Nate Bargatze’s Southern Charm Helps SNL Get Back on Track After Its Poor Season Premiere

Last year, the SAG-AFTRA strike forced Saturday Night Live into a corner, as no movie stars were available to host the show. It wasn’t all bad, though, because alum Pete Davidson and part-time wrestler Bad Bunny took serviceable turns to open the 49th season. But then, SNL scheduled an unfamiliar name to host: Nate Bargatze. Even now, nearly a year to the day after Bargatze’s episode, I see users on my social media feeds questioning just who the hell the Southern comedian is. Even after a heroically (and unexpectedly) great job hosting, Bargatze remains unknown to most Americans who aren’t geriatric Millennials—good luck finding a Zoomer who can quote Bargatze’s dead horse joke.

But what’s great about Bargatze is that his style—intentionally-dated, grown-up humor and dry deadpan—is a pretty wonderful vehicle for SNL, especially when the cast’s gears are turning just right. A stand-up comic by the name of George Carlin hosted the very first episode of the show; the show’s most beloved modern-day host is still John Mulaney (who is stopping by for another gig in early November). It’s no secret that, most of the time (here’s looking at you, Shane Gillis), hosts who have an extensive background in writing comedy do well in Studio H8. Bargatze, like Mulaney and, yes, even Bill Burr, is just one of those guys.

Bargatze went from being a “because there’s no one else to ask” fill-in to a bonafide yearly inclusion. You can tell that his presence during the week entices the cast to step up their game. He’s got a real Buck Henry-like potential, though I am in no way saying that Bargatze will host SNL 10 times when all of this is said and done. What I will say, however, is that, in the wake of the underwhelming, Jean Smart-led season premiere last week, I went into this week’s episode with a shred of hope—not a lot, but enough.

As a wise cue-card says…

“Live from New York…”

Unsurprisingly, we’re going to be getting a lot of election-centric cold opens this season, but SNL virtually recycling last week’s material was a bit of a bummer. The vice presidential debate was under the knife this week, which meant that we got a lot more Bowen Yang as J.D. Vance and Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, a combination I am feverishly seated for. Yang’s Vance impression is still a slam-dunk, and the dash of flamboyance he brings to the otherwise straight-laced Ohio senator helps the schtick feel bigger than it is. He’s got the cadence and the question-dodging down to a science (“Context matters, I meant that as a compliment,” Vance replies, after being asked about his “Trump is Hitler” comment), and Gaffigan’s ability to make Walz’s Midwestern do-goodery and inclination for the “fundamentals” a stroke of larger-than-life buffoonery is admirably worthwhile.

The joke about Walz grading midterm papers mid-debate doesn’t quite land, but him and Vance saying “we have a lot of common ground” in unison before nearly touching hands onstage three minutes later picks up the slack. The show is still catching up with the trends that came and went while it was off the air this summer, this time by making an already-dated reference to Josh wine, but the “You haven’t had a night off in three months—do you want to watch something less stressful, like the Menendez Brothers show?” gag is resoundingly timely. Of course, SNL makes sure to include something about Walz’s “friends with school shooters” gaffe and how, for goofy white guys like Doug Emhoff, the Minnesota governor’s debate performance “really set them back.”

Andy Samberg doesn’t do an Emhoff impression so much as he impersonates a Dad who has that “golden retriever” energy, which I realize is the point, and it wouldn’t be so bad if literally anyone else was playing the part. But the problem is that, with someone of Samberg’s legacy involved, he has no room for error or mediocrity. All eyes are on him, even when he’s playing second-fiddle to Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris. That pairing should be one of the best one-two punches of this decade. Instead, it’s going nowhere and there aren’t enough “Mamala and Pooh-Bear” jokes in the world that can change that.

