Paul Mescal hosts ‘SNL,’ but it’s still the Dana Carvey show

I can’t wait for SNL’s celebration of its fiftieth season to be over.

It didn’t have to be this way. If Lorne Michaels wanted to honor the illustrious history of SNL in the lead up to February’s SNL50 special, there’s a version of that idea that could have been a lot of fun.

Going into this season, the historic milestone was always going to hang over the show. Based on the season premiere, with Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg and Dana Carvey all returning, it looked like SNL was going to treat viewers to a wave of former cast members making cameo roles.

What if SNL had brought in a different former cast member for each episode, giving them a shot at appearing in the cold open while bringing back a recurring character of theirs during the episode? We could have seen iconic cast members like Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Dan Akroyd (look, I’d love an episode featuring Will Forte too, but I’m not getting my hopes up) swing by Studio 8H. This would’ve allowed SNL to continue to focus on its actual cast while still surprising viewers each week with a new featured veteran cameo.

Instead, the celebration of Season 50 wound up devolving into a situation where we now just get Carvey every week. Maybe he’s playing Joe Biden. Maybe he’s derping his way through an Elon Musk impression he’s admitted he can’t do. And maybe, in the case of this week, he’s once again playing the Church Lady.

How is this honoring SNL’s five-decade history?

Paul Mescal was an average SNL host. He was enthusiastic but often relegated to being the kind of host that the show happens to — think his character in “Earring” or “Brilliant Lawyer” — instead of the kind of host who shapes an episode themselves. No matter what he did, though, Mescal wasn’t going to escape the shadow of Carvey looming over the episode.

COLD OPEN

Church Chat 2024 Cold Open

Woof. I’m so, so tired of seeing Carvey on SNL this season. The question is no longer whether Carvey is good at the material he’s performing. (I’d argue that’s been a very mixed bag.) The question is does this material belong in a normal episode of SNL.

If the show wants to bring Carvey back and have him doing Church Lady, that’s what the SNL50 special in February is for. Bring back old sketches. Put the spotlight on former SNL cast members. Go crazy. It’s their night.

But a random episode of SNL in December? Go home, Carvey. Only Sarah Sherman and Marcello Hernandez got to be in the cold open as actual characters before the show shuffled out Emil Wakim, Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson and Jane Wickline as backup singers.

• “At least you haven’t been doing a podcast”: Who is this for? David Spade played Hunter Biden during the cold open, and the show leaned heavily on the fact that Spade and Carvey now have a podcast together … a fact I don’t assume the average SNL viewer would know?
• Close the Gaetz: Not only did the Matt Gaetz news wrap up a week ago, having Sherman play the former congressman feels like an awkward throwback to SNL’s “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if a woman played a man?!” era of the last Trump administration.

THE MONOLOGUE

Mescal wasn’t lying when he said that “it’s safe to say there’s not a lot of comedy on the résumé.” His monologue was brief, jumping from a montage of him crying in his movies to a kind-of-dated bit about Irish stereotypes including the clarification that Irish people don’t hook up with their cousins — they hook up with their second cousins.