Christmas came early on Saturday Night Live, with host Eddie Murphy, returning to Studio 8H for the first time in 35 years. From start to finish, he was smooth, game, and 100% cool–his old characters as welcome as his fresh sketches. The mood of the show was electric, everyone alive to the luck of being a part of this night. I can’t remember ever seeing such genuine delight on faces of the band when a guest host took his opening mark.
But it wasn’t just Eddie who made the night a joy. It was the Mt. Rushmore of comedy excellence who came to stand alongside their hero upon his return. First Tracy Morgan joined Murphy during his monologue, then Chris Rock, then Dave Chappelle and his cigarette, and finally the enduring Kenan Thompson, who hilariously shoved an obtuse Beck Bennett out of the picture. What a powerful block of black excellence.
Let’s skip right on over the cold open–yet another Democratic debate brightened solely by Maya Rudolph’s return as Kamala Harris, here sipping from a martini while bemoaning the fact that we voters “coulda had a bad bitch.” Come on writers! With all the crooks and chumps and chaos in Washington right now you all chose to lead again with a stage scene of the Democratic hopefuls mincing at each other?
Back to the magic of Murphy! Even before his buddies joined him, he was on a tear. From acknowledging his enduring youthful appearance (“You know what they say…. Money don’t crack”) to his marveling over his 10 kids. How about them odds, he mused, in his sharpest joke of the night, that he’d be living that stay-at-home life and Bill Cosby would be in jail. “Who’s America’s Dad now?” he said in perfect Huxtablese.
His old characters still kill. “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood” has gone the way of the white folks, with his former black neighbors all priced out to Atlanta. Now he’s left with nervous white neighbors who don’t want to accuse him of stealing all their Amazon packages but they kind of want to also but not if it makes them seem less liberal.
It was fun to see Buckwheat emerge from a husk of corn on The Masked Singer and take a crack at more recent hits like “Tinga Nadies,” And Eddie Murphy’s Velvet Jones extolling the virtues of an Instagram Ho in Black Jeopardy! The categories alone in the sketch were gold. (To the answer of “Elf on a Shelf” in the “What You Not Gonna Do” category, for example: “What you not gonna do is put a snitch in my house.”)
But the winner of returns goes to Gumby, who brought an outraged blast to Weekend Update. ”Shame on you Lorne Michaels! Shame on you NBC!” How dare they bench Gumby until 40 minutes into the show. He then went on to describe elevating Eddie Murphy above “his coonboy” origins, twice call Michael Che “this black bastard,” reduced Colin Jost to trailer trash and “a headshot,” and deemed Lizzo “a real beauty… and colored girls don’t usually do it for me.”
And what other musical guest besides Lizzo could have lived up to this night of historic hosting? The girl is a bright and shiny gift. She and her ferocious all-female band (that guitarist!) breathed fresh life into her two hits that radio seems bound and determined to kill through overplay. During “Good as Hell,” her dancers were dressed up like sexy wrapped presents, dancing upside down on candy cane poles. When the song ended, Lizzo jumped up and down clapping, in the moment even as she seemed in awe of it.
How great was Eddie Murphy? He isn’t too cool not to look shocked when “shit” slipped out of his mouth at the end of the Nailed It sketch. And he’s so cool the last sketch of the last show of the decade was arguably the best of the night. By this point he’d anchored every sketch of the 90 minutes, and was hard and absurd to the end. It was North Pole News Special Report, and he kept crashing the live feed with his aggressive eyewitness accounts. A global warming-starved polar bear had crashed the fence and was on an elf-killing spree. “Bears was popping elves into their mouths like skittles!” he yelled. “Christmas is canceled! Hashtag Santa Knew!”
There were other joys to the night besides Murphy and Lizzo. There was Cecily Strong’s Jeanine Pirro vomiting repeatedly over Jost during her Weekend Update spin. “I’ve got a bit of a winter tickle my throat,” she slurred. Also in Update was the terribly unlucky timing of Pete Davidson having to follow Murphy’s Gumby. His whole bit was how disappointing he agreed his presence to be after such greatness. But on a sad and hopeful note, he fully appeared to be announcing that he’d be entering rehab in 2020. Godspeed if true.
Finally, during a genuinely moving goodbye for the night, there was Eddie on stage hugging Lizzo and his pals from the beginning and Rudolph and… what’s Usher doing there? Off to the side was Kenan Thompson, grinning ear to ear, capturing it all on his iPhone. That’s a wrap on 2019. What a way to go.
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