Dana Carvey reprises his role as Joe Biden, and while the “Anyway… and guess what? By the way!” line is chuckle-inducing, SNL centering their whole take on Biden around his age, memory and speaking ability is wearing thin already. At this point, all of this is just an excuse to bring Carvey back to Studio 8H and have him sloppily eat ice cream. And, if I’m being straight with you all here, it’s a casting move that is rid of substance but worth some shred of respect for the audacity of it alone. But, Carvey saying “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” two weeks in a row for the first time in 30 years (don’t fact-check that) was cute.

When the camera cuts back to Vance and Walz, Walz says that Minnesota has the lowest teen pregnancy rate in the country because “everyone’s wearing a lot of layers.” “Just not a horny place!” he exclaims. There’s a moment where Rudolph flubs a line, only to pause and, with a hearty “let me say that again,” correct herself. It’s a very cool and confident flash of star-power from one of the show’s all-time greats. Chloe Fineman, who we rarely saw last night, is perfectly cast as moderator Margaret Brennan here, while Gaffigan gives us one great line about his newsworthy Hong Kong fib: “If we’re allowed to lie while we’re up here, then let me say I actually was in Tiennaman Square!”

“You look mahvelous!”

The best sketch of last night goes to “Water Park,” which rests on the premise of an octogenarian with a bad heart dying at the top of a waterslide after climbing 255 steps. Two lifeguards (Devon Walker and Jane Wickline) and two EMTs (Bargatze and Michael Longfellow) debate over what to do with the man’s body, whether to carry him down all those steps and past all of those eager kids, or, naturally, just push him down the slide. “He did wait in this long line,” Bargatze says. “It actually seems respectful!” Wickline, who is still green and still isn’t accustomed to reading cue-cards, struggles at times, while Longfellow’s deadpan delivery properly matches Bargatze’s—the two of them make the sketch soar.

What makes something like “Water Park” successful is the writing. As soon as we see the dead body positioned perfectly at the top of the slide, we can immediately posit that our protagonists are going to want to send him right down it. But there’s tension and anticipation, as that moment takes four-and-a-half minutes to actually happen. You’re waiting for gut-busting horror to come, but it never does. It’s just Bargatze, Longfellow, Wickline and Walker debating on what to do with this fresh corpse for nearly five minutes—and all of it is just pure comedic bliss, so much so that users online were openly wondering if Bargatze wrote the whole thing (in my opinion, a good measure of a host being in-sync with the cast and the material).

I could’ve watched 90 minutes of Bargatze and Longfellow doing sketches together, so it’s a shame that we only got just this one. When Wickline mentions how, when you come out at the bottom of the slide, your picture gets taken and questions what the dead man’s family would think, Bargatze levels with her: “We just wouldn’t buy the picture,” he says, in the driest reply imaginable. Then, we get this perfect exchange:

“I wanna see how big the splash is,” Walker says.

“Well, don’t say that, man,” Bargatze replies. “That’s not helping.”

“I mean, I just wanna see if the splash is different,” Walker affirms.

“We all do, but let’s not say it,” Longfellow chimes in. “This was a human being.”

“A wooden bowl, some oversized index cards, and a funnel…”

Where last week’s Jean Smart-led episode struggled to boast more than one skit worth praising, last night gave us quite a few options to choose from. I’ll highlight the “Mile High Burger Challenge” and “Golf Tournament.” In the former, Heidi Gardner, Bargatze, Mikey Day, Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang meet at a restaurant to discuss their dad’s progressing dementia. Appearing as a waiter for the second week in a row, Andrew Dismukes arrives with a humungous cheeseburger and milkshake and explains that Gardner entered the “mile-high burger challenge” and could potentially win a trip to Hawaii by completing it.

I’ve talked before about the various formulas on SNL, and this is another example of that: a serious conversation is juxtaposed with pure absurdity, as the siblings reckon with what to do about their regress patriarch, while Gardner sloppily tears into the burger after claiming that she is the family’s “silent resource.” Every player in the sketch, even Bargatze, breaks into laughter. Day can barely get through his lines, and Gardner even spits up a part of her milkshake. It’s flat-out chaos that doesn’t feel as ridiculous as the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch from last season.

