Saturday Night Live Recap: Jack Black Brings The Energy

Saturday Night Live
Jack Black
Season 51 Episode 16
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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This time last year, Jack Black hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time since the early 2000s; this week, Black returned for his five-timers club debut. The thing about Jack Black hosting is that you know he’s showing up and delivering a reliable, committed performance right from the jump. I had forgotten, until I rewatched his episode from last year, that he literally somersaulted onstage during his monologue. He’s here to surprise us, and his hallmarks are to be expected: big, kooky expressions, a song or two, some physical humor, and an unexpected twang on a random word of his choosing. And if last year’s any indication, Black can shepherd us through an episode even if the sketches fall flat, with enough amusement to make it worth a night. It seems hard to fumble, but I still entered the episode cautious about accepting that as a given. One thing I’ve learned from life — and from asking my accountant to lie on my tax returns — is that you don’t always get what you want.

I’m pleased to say that my skepticism was unwarranted: the writing throughout the episode was strong, and Black turned in a great performance. Most importantly, his characters drove the sketches he was in: a man spearheading efforts to ignore a coworker, a delightfully clueless and schlubby Spartan who’s not built for war, an Airbnb host desperate to hang with his young guests. It’s the best case scenario for a trusted host, especially since the monologue was inevitably going to be a five-timers club sketch that diverted some focus to the celebrity cameos. I’m not complaining — it was entertaining, and it didn’t feel like it dragged on too long. In this iteration, Jonah Hill leads Black to a cobweb-laced five-timers lounge, where they run into Tina Fey (dressed in a custom Paddington-lined five-timers robe), and soon, Candice Bergen and Melissa McCarthy. Marcello Hernández’s Domingo character pops in for a second before Jack White comes in and cartoon-style boinks his head with a pan. It was a nice start, and ending it on the Jacks performing a “Seven Nation Army” parody started the show on an energetic high note. 

Overall, this is a really good episode. The cold open thankfully skipped Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth (did the writers read our Harry Styles recap?) by putting Ashley Padilla’s Pam Bondi at a March Madness sports commentators’ table, alongside a marble-mouthed Charles Barkley (Kenan Thompson). The Trump cold opens have become stale, so I appreciate mixing it up with a new setting. Even though the last two sketches of the night felt a little anticlimactic, I still enjoyed myself enough to include one of those in my highlights. Here are the highlights:

Kathy

A group of coworkers (Black, Mikey Day, Sarah Sherman, and Thompson) is enjoying lunch in their office break room, or at least, they’re trying to, except their most annoying coworker, Kathy (Padilla), keeps trying to join the conversation. Character sketches can sometimes end up homogenizing the host into the ensemble, but that doesn’t happen here. Instead, Black leads the charge to ignore Kathy. He’s also particularly set off by her, and watching him unsuccessfully suppress his outbursts is very funny. Padilla is so good here. She plays Kathy with a confidence that makes me root for her, and in lesser hands, this character would be really annoying to watch. But instead, I’m rooting for this freak with nachos dusted with crushed up birth control, with the worst phone on the planet (“I get to call my mom and the cops”). In a final standdown between Black’s character and Kathy, Padilla’s repetition of “We talkin’ TV?” is so precise, it almost feels automated, like when a smoke detector goes “Fire. Fire. Fire.”

Words to Live By (Country Song)

A country singer (James Austin Johnson) croons about his Pappy’s last wise words before his death. The only problem, though, is that he can’t quite remember what he said. A funny, well-executed premise and a genuinely catchy song? Up there on my list of favorite pre-tapes this season. Black, naturally, also sings a verse about forgetting the wise words of a man in the Tibetan mountains because he was distracted by a terse text from his wife. The idea of getting a text while remote in the mountains is funny on its own, and Black’s delivery of “Google calendah!” is still in my head. When Andrew Dismukes enters as the third singer, I was expecting another beat about how he couldn’t remember what his son said, so the misdirect had me laughing uncontrollably. Jack White forgetting his guitar solo was also a funny add-on. I’d love to see this quartet on tour! 

