Saturday Night Live, Season 40, Episode 13, “J.K. Simmons/D’Angelo”
Aired January 31, 2015 at 11:30 pm ET on NBC (East coast version watched for review)
Host: J.K. Simmons likes to work. For those who may be unfamiliar with him or that fact, he makes it all very clear in his monologue, when he points out that he starred in a movie called Whiplash, which he is practically a lock to win the supporting actor Oscar for, as well as a TV show, Growing Up Fisher, where he played a blind lawyer (“It got cancelled”), along with starring in ads for State Farm AND as the voice of the yellow M&M. Simmons is the epitome of “oh its that guy” actors; he was even once an “oh its that guy” guy on an episode of SNL. As such, Simmons brings an affable working man quality to all of his sketches tonight, playing a pageant host, two different older middle class working men, and Humphrey Bogart, where his particular batch of old school Hollywood charm really shines through. Simmons is a team player, meaning that we get to see him affect different accents, speech patterns, wigs, and even do some singing, but because he is so good at his job, we never once see the actor’s facade break.
Musical Guest: For many, tonight’s musical guest must have seemingly come out of the ether as a fully formed eccentric and genius. D’Angelo released his sophomore album Voodoo in 2000, and then vanished into a soft falsetto mist. Then, seemingly with little warning, as 2014 was winding down, out of the darkness came D’Angelo with an album called Black Messiah, and there was much rejoicing. In his first performance, “Really Love”, he comes out with a piano poncho and a wide brimmed hat, accompanied by a nylon string-guitar and cool harmonies. The performance is foreplay of the highest order: Both D’Angelo and the song have a sexual energy that threatens to escape from underneath their respective sensual exteriors, yet have enough control to keep things focused on soft eroticism. “The Charade”, D’Angelo’s second performance, sounds like if Kanye West produced a Prince song. Much of D’Angelo’s band is dressed in “I Can’t Breathe” and “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts, while D’Angelo stands in front of a tape outline of a corpse. The song is the protest song of a generation, with the guitars and harmonies mimicking the quiet aggression of the lyrics (“All we wanted was a chance to talk / ‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk”). The final image of the entire band standing with fists raised, with a single spotlight over the outline, may be the most powerful statement about race ever made on SNL, and on network television.
Best Sketch: The standout sketch of the night goes to “Pushie”. INT. NIGHT. OLD MAN SITS AT HIS COMPUTER AND BECOMES INCREASINGLY FRUSTRATED AS HE TRIES TO WRITE A LETTER. Simmons’ accent in this sketch, as the man having tech issues, makes one long for him to get cast in FX’s Fargo at some p0int, which seems so obvious in retrospect. The moment Simmons voices his frustrations, in comes Microsoft Word assistant Pushie, Bobby Moynihan dressed as a giant red push pin. The costume has a nice live effect to it, as Monyihan is wearing green leggings that are keyed out, so all the (TV) audience sees is Pushie hoping around on a single white point. Pushie is all undeserved optimism as he replaces every instance of the word “Phil” in the word document with “goof troop”, forces an unwanted birthday cake man border on the letter, and suggests that Simmons’ character use the font Helvetica Bonham Carter. As Simmons finally has enough, he directs Pushie to show him how to disable Pushie, at which point Monyihan drops the cheery exterior and coldly tells Simmons to verbally tell the computer “Murder Pushie”, but not before Pushie shows Simmons a picture of his daughter. SNL has a penchant for big, goofy costumes — see Gumby, or any of Justin Timberlake’s “Take it on Down to (Something)ville” sketches — and when it works, as it does here, it works like gangbusters. Don’t be surprised if we see Pushie again before the end of the season.
Best Video: Normally this is the part of the review where we would talk about the worst sketch, and don’t worry, we still will, but tonight we are treated to a film by Mike O’Brien that’s so great, it deserves its own capsule. O’Brien has a weird sense of humor that enables him to do things mere mortals can’t. Tonight is a perfect example, as he takes the kind of stupid premise of “what if there was a documentary about Jay-Z where Jay-Z was played by a white guy” and turns it into the most joke-abundant bit of the night. O’Brien plays Jay-Z not as the posturing capitalist we are all familiar with, but as an aw-shucks midwesterner who is genuinely thrilled by his continued success. The best example of this is the scene where Jay-Z encourages Kanye West (Jason Sudeikis) to start rapping, causing the two of them to break down in tears over how happy they are for Kanye, leaving their “big salads so we can go to the studio and practice rapping.” This is only the second short O’Brien has made since being quelled from the cast, but it builds on the promise of one of the most unique comic voices SNL has had in a good long while.
Worst Sketch: The “Career Day” sketch is pleasant and enjoyable right up until the end, at which point it becomes eye-rollingly racist. Simmons is at his son’s school for career day, talking about his job as a Japanese Messy Boy, where he goes the homes of older, extremely wealthy Japanese women, dresses like a toddler and eats sloppy food, and then is paid $45,000. The sketch is full of great detail, sold well by Simmons’ affable jolliness, but then Simmons gets a call from his handler Taran Killam, “speaking” in yellow face. It is a bit of mean spirited ugliness the casts a shadow of ill-will on the whole sketch, a horribly misguided decision for a show that was just recently taken to task for being too white.
Weekend Update: Jost’s best joke this week come when taking about Disney’s first Latina princess, as he says “But when I call someone a ‘Latina Princess’ I’m ‘ruining the Quinceanera'” (Che’s response: “How many Quinceaneras are you going to, man?”). Che’s best bit is his list of alternate black history month stamps of lesser known black heroes, like PJ Morton, the first black member of Maroon 5, and Crispus Attucks’ mother, for being the first black woman to name her son Crispus. The highlight of Update, however, comes in the return of two panelists: One Dimensional Female Character From A Male-Driven Comedy and Jebidiah Atkinson. Cecily Strong plays ODFCFAMDC with the right amount of anti-charisma to make the character interesting, while still selling the joke that she is nothing more than someone who walks in front of her stainless steel refrigerator in just a pink football jersey and no pants, and who begs Jost to just grow up already and stop hanging out with his two friends, Fat Jerry and Horny One. Jebidiah Atkinson will be the first clip in Killam’s eventual obituary montage, and his zingers are on point tonight, calling Madonna the “only thing ARod can still hit”, saying that the Titanic had too many lifeboats, and calling Elvis’ lyrics so juvenile that Michael Jackson would have tried to take naps with them. Atkinson is the music critic for the high school newspaper staffer in all of us.
Other Notes: Nice try cold open, but Key & Peele has already done the definitive Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman sketch. The next episode is the 40th Anniversary Special on February 15. It’ll be three hours long and will feature, among many things, the hopefully triumphant SNL return of Eddie Murphy.