“Golf Tournament” was great too, and one of the better pre-recorded sketches in quite a while. We’re dropped into coverage of the Oakmont Fall Classic, and Brady Knoll (Bargatze) is about to crush a drive on the first hole. Quickly, he does his best Randy Johnson impression and smacks the ball right into a bird flying by, obliterating it immediately. He gets a mulligan, and then quickly knocks an eagle’s nest out of a tree with his next shot. Then, as the momentum would have it, his next two shots are just as catastrophic: He mistakes an eagle egg for his golf ball, pulverizing it upon impact, and throws his club into a nearby pond, killing a tortoise named “Fairway Fred” (who had been “a fixture of the golf course” since 1971) by doing so. Knoll holes out from 450 yards away and, in a disastrous conclusion, puts the pin back in and decimates a chipmunk. All the while, a few quick cuts to Toby Doyle, who keeps missing short putts, is an understated part of the skit that becomes so stupidly funny in the context of Knoll’s continued, unintentional animal violence. Bravo.

“Yipee! Jerry Rubin died last week.”

This week’s Weekend Update was good until it wasn’t. Things start off slow, with Colin Jost making a joke about Trump’s rally at the site of his assassination attempt that was sluggishly reminiscent of a joke in the cold open last week (the one where, as soon as J.D. Vance steps on stage, the bulletproof glass is removed). Jost then jokes that the aforementioned rally will be the last time we see Elon Musk and Trump together until they are tapped to host the SNL Christmas episode in December. The focus shifts to Michael Che doing his best Norm Macdonald-versus-the OJ Simpson trial impression by unloading a couple of bits about the ongoing P. Diddy case. “It was reported that, last month, the US added 245,000 new jobs,” Che says. “Unfortunately, they were all ‘Diddy Accuser.’” Jost gets in a good jab, too, riffing on how, allegedly, Prince William and Prince Harry were both invited to one of Diddy’s parties but did not attend. “Although, before Diddy could even finish writing the invite, Prince Andrew was there,” Jost barbs, and I admittedly cracked up a good amount.

In comes a joke from Che about Trump’s hair, followed by Jost throwing some heat onto himself and, in classic Che-Jost Weekend Update-era fashion, implicating himself as a Trump supporter. “New court filings in Donald Trump’s election interference case revealed that, on January 6th, Trump was scrolling Twitter during the attack on the capitol,” Jost said, “which is just so infuriating to those of us who were there fighting for him.” Cue a graphic of Jost holding a “Make America Great Again” flag.

Che and Jost do a nice job of delivering one-liners, as Jost’s “This debate was so white, it made me look Haitian” crack about last week’s J.D. Vance-versus-Tim Walz debate goes toe-to-toe with Che’s quip against the former president (“Donald Trump has refused to release his medical records. I bet I know what he’s hiding, I’m not allowed dementia it”). Jost’s quick monologue about the American people being robbed of a debate featuring Robert Kennedy Jr. is a great moment, too: “I love that RFJ Jr. admitted he dumped a dead bear in Central Park, he chainsawed the head off a dead whale, strapped it to the roof of his car like a Christmas tree, and he told us a worm was living in his brain, eating through his head, and, still, everyone is like, ‘You know who’s weird? J.D. Vance!’”

The best joke of Update, however, goes to Che, who riffs on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent anti-Semitic “Yes they can control the weather” tweet by saying “I don’t know who they is, but it has been a suspiciously nice Rosh Hashanah weekend.” Jost comments on how, for Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, thousands of children sent him hand-made cards with messages of “Who are you?” and “My mom made me do this” on them, which receives a healthy applause equally given to Che saying that “Hung Cow” would make a good drag name in response to Hung Cao saying that queens are “not tough enough for the military.”

