In theory, this episode should’ve felt back to basics. Instead, it’s only a slight improvement. 

I don’t blame Johnson, though her laconic line delivery certainly isn’t for everyone. She’s not the most natural live performer ever, but her distinct energy is well-suited to some of the characters she plays in this third outing. In the mostly uninspiring Press Your Luck sketch, for example, she does a decent Elizabeth Banks impression — her reactions to Ashley Padilla’s overenthusiastic contestant (wacky in the Kristen Wiig mold) start with mild concern and escalate to deep exasperation and confusion. It’s somewhat amusing to watch Banks, the studio audience, and even the fellow contestants join in on urging Sherri to stop rejecting millions of dollars.

Johnson didn’t necessarily do much to liven up the drier live segments, like the outdated Game of Thrones parody “Throne of the Dragonborn.” She’s playing a Daenerys lookalike who wants to have sex with Ser Aleric (Ben Marshall) despite her overprotective dragon watching, and that’s basically it. A few obvious incest jokes, a Varys-esque eunuch appearance by Kenan Thompson, and nothing the show didn’t already cover when Game of Thrones was actually airing. Johnson also doesn’t get much to do in the brief final sketch, where she plays the straight-man doctor role opposite a delusional girl who believes she can save her comatose father by singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A nice showcase for Veronika Slowikowska’s voice, though!

As usual, one gets the sense that the host isn’t truly the issue at play here. After all, she shines nicely enough in the monologue, making a few self-deprecating comments about Madame Web and her relationships with musicians. (And yes, Taylor Swift dropped by.) And look at the Johnson-less segments, like the overlong Weekend Update (more on that later) — or especially the stale-as-hell midterm ads political cold open, another excuse to run through all the usual impressions. I’ll admit that I laughed at Mikey Day’s frozen Mitch McConnell and his premature “live from New York,” but not much else worth commenting on there.

Here are the highlights: 

Mean, Scary Girlfriend

Johnson is a natural in the pre-tapes, especially this one. It’s a basic premise, executed competently: a commercial for cruel, honest-to-a-fault girlfriends. Sometimes you’re sick of your partner’s inability to give a straight answer, after all, and you just crave a little honesty. This short at least builds a little as it goes on, and I like that we get to see the intense catharsis of earning a rare compliment from the mean girlfriend. 

Hospital Gossip

Another pretty slight sketch, but I actually dig the central joke here, even if it could’ve cooked longer. Jeremy Culhane stars as Eric from Legal, a down-on-his-luck man who chimes in on gossip sessions with his coworkers with depressing tidbits from his own life. Culhane really commits to the performance here, and each detail he shares is increasingly funny and pathetic. Even when he gets close to landing on some real hot goss, it turns into something about himself — like the fact that their coworker Megan picked him up from jail after he begged to be arrested. 

Guns for Women

This one goes for some pretty low-hanging fruit, but I appreciate that Johnson’s friends never come around to her pitch: a gun with a vagina (and a hard-to-find trigger, har har har) for women who want to project their femininity the same way men try to project masculinity with their phallic weapons. Johnson does good work committing to the bit here, too, barreling forward despite her friends’ alarm and disapproval. 

Weekend Update

Weekend Update was responsible for a surprising number of high points last season, and I’m starting to think that won’t be the case this year. A lot of these jokes are groaners at best and offensive at worst, like that stupid image of low-testosterone James Talarico blowing a dandelion, or the non-joke about why Kristi Noem filed for divorce, pretty much just an unnecessary reminder of the scandal we’re already aware of. (A little more cutting: “Kristi Noem said that she’s sad about the divorce, but is always happy to separate another family.”) The Cornell bit, with Michael Che describing a prototypical Ivy League “nice guy” sexual predator while the camera cuts repeatedly to Colin Jost, isn’t so much risqué as it is boring. 

The guests were marginally better, though, which is why I’ll count Update as a highlight. I did enjoy Mikey Day’s Link, the only one at the desk not to break into laughter repeatedly during his bickering with Marcello’s Jason from GTA. I did laugh out loud at Link’s singsong way of bragging that he and Zelda are “friends and that’s it.” Kam Patterson remains charming — if only the show would give him better material than joking about whatever white- or queer-coded material he wouldn’t enjoy! Sarah Sherman’s matchmaker was also kind of funny, though it mainly felt to me like a missed opportunity to bring Dakota Johnson’s Materialists character to the desk.

Get Ready with Me

Colorado Vicky, the deeply mentally unwell and obscure influencer who somehow made her way onto the algorithm of a middle school girl, is another classic role in Johnson’s wheelhouse. It’s fun to see her “get ready with me” videos get more and more deranged, but the real star of the sketch is James Austin Johnson, who executes another “extremely depressed but disguising it with a sunny disposition” character to perfection. You don’t know whether to feel bad for him or be scared of him, but maybe he’s just a lonely man looking for another unwell person who can match his freak — and Colorado Vicky fits the bill! Nothing revelatory here, but I kind of enjoyed it. 

Cut for Time

• I’ve been meaning to check out Turnstile for a while, and this episode convinced me to make that a priority. Both performances were great, raw and full of energy. 

• One of the funniest jokes of the episode gets slipped in to set up the hospital gossip sketch: “How did surgery go today?” “It was great. I mean, the guy didn’t make it, but we seriously had so much fun.” 

• “Cheryl, I have never liked you.” 

• “To me, it just looks like two shapes bouncing around, having sex.” 

• “Newly discovered records suggest that in 1931, Adolf Hitler may have murdered his niece. Okay, that’s strike two.”