Saturday Night Live Recap: Has Nate Bargatze Cracked the SNL Code?

As a longtime fan of Saturday Night Live, I must say this season is shaping up to be a real treat! The water slide sketch had me rolling with laughter – it’s one of those sketches that you watch once for the story, and then again just to appreciate the physical comedy.

Nate Bargatze appeared just as surprised as everyone else when he hosted Saturday Night Live last November, given that despite his long career in stand-up comedy and playing larger venues since the mid-2010s, he hadn’t had a leading sitcom or film role. In fact, his only acting credit to date is from a 2014 episode of Maron. But Bargatze’s debut on SNL was nothing short of remarkable – it produced the best sketch of season 49 with “Washington’s Dream,” and attracted the show’s highest ratings in nearly a year. This turn of events certainly came as a surprise!

Currently, Bargatze has made a swift comeback as if victorious from a conquest. If there was any shock this second time around about skyrocketing to the hosting frequency of John Mulaney per season despite lacking promotional material, it didn’t show. Interestingly, one of Bargatze’s most notable traits is his enigmatic exterior that makes it difficult to discern his true feelings. Rarely has a comedian’s demeanor appeared so contrasting with the essence of their jokes. Is he anxious? Self-amused? Having an incredible time? It’s anyone’s guess.

In both his stand-up performances and sketches, Bargatze’s style suggests a man just sharing information, oblivious to the impending laughter. He casually delivers jokes as if they were background details; drier than the driest humor, more straightforward than the most conventional straight man, yet with exceptional timing that frequently deviates from what seems expected. Last year, Bargatze’s detached delivery really resonated in the sketch “Washington’s Dream.” Remarkably, this seemed to unleash his full potential for the Saturday Night Live team, and this time, it appears they constructed the entire production using the black box.

Here are the highlights:

VP Debate 2024 Cold Open

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7E_WeuKkJ2s?si=qo0izz7EmKlzeMcz

After handling the initial introductions during the season opener, SNL’s roster of election-year substitutes is now ready to take center stage and perform. This week’s cold open shrewdly steps back from the main VP debate to focus on Kamala Harris (portrayed by Maya Rudolph) and Doug Emhoff (Andy Samberg) watching the event at home. This setup offers opportunities for jokes about both the debate itself and the shared experience of watching it, with a special emphasis on Harris’s perspective as well as that of many viewers alike.

In an unexpected turn of events, not many would have foreseen or understood the unusually friendly dynamic between the two debaters on the show, which was portrayed as a warm camaraderie, almost bordering on a brotherly bonding session. This scenario offers a great chance to flesh out the personas of our fresh acquaintances JD Vance and Tim Walz. Bowen Yang cleverly depicts Vance’s debate tactic of speaking in a cheerful, upbeat manner about radical ideas and sneaky evasions, while Jim Gaffigan brilliantly portrays Walz as someone who is genuinely overwhelmed by the situation. Dana Carvey’s portrayal of Biden isn’t as dominating this time, but he does solidify the character with a new nonsensical catchphrase: “Guess what. And by the way.

Washington’s Dream 2

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VJ62EfUKI3w?si=lTkKbEMBQ-apDibq

In a surprising turn of events, they indeed carried out another “Washington’s Dream” sketch, featuring the return of Bargatze. While I had initially believed that they didn’t have enough creative energy left for another one, I was proved wrong. The audience, aware of his previous appearance, greeted him with a gentle applause as he appeared in Revolution-era clothing. Though it may not surpass the original in terms of surprise or first-thought-best-thought material, this sequel is still laugh-out-loud funny. And Bargatze’s answer to what will appear on the back of the dollar note was nothing short of brilliant, rivaling anything from the initial sketch.

Sábado Gigante

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yy5BhV0z8E0?si=gMGUCKY6uJnoNtWN

The popular Spanish-language show “Sábado Gigante,” off the air for almost a decade, continues to resonate deeply with its old viewers. This skit brings it back in a way that serves two purposes: It caters to the underrepresented Latino audience of SNL with a clever dose of nostalgia, and introduces non-Latinos to a less biased version of the ’90s sketch featuring Chris Farley trapped in a Japanese game show. The character played by Bargatze, who seems to have learned some Spanish through DuoLingo, expresses more innocent confusion than fear (“Why was that man dressed like Dracula?”), resulting in a more considerate portrayal of cultural differences while still maintaining the humor.

Water Slide

https://youtube.com/watch?v=s6o9zVNr6IE?si=MH_b505a8oKCh6cE

Among viewers, there’s likely a wide variety of time frames between when this sketch starts with a body atop a water slide and when they figure out the most practical method to retrieve it. On the other hand, when they reach that understanding, viewer reactions are likely to be quite consistent: an overwhelming sense of joy or delight.

Mile-High Burger Challenge

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_jOENrSbths?si=m1cSRQa9gHDquYyH

On numerous occasions during the previous season, Heidi Garner demonstrated her exceptional skills as a physical comedian. Yet, these performances might have merely served as a prelude for her remarkable spectacle of consuming a gigantic burger. She certainly gave it her all. By the end, one can easily envision her eating an entire lasagna to lift up Bargatze’s character’s spirits.

Cut for Time:

Maya Rudolph is so skilled that she can mess up a joke about Bruce Springsteen almost as much as anyone could ever mess up a line, yet she gracefully turns the blunder into something amusing.

In this week’s speech, Bargatze has provided processed-food lovers with fresh terminology to define our identity: we can now be referred to as “table-to-factory-to-farm” individuals.

Instead, it wasn’t the military veterans who once served our country choosing to face away from the golfer, due to his golf ball accidentally damaging a bald eagle’s nest.

From what we can gather, it seems that the Saturday Night Live (SNL) team appears to have second thoughts about inviting Donald Trump to host in 2015 while he was campaigning for president and Elon Musk to host in 2021, given who they are as individuals. They’ve tried to even things out by mocking both men regularly, but it’s nice to see them taking a different approach this time around. For example, on last night’s Weekend Update, Colin Jost joked about Musk joining Trump at a rally, stating that “it might be the last time Trump and Musk will be together until they co-host our Christmas show.

• Elsewhere on Update, new cast member Jane Wickline performed a song about not partying, during which Jost fed her an exit line two minutes in and she responded, direct to camera: “I intend to keep singing.” It’s a promising introduction to how the unassuming energy of Wickline’s TikToks might play on the show.

As a movie reviewer, I must say, having the charismatic Samberg onboard for this season’s ride means we also get to enjoy his longtime collaborator, Akiva Schaffer. This week, they graced us with their antics in the utterly absurd “Sushi Glory Hole” sketch. Frankly, it’s not uncommon to find a fresh Lonely Island gem sprinkled casually within an episode, which only adds fuel to my belief that this season could turn out to be nothing short of spectacular.

In other words, the fact that the latest digital short resembles OG-style doesn’t change the observation that this is the second episode of the new season without a “Please Don’t Destroy” sketch. So, we urgently need more information about what’s happening behind the scenes, as a recent Instagram video from Ben Marshall hinting at pigeons damaging the trio’s office doesn’t quite clarify the situation fully.

While it might appear as if this is a subtle form of praise, the standout aspect of the locker room sketch lies in its brevity. Prolonging Bargatze’s delivery beyond two minutes and 26 seconds could potentially make the one-dimensional concept overstay its welcome.

2024-10-06 21:54