Husbands

Could the male loneliness epidemic be solved through the power of song? I believe it. In this sketch, a group of women worries about whether their husbands in the other room are getting along. And there’s certainly reason to worry, until Black’s character cautiously initiates singing Kansas’s “Carry on Wayward Son.” Suddenly, they have ribbons, they’re doing solos, and by the end, they’ve ripped off their clothes to reveal rock-and-roll outfits. Details like Black karate chopping wood and Thompson holding a copy of “Respecting Women Magazine” help elevate it from simply relying on the song to being pretty joke-dense. Jane Wickline’s character reveals her own tearaway outfit for a nice button to the sketch. I also like the B-story beef between Ashley Padilla and Sarah Sherman’s characters, too: “I will give you one million dollars if my husband is singing,” “We know you’re rich!” 

Weekend Update

Monologue jokes are kind of antiquated as a format. They’re so often predictable, which is why I cannot believe I laughed out loud as much as I did during this Update. Some of my favorites are the FEMA Waffle House drunk driving joke, the JD Vance Catholicism joke, and the Iran healthcare system cyberattacks joke. 

Sarah Sherman as Kristi Noem’s husband is, to no one’s surprise, a highlight of the night with her balloon boobs (“baloobs.”) So many ways to say bimbo bazongas, including my personal favorite: Party City poppers. It’s also more dynamic than the usual Update desk piece with all the cutaways to the cue card guy, Lorne’s empty spinning chair, Padilla’s Kristi Noem, and the dog in heaven. I love the surprise of Thompson’s cameo as Law Roach, too. 

Kam Patterson also joins the desk as black Professor Snape, and while I think Harry Potter jokes are a little played out, Patterson’s bubbly delivery makes it work. The line “Kingsley Shacklebolt, a name I’m guessing they got out of the Wu-Tang name generator” got a guffaw out of me. 

Airbnb Superhost

I love the last sketch of the night. If a sketch is weird enough with pacing that keeps me up at 12:57 a.m., it balances out into a win, even if the momentum fizzles by the end. A group of young friends is at an Airbnb run by a superhost named Bob (Black), who can’t leave them alone. Melissa McCarthy pops in as Bob’s not-wife, and to keep their guests from leaving, they slather the doorknob (and later, Jeremy Culhane) with lotion. Black’s doing what can only be described as “Scary Eyes” with a horror-movie-esque smile plastered across his face; McCarthy’s physicality is always masterful. The literal messiness of the lotion, combined with the chaos of the interaction between Black and McCarthy’s characters, took me back to the nostalgia of watching SNL in high school.

Cut for Time

• “The five-time musical guests only get their parking validated for fifteen minutes. So uh, I have to move my hearse.” I loved Jack White, both as a musical guest and in his cameos in the monologue and pre-tape. He’s got good timing! 

• I will say I did feel distracted by Hernández coming in as Domingo in the monologue. It felt misplaced, and Hernández’s accents in general across the season have started feeling like a bit of a crutch. Unless it’s really intentional and in-group, I’m personally good on accent humor from here on out. It annoyed me enough that I was still thinking about it during Hernández and Black’s accents in “Self-Defense,” which was otherwise a fun sketch where every ensemble member had multiple fun moments, including a “tough” Jane Wickline going, “I’m here to F you bitches up,” and Jeremy Culhane’s character inexplicably eating a caterpillar. Maybe I wouldn’t have been thinking about it so much if the sketch had been spaced out to later in the show, but it’s a shame for it to be a distraction either way.

• “We’ll be white black.” We are really getting as much mileage as possible from the Jack White/Jack Black joke. 

• Black stretching out “penis” to sound like “pianist” in the “Self-Defense” sketch.

• Kenan’s Charles Barkley to Padilla’s Pam Bondi in the cold open: “You already look like a women’s basketball coach who got suspended for pulling on a player’s braid.” 

• “And in the spirit of Easter, let me just say: Jesus Christ.”