Ranking the skits from Saturday Night Live Season 44, Episode 12: Bezos and blackface

Last night’s SNL dealt with the recent news stories, including the most recent State of the Union and the reveal that the Virginia Governor wore blackface in the 80s. Which skit made us laugh the most on last night’s Saturday Night Live?

SNL had a lot of material to pick through in writing their scripts for this week. Not one, but two high-level officials in the Virginia state government were found to have worn blackface in the past. Jeff Bezos was being blackmailed by the National Inquirer after they received lewd photos of the Amazon CEO.

With all of these subjects to cover, and with musical guest Halsey doing double duty as host, which of the skits from last night had us laughing, and which had us scratching our heads?

Here’s our ranking…

9. Riverdale

My God this was painful to watch. As someone who has never seen Riverdale, this makes me not want to ever risk assaulting my brain with this show. Even if the acting is half as good on the actual show, I don’t know if I could possibly stay sane.

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Pete Davidson plays a “corpse actor” who consistently ruins takes by – shocker – not playing dead. He moans and groans then begins convulsing, to the anger of director Keenan Thompson.

The corpse actor justifies this by saying that these sounds and movements are typical of actual corpses, but the director continues to insist that he just lay still on the gurney.

It’s such a formulaic sketch, one that makes me think “I’m watching a sketch, I know what’s going to happen next.” Pete continues to ramp up his efforts to ruin the scene, the actors (inexplicably) come to his side, and the director unrealistically relents.

Every part of it is so unrealistic (unless that’s how

Riverdale

actually airs, in which case again, I will claw out my eyes before watching) that I can’t enjoy the final payoff of Pete screwing up the take by actually shouting “avenge me!” It’s a joke that I could have written myself and any astute writer saw coming from a mile away.

8. Valentine’s Song

With a musical guest performing both acting and singing duties, as Halsey did here, it makes sense to have a musical number as a keystone piece. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, a little piece about how it can be uncomfortable to get Valentines from parents or co-workers. And it just didn’t work.

The music itself was pretty bland, and the concept of feeling creeped out and unable to get…excited on Valentines day by these little gestures just felt stupid. Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant did an admirable job on the musical number, but this was a fail from the concept.