Unfortunately, Update takes a nose-dive once new cast member Jane Wickline appears at the desk to perform a song about being the last person at a party. The song, which mimics something you would see on Wickline’s popular TikTok page, barely conjures any laughs from the audience and goes on for far too long—even if that is part of the joke. I’m all for the featured players getting some limelight, and Wickline had a good enough showing in the water park sketch, but her Update debut suggests that it might be a long time before we see her there again.

“Who’s the barber here?”

Leading into the episode, I wondered if the writers would dust off “Washington’s Dream,” Bargatze’s smash-hit Revolutionary War sketch from last year—and my wondering was correct. Bargatze, dressed up as a wigged George Washington, sits with some of his calvary on the Delaware River and dreams of creating their own nation and “to do our own thing with the English language.” In 2023, the absurdity of American-based measurement systems was the butt of the joke, but this year the focus turns directly onto our odd selection of spelling, numbers and money. You never want to see a really good sketch get a part two that it doesn’t deserve, à la David S. Pumpkins, but “Washington’s Dream” nicely avoided a sophomore slump last night.

“I dream that, one day, our great nation will have a word for the number 12,” Washington says. “We shall call it a ‘dozen.’” “And what other numbers will we have a word for?” Bowen Yang’s soldier replies. “None,” Washington responds. Of course, there are recurring sketches and characters that, over the years, have been forcibly stuffed down our throats, but “Washington’s Dream” is no such thing. It’s a formula that works because we’ve all, at one time or another, wondered aloud about all of these English peculiarities. Why is it spelled “donut” and “doughnut”? The ridiculousness of names having multiple spellings, like Jeff (the short way) and Geoff (the stupid way) lingers, while, again, Kenan Thompson’s soldier raises fair questions about whether or not the liberties of free Americans will exist for Black Americans, too. His concerns are met with more dodging, as Washington proposes two labels for animals, one when they are living (cow, pig) and one when they are dead (beef, pork).

The best part of the sketch happens once the dollar is brought up. “And, if you think I’m worthy, put my portrait on the front of it,” Washington suggests. “And what shall be on the back, sir?” Kenan replies. “Everything, all of it,” Washington remarks. “Crazy stuff, squiggles, Latin words… pyramid with a floating eye on top.” And then, as Washington begins explaining how the first year of school will be called “kindergarten” and that the second year will be called “1st grade,” you can see just how full of steam this concept truly is. One last joke, that Washington dreams of Americans spending their President’s Days buying mattresses, lands without a hitch, and the hope that “Washington’s Dream” will get a third installment comes trickling in.

“In a word? Chaos.”

Despite the fact that Sábado Gigante has been off the air for nine years, SNL decided to resurrect the beloved Spanish-language variety show last night—and it gave us a big, resounding performance from Marcello Hernandez, whose on-the-rise chops were put on full display here while doing a great Don Francisco impression. It’s reminiscent of the controversial “Japanese Game Show” bit from 1994, as Bargatze does his best Chris Farley take and plays the “white guy who doesn’t speak the same language” trope well enough. SNL loves a fish-out-of-water sketch.

New cast member Emil Wakim serves as Francisco’s Dracula sidekick, while a mysterious, black-cloaked figure jumps out and hysterically plays a few notes on his trumpet. It seems like not even five seconds can pass before some other figment of hell breaks loose, as Bargatze’s middle-class man schtick faces off with Hernandez, who doesn’t speak a lick of English for all six minutes of the sketch. I can’t say that “Sábado Gigante” is a particularly good bit, but it certainly was surreal and confounding to watch unfold, as the messages and jokes were indiscernible but the intensity was intoxicating. And, at the very least, Hernandez put on one of his best-ever performances during it. I’m not sure what happened here, but I’m glad it happened.

“You are weak like H.R. Pickens!”

