Last year’s Saturday Night Live season finale was not intended to be the finale. After the team put out a resoundingly mid Ana de Armas-hosted episode in April, they hoped to follow it up with three more shows in May, culminating with Jennifer Coolidge’s decades-belated hosting debut . Instead, the WGA strike scuttled that last trio of episodes, leaving an undercooked sequel to “Lisa From Temecula” as a summary statement on season 48 as a whole.
Season 49, unfortunately, has no such excuse for going out on an off-pitch note. The fault appears to lie equally with the writers and versatile third-time host Jake Gyllenhaal. Some actors can’t handle leading an SNL sketch; others can, but only in reactive straight parts, not big, wacky characters.
Gyllenhaal can do both in his sleep. The problem is that, ever since his role in 2019’s John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch , he seems all too aware that his penchant for high-voltage eccentricity lends itself to sketch comedy. When he next hosted SNL in 2022, that overconfidence was etched on his face the entire time .
This episode finds the actor somehow operating at an even higher register. Gyllenhaal plays big, wacky, scenery-chewing characters in pretty much every sketch. A live-action Fred from Scooby Doo is possibly his least animated role of the night.
The rest of the time, he comes across just as sweaty from exertion as the cyclist he plays in one memorably inscrutable sketch . At a certain point, viewers can only c.
