After three Saturday Night Live hosting gigs in the early aughts, Jack Black hasn’t appeared in almost 20 years. So it was a delight to see him back on the show again, this time promoting A Minecraft Movie and the upcoming Anaconda installment. He’s a seasoned pro who can reliably churn out laughs (or at least warm grins) whenever he’s on camera, and I felt like I could relax watching him after Mikey Madison’s wobbly debut last week.
Sure, Black had some flubs here and there, and he couldn’t always take his eyes away from the cue cards for very long. But he was always on, bringing a level of energy to the show that proved infectious to his oft-breaking castmates. Just look at the sheer joy on Heidi Gardner’s face as she rocked the tambourine in the background near the close of Black’s monologue performance running through his biggest movies of the last 20 years. Who cares if many of those movies weren’t good? (I would’ve preferred a Bernie shout-out, but I get it.)
It makes sense that Black’s pipes would be heavily utilized throughout the night, from that “Back Again” song to his silk-pajamaed duet with Sarah Sherman about “makin’ lurv.” (What makes the latter work is the physical comedy of their herky-jerky flying, especially when Bowen Yang enters as their third and clings to Black’s legs.) And during Big Ricky and the Minnows’ potluck jam performance of “Free Fallin’,” a one-joke skit about an overabundance of bass guitarists, he makes for a more than capable Tom Petty stand-in while undercutting his chill vibe with an increasing frustration at the musical imbalance. Affability was also a big theme throughout the episode for the host, who brought his signature intensity when needed but played it earnest when the characters required it.
Here are the highlights:
Black plays Gene, a contestant on a dating show where the bachelorette (Chloe Fineman) isn’t supposed to know anything about the three dudes’ physical appearances. But host Todd Bruff (Andrew Dismukes) can’t help telling her that the sweet, well-meaning Gene is clearly dressed as Indiana Jones, including a whip and “adventure hat.” Part of me felt slightly let down when I realized there wouldn’t be much more to the skit than Black and Dismukes’s debate about whether or not the Indiana Jones get-up is intentional, but it makes for some pretty funny moments, especially when Gene slips up and mentions a fact he shouldn’t know about Indiana’s origin story. And the appearance of Bowen Yang as a new contestant dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow makes for a good-enough final beat to end on.
When the name of the fake product alone is funny, we’re usually in for a good time. And crossing over Flamin’ Hot Cheetos with hemorrhoid cream is just good stuff, especially with the care taken to the graphics to show the “total eruption” that would result. Black is the ideal guy for the job here, screaming in agony while applying the nightmare product, and using Chester Cheetah as the alarmed straight man is inspired.
Creating a solid comedy song often means pairing the right content with the right form, and in this case that means a reggae song sung by Jamaican locals (Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim) about goth American kids on vacation with their families. Black appears unexpectedly as My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way in a new version of the opening verse of “Welcome to the Black Parade” (and outfitted as Way in the music video), which means a lot to me personally.
This week’s Update featured some of the better one-liners of the night, arguably peaking early on when Colin Jost acknowledged Morgan Wallen’s abrupt departure at goodnights last week. But the Trump skewering was good and tough this time around, like Michael Che’s joke that “The U.S. has been plundered and raped by other countries … and Trump will not stand for plundering.” I also appreciated the flashback to Russell Brand introducing Chris Brown as a musical guest, with Jost’s remark, “We really knew how to pair ‘em up.”
Far and away the highlight, though, was Nwodim practicing an apolitical stand-up comedy set for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The humor comes not so much from watching her stick to food jokes as it does from her confusing, apparently over-50 “Miss Eggy” stand-up persona, which had everyone in the studio cracking up, including the Update anchors — and led to a great unexpected moment when the audience contributed a loud “shit!” to follow her “men ain’t what?” call. For someone who doesn’t always get her due on this show, it’s a welcome star-making turn.
This one is also based around a silly but amusing concept: When the Greeks put on their “first play” in 500 B.C., people in the audience took it literally, not understanding that they weren’t being spoken to directly. Black co-stars with Day, Dismukes, and Fineman as the befuddled audience members, loudly chiming in from the front row after every line to reply. The sketch goes on a bit long without taking any particularly unexpected or clever directions, but I liked the outraged reactions to the transparently fake stage murder.
• Another week, another appearance by Mike Myers as Elon Musk in the cold open, this time present at the Rose Garden to hear Trump’s tariff plan and “MAGDA” (“Make America Great Depression Again”) agenda. The idea of a new self-vandalizing model of Tesla with “self-smashing headlights, self-slashing tires, and AI-powered graffiti” doesn’t feel far off from a stunt Musk might actually pull to show how in-on-the-joke he apparently is, and “swastikas made out of penises” really does encapsulate his sense of humor.
• The sketch about one uppers doesn’t really go anywhere new after establishing the basic “humblebrag followed by eagle sound cue” pattern, but Black gives good face, as does Yang.
• Very little Ashley Padilla in this one, and Devon Walker is nowhere to be seen!
• I don’t have much to say about Elton John and Brandi Carlile, but I enjoyed the performances, especially Carlile’s voice in the second song, the title track from their album. Carlile was also brought in for the making-lurv sketch as a fourth to Sarah Sherman and Black’s relationship.
• “A ballet dancer set a new world record for the longest distance covered while performing a split on two moving ATVs, which also inspired the new TV show, Vagina 911.”
• Not sure about the ICE joke, less because it “went there” than because it’s just pretty lazy, especially compared to some of the other topical humor here.
• I could use less of Marcello Hernández breaking, but I did laugh at his delivery of “We’re gonna live happily ever after, baby, like Romeo and Juliet … I assume.”
• “You think Tom Petty is liking this?” “I do not.”
• The other part of the bass skit that made me laugh is Yang coming in with a keyboard, only to reveal it as a guitar case carrying yet another bass.
• The Times Square Kiss skit, based on the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo, was a bit of a dud for me, repeatedly hitting the same note about Black’s jealousy of the various men kissing his nurse girlfriend (Gardner). But I understand where he’s coming from in wanting four hot dogs.
