General Overview:
“I think a lot of villains are just misunderstood, you know? For example, Jaws is hungry, Dracula is thirsty, Frankenstein’s horny. I can keep going. Darth Vader? Just trying to reconnect with his son. Freddie Krueger? Encouraging kids to dream.”
-Rami Malek, 10/16/21

This was quite a strange episode. Normally the sketches after “Weekend Update” are wackier and less sophisticated. They’re often based around one single joke that gets repeated, getting more and more over-the-top each time. Saturday’s episode felt like almost every single sketch was an “After Update” sketch, and it went better than I would have expected.

Highlights:
Bowen Yang stole nearly every sketch he was in, whether he was dancing around as a daddy longlegs in “Bug Assembly” or attacking Willy Wonka as an Oompa Loompa on “Weekend Update.” His commitment to his roles gets a laugh out of me every time the camera is on him.

I usually don’t enjoy guest appearances on “Weekend Update” as much as the regular “making fun of the news” section, but I loved Yang’s and Chris Redd’s appearances, and the reveal of the latter’s was hilarious. Plus, the hypnosis segment was in a similar vein of “this is stupid, why am I laughing so hard” as the rest of the episode.

Lowlights:
SNL is at its best when it has a good balance of intelligent sketch comedy and stupid fun. This episode was just stupid fun, which was entertaing at first but a little tiring to have to watch an entire episode of. The show has made some really excellent satire, so it’s always a little disappointing when they go soley for easier, less complicated humor.

That being said, there wasn’t a single sketch in the episode that made me want to rip up a pillow, and there’s always something to be said for that. It wasn’t particularly sophisticated comedy, but at least it was consistently comedic.

Best Sketch: “Celeb School Game Show.” This was a strange concept, but it was well executed. The eight celebrity impressions were shockingly accurate, the jokes were great and having Pete Davidson and Rami Malek play each other was a creative idea.

Best Joke:
“The man (Willy Wonka) doesn’t know how to make chocolate, ok? He’s an ideas man who’s never touched a machine; he just tumbles into the inventing room and says something like ‘oh, what about a gumdrop that makes children dream silly dreams’ and it’s like ‘Yeah b*tch, what about it?’ Meanwhile we’re rehearsing the song and dance we do when a CHILD DIES. The whole thing is sick.” -Bowen Yang

Overall Score: 7/10
Most of the sketches had me shouting “What!?” into the screen within 30 seconds, but they also had me laughing my head off within 45.