It must have been the Oscars that got burned tonight SNL open cold, right? But did it have to be this cold open gammy?
“Last year’s Oscars got the slap in the face, which was awesome, I mean bad, so bad,” Heidi Gardner said, saying “either Maria Menounos or Kit Hoover, they haven’t gotten to me yet. says which one” in the opening minutes of NBC’s late-night show. . “So this year, to make sure nothing crazy happens, the Academy hired a new head of security: a notoriously calm and sensible person, Mike Tyson,” she said as Kenan Thompson strolled on screen as a former heavyweight champion.
At the moment, Saturday Night Live should have realized that there was one case less is more. But the show wanted more.
“I have to warn you, the following things are going to trigger me,” Tyson of Thompson told Gardner’s Go to Hollywood host and sidekick Mario Lopez (played by Marcello Hernandez). “Applause, golden people statuses and shows that are over three hours long, and also hearing the phrase ‘movie magic,'” the fictional Tyson continued, referring to Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel being outfitted with a “flamethrower” as a new security measure.
“Seriously, is that great?” exclaimed cast member Chloe Fineman as Jamie Lee Curtis in the longer-than-usual skit. Does the fictional version of Everything everywhere all at once star and nominee for Best Supporting Actress being entirely rhetorical? Infuriatingly, a half-cold open on-screen sidebar of Draft Kings taking bets on “George Santos pretending to be Tom Cruise”, “Chris Rock” appearing and the billion-to-one of “Harvey Weinstein presents Kanye West” teased how good this Oscar-centric skit could have been.
Even the great Bowen Yang showing the freshman Congressman challenged the truth claiming to be the Top Gun: Maverick the “Thomas Q Cruise” star was not the redeemer he was meant to be. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be everyone everywhere at once,” was an understatement.
As Sunday’s Oscars approach, along with other fallout from the Dominion Voting System’s libel lawsuit against Fox News and the self-cannibalism that the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race is already shaping up to be , news SNL had no shortage of satire at his disposal for this week. A new filing of documents and depositions in the Dominion legal war against FNC in recent days could have easily and shamelessly provided Saturday Night Live with another cold, open mockery of Fox News, as she had done the previous week.
But after the slap in the face heard around the world when Will Smith took a live jab on stage at The Rock for mocking his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, this week’s cold open was set to be a hot take on the 95e The Oscars and the banality of parades on the red carpet before the ceremony.
Yet later beaten in the cold open with comparisons between the 95e Oscars and “how racist and sexist your grandfather was at 95” we should have seen where this was going from the start – and it wasn’t good.
“I guess everyone in Hollywood has diabetes,” Gardner joked early on in the cold open with a lame jab at Tineseltown’s new love affair with the drug Ozempic. “We are so excited to have been standing in front of the Dolby Theater for almost 153 hours,” Lopez de Hernandez added. “But it’s worth asking Angela Bassett if she really did the thing.”
Yeah.
With Wednesday star Jenna Ortega as host and The 1975 as musical guest, the 15th episode of tonight’s 48th season finds SNL in the home straight for this year. In what could be the Lorne Michaels EP’s final stint at the helm, NBC’s late night also faces a very unfunny labor disruption as the show’s post-production editors could hit the April 1st. As the rest of Hollywood prepares for the WGA session with the studios on March 20 for likely contentious negotiations over a new three-year contract, the Editors Guild is having another virtual chat with NBCUniversal representatives on March 13.
The 95e The Oscars begin at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT Sunday on ABC with Kimmel returning as host for the third time. And they basically promised there would be no punches — at least not literally this year.