Emma Stone hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time on Dec. 2, making her the youngest member of the show’s esteemed “Five-Timers Club.” Tina Fey and Candace Bergen made special guest appearances during Stone’s monologue to welcome her to the club where they discussed the club’s women’s section, Fey being the second youngest club member at 53 and joked about Woody Harrelson’s bizarre anti-vaccination rant in his monologue earlier this year. Stone was then awarded her very own Five-Timers Club blazer before the show kicked off.
As Saturday Night Live is a comedy show (or, at least, it’s supposed to be), hosts with a background in comedy usually yield the best results for the show and produce the most memorable sketches. In the early years of her career, Stone acted in a slew of comedy films including “Superbad,” “Zombieland,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and “Easy A”. Seeing Stone return to comedy on Saturday Night Live is exciting and, as always, very entertaining.
The episode began with a classic game show parody in which Michael Longfellow, playing Joe Vibin, the host of fictional game show “Question Quest,” is hell-bent on pawning his 25-year-old tortoise, Speedy, off on Stone’s character, Jen. Jen is somewhat pleased with Speedy at first, until she is informed by the host that tortoises live upwards of 190 years and that Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin both owned the same tortoise in their lifetimes. All attempts to re-gift the tortoise to the other contestants fail spectacularly, and Jen is forced to go home with her new pet which will most certainly outlive her.
SNL also brought back a classic Stone sketch for the third time, in which she portrays a poster of a hot model come to life. This time, however, the struggling student whom the posters speak to and encourage to finish his school work is played by Marcello Hernandez rather than Pete Davidson.
The stand-out sketch of the night starred newcomer Chloe Troast as Cass Elliot and allowed Stone to show off her prowess as a physical comedian. This “More Cowbell”-esque sketch poked fun at Elliot’s 1969 classic “Make Your Own Kind of Music,” or more specifically that the song has been used in movie scenes that seem to completely negate the song’s meaning. “In about 40, 50 years I think it’s gonna start showing up in a bunch of movies,” Stone’s character, Mitch Lester, says, “Because it’s a perfect song to go under a slow-mo montage where the main character snaps and goes on a rampage!” Stone demonstrates how the song will be used in the future, pretending to be the heroine of a zombie apocalypse film, a high-profile prostitute and the resurrected corpse of Joan of Arc, while using various musical instruments as stand-ins for lethal weapons. Additionally, Troast was given another opportunity to exercise her impressive singing voice following her popular breakout performance on Nov. 11 as a 27-year-old orphan in “Little Orphan Cassidy.”
Noah Kahan made his Saturday Night Live debut as a musical guest performing his two biggest hits, “Stick Season” and “Dial Drunk.” Kahan’s performance was spirited and vibrant; a beautiful juxtaposition to his penitent, angst-filled lyrics. In keeping with the feel of his latest album, “Stick Season,” the set for his performance was designed to emulate a forest in the dead of winter, with a fog machine mimicking a recent snowfall and barren trees lining the edge of the stage.
The episode ended on a high note with a dramatic musical number about America’s favorite pastime: wandering around New York City completely stark nude and really letting it all hang out. Nothing feels better than feeling your “big fat ass flapping in the breeze,” as Stone so eloquently puts it.
