Saturday Night Live: Kit Harington & Sara Bareilles

April 6, 2019

BY Vish KhannaPublished Apr 7, 2019

7
Kit Harington was a solid, committed host and Sara Bareilles was a compelling musical guest on a rather enjoyable episode. Here's everything that happened on Saturday Night Live this week.


The cold open


Jason Sudeikis returned to the show to reprise his old Joe Biden impression and partake in some sensitivity training, as recommended by his exploratory committee for a 2020 presidential run. Biden's creepy and weird physical behaviour with women was sent up here in a not-so-well-written sketch, but it was good to see Sudeikis on the show again.
 
The monologue


Kit Harington commandeered a rather busy and exciting monologue geared towards Game of Thrones fans. Fielding questions from the audience, Harington got some weird things like someone (show writer/comedian Sam Jay) mistaking him for a Harry Potter cast member. But he soon took queries from his actual cast mates like Emilia Clarke, John Bradley, and his real-life wife, Rose Leslie, which was all pretty amusing.
 
The 2019 Nephew Pageant
 
This silly thing was rather funny, thanks especially to Kit Harington's awkward teenaged nephew, Joshua, and Aidy Bryant's disturbingly earnest aunt, who was leading this strange, biased-towards-nephews event.
 
Game of Thrones spin-offs


A very funny speculative bit about HBO cashing in on Game of Thrones by producing all manner of absurd prequels, sequels, and stand-alone new shows semi-related to the series. Among the most ambitious and cool pieces here was a Law and Order: SVU property, featuring the actual Ice-T and Mariska Hargitay.
 
Frank Sinatra
 
A cruise ship cover band disappoints its captive audience, who are expecting a Frank Sinatra tribute. It turns out they were a Michael Jackson cover band until Leaving Neverland came out and now they're a flailing hybrid that is 95 percent Michael Jackson and five percent Frank Sinatra. At the very least, this showed off Harington's physical comedy chops.
 
Earthwar 3
 
A VR gamer, played by Pete Davidson, is eager to play a round of a new zombie killing game. Unfortunately, he finds his player embroiled in some kind of office politics stand-off among the characters in the game, played primarily by Harington and Mikey Day, who are competing for control of the game's infrastructure. This was mildly amusing.
 
Sara Bareilles
 
Theatrical pop singer Sara Bareilles sat at a baby grand flanked by a nine-piece band and performed an impassioned and dynamically arranged love song called "Fire" from her new album, Amidst the Chaos. Its purpose was to tug at as many heartstrings as possible, and it possessed a dramatic kind of populism. Bareillis's voice felt more authentic during the comparably understated, "Saint Honesty," which had the feel and power of something by the Band, and was full of more vivid imagery and, for a church-y ballad, possessed a certain anthemic boldness.
 
Weekend Update
 
Michael Che and Colin Jost dissected Joe Biden's disastrous attempt to address allegations of sexual harassment, which included Jost cutting apart Biden's weird smartphone apology video.


Then there was Trump's border wall, which Che told some good jokes about, including a good one about the president clearly attacking brunch.
 
The wondrous Alex Moffatt played Update's new film critic Terry Fink, whose assessments of contemporary films are clouded by the massive amounts of LSD he thinks it's okay to consume. Moffat was great in this. After some good stuff about a Star Wars orgy and Charmin's new "forever roll," Kenan Thompson, likely in his farewell season, dug up his Charles Barkley impersonation to vaguely discuss his alma mater, Auburn, and their Final Four loss earlier in the evening. In reality this was just a nonsensical excuse for WU to kill time by letting Thompson's Barkley say a bunch of dumb stuff.
 
Bryan's Burlesque


A bachelorette party takes an odd turn when the woman of honour (and her friends) is visited by her fiancé Bryan, played by Harington. It turns out Bryan is the evening's entertainment, but instead of stripping, engages the party in a drag burlesque show, which was more or less an excuse for Harington to show off his half-naked body while Kate McKinnon played a French dance instructor/prostitute/ghost.
 
Theresa May Used to be Mine
 
In this remote, Kate McKinnon reprised her Theresa May impression to address her extreme unpopularity over her handling of Brexit. This was all packaged as a dramatic sequence scored by the real Sara Bareilles and her older hit, "She Used to Be Mine." Not certain why the show chose to humanize May, as there's always at least a little affection within every one of McKinnon's impersonations, but this overlong piece didn't do much to generate sympathy for her.
 
Office Nerds of the Month
 
An unusually painful Kyle Mooney/Beck Bennett invention, the duo and Harington play irritating graphic designers in an office who turn on one of their own, when he is dubbed "Employee of the Month" and wins an ice cream. Things take a somewhat funny turn when their boss, played by Mikey Day, is caught in a compromising position.
 
An exam
 
Harington plays a patient nervous about his colorectal exam, after he meets his long-finger-nailed doctor, played by Leslie Jones. All of the drama and tension of this sketch is eventually revealed to be a ruse and in the end, this whole thing was sub-par.





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