The worst part of the night was certainly “Coach Alan,” a 10-to-1 sketch so flat and uninspired that you’re left questioning how it even made it to air once it’s over. “Coach Alan” runs for two-and-a-half minutes on one single gag: players on the football team still haven’t paid Coach Alan (Bargatze) for their jerseys. It’s SNL’s way of saying “Hey, Bargatze is good at that wholesome, boring white guy style of humor” and then beating us over the head with it. Last night, that style landed more than it stumbled, but “Coach Alan” has to be one of the most uninteresting episode conclusions in recent memory—somehow doing worse than last week’s abysmal “Real Housewives of Santa Fe Dinner” sketch. Two-and-a-half minutes have never felt so long, though Andrew Dismukes turns in a solid showing as the head coach not so focused on the logistics.

“If you have a $50 bill, we can give you 50 singles.”

There were two pre-recorded sketches this week, “Golf Tournament” and a Digital Short. I already covered the former, so let’s dig into the latter: While it’s surreal that we got the first SNL Digital Short in six years tonight, it’s a bit concerning that we got a Digital Short before a Please Don’t Destroy sketch this season. I suppose the potential for this happening was exponentially better, considering that Andy Samberg was already in the building playing Doug Emhoff, and “Sushi Glory Hole” marked the return of 66% of the Lonely Island—as Akiva Schaffer joined Samberg but Jorma Taccone was MIA. No worries though, as Samberg and Schaffer give us a refreshing return to form, one that sees them rapping about exactly what the title says.

The beats sound as good as ever, and the Lonely Island dress up like Wolf of Wall Street extras to deliver their “pitch” to a board of unimpressed investors (Rudolph, Yang, Thompson). “You head to a club, hit the bathroom stall,” Samberg spits. “Find a sushi-sized hole in the bathroom wall, then make a wish and prepare for some shockingly high-grade fish.” Digital Shorts are always just a whole mess of fun, even if this one made no real sense (these clips never do and that’s why we love them). No Please Don’t Destroy? No problem. I’ll be humming “hear us out, hear us out” all week. Oh, and the first Digital Short premiered way back in 2005. Kenan Thompson started his still-going tenure on the show two years before that. Huh!

“You guessed it… Frank Stallone!”

Per last week’s cameo stipulations, Rudolph, Gaffigan, Samberg and Carvey get the nod here again. Otherwise, the Lonely Island’s return last night marked the only other guest appearance—which is a refreshing thing to type, as this year’s cast members need all the air-time they can get.

Not Ready For Primetime Power Rankings

1. Heidi Gardner
I’m giving this week’s top spot to Gardner for her work in the “Mile-High Challenge” sketch alone. I was grossed out watching her demolish that disgustingly big cheeseburger that, by the time she put her fingers in Sarah Sherman’s mouth, I was ready for the bit to end—and I mean that with love. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much of a grounding force Gardner is for this show, but it’s moments like these that make her one of the show’s brightest vets of the post-McKinnon age.

2. Bowen Yang
Yang ran circles around the cast during the premiere, but his workload was far less demanding this week. His cold open performance as J.D. Vance was great, and his break during the “Mile-High Challenge” skit was infectious. He played a good supporting role in the “Washington’s Dream” sequel, and he popped up briefly in the Digital Short. It was a week of SNL where the host was the main character, but Yang didn’t waste a single second he was on-screen.

3. Marcello Hernandez
Hernandez gets the nod here for his incredible and chaotic turn as Don Francisco in the “Sábado Gigante” sketch, even if it was his only meaningful appearance of the night. To go on air and deliver an entire six-minute bit that’s completely devoid of any English? Hernandez’s stock is on the rise, and I’m buying into it.

Goodnights

“I didn’t see raspberries growing up! I don’t come from money, all right? I still swim with my eyes open!” – Nate Bargatze

We’re back next week, as Ariana Grande comes to Studio 8H to host with musical guest and American treasure Stevie Nicks.