Saturday Night Live - Season 44, Episode 06: Steve Carell / Ella Mai
Trailer
On Saturday night, a new season, a late-night comedy show featuring several short plays, simulations of television commercials, and a live band. There is a new team of award-winning celebrities performing comics and popular music stars. It is a new display of a wide range of music and graphics that seem to be the most famous and have won the admiration of many.
Throughout Saturday's show, the presumably exhausted writers relied on throwbacks and old reliable tactics. (At times they swerved lazily into the tone-deaf.)
The show's reliance on famous actors and comedians has morphed from an occasional treat into an annoying crutch, an admission that its regular cast isn't good or well-known enough to play the likes of Kavanaugh and Mueller.
I'm glad we're getting less of Alec Baldwin's POTUS this season, but now would be great time to see the writers find a new way to open the show besides mocking the 24-hour news media.
The night felt like something of a letdown as very few of the sketches thrown his way proved to be winners, often relegating Carell to play various incarnations of Weird Dad.
I'm not saying the episode underperformed because of Carell, but he was definitely one of the handful of factors that made it more disappointing than it should have been.
For an episode featuring a seasoned comedy star and sketch comedian, this felt like a bit of a disappointment, especially for the Thanksgiving episode.
Steve Carell, a skilled comedian in his own right who did exceptional work for years on The Daily Show before becoming a movie star, was largely wasted.
