Paul Mescal is one of those actors where it’s hard to tell how high his profile is outside of, well, the type of people who read and write for pop-culture blogs. Sure, he’s in the certified #1 non-musical movie in America right now, capably handling the role of Not Russell Crowe, and he got a much-deserved Oscar nomination for the heartbreaking feature film Aftersun, which was both the best movie of 2022 and recipient of slightly lower North American grosses than the Pierce Brosnan-led fantasy The King’s Daughter. Plus, he was in a streaming TV series based on a popular book. Normal people watched Normal People, right? Yet there was something slightly undercooked about his debut appearance on this week’s Saturday Night Live—something oddly lightweight about this serious actor getting silly, as if even those familiar with his work were granted the power to look at Paul Mescal and go: Wait, who is this guy again?
It's not that he was hosting too soon, exactly; he’s very talented, and as he alluded in his monologue, he hasn’t had the chance to show off his lighter side yet. He was certainly gamely charming, playing his sketch parts with that sometimes-aching sincerity he brings to his more serious acting. But a lot of sketches placed him uninspiringly on one side or the other of a this-guy-is-acting-weird premise. In the sketch where Mescal played a kid coming home from college, surprised to find that his parents (Heidi Gardner and Emil Wakim) take his acquisition of a single earring as a personal affront, or the sketch where he played a man on trial whose lawyer (Andrew Dismukes) has some downright Lionel Hutzian plans to win the case, he was the one suffering through the weird behavior. In the sketch where he played an actor seething through a costar’s corny improvisation on a pasta ad or a Spotify listener with a deeply strange artist at the top of his Wrapped data, he was the one being weird, though not all that memorably.
None of these sketches were completely awful. Some of them were quite funny, in fact. But it never felt like Mescal was actually playing much of a character, save perhaps in that pasta-ad bit, which had the misfortune of not being as well-constructed, concise, or laugh-out-loud funny as some of the other sketches. He did fine straight-man work in the earring sketch, but didn't exactly make sense as a character ten years below his actual age, and in the decidedly stranger Spotify sketch, Mescal was upstaged by Bowen Yang’s latest collection of nonsense. (And Yang, hilarious as he can be, is beginning to rival the lesser Melissa McCarthy vehicles in terms of smushing together bunch of crazy tics and selling them as a package through sheer conviction.)
So while usually the host’s precise level of stardom doesn’t really figure that heavily into the show—that equalization process is one of the most fun things about watching week to week, year to year—this may have been one case where SNL had trouble figuring out what Mescal’s level is, besides “obviously talented” and “lovely accent.” In the fake ad for an immediately musicalized rerelease of Gladiator II, there was a glimpse of the opposite effect: Briefly, and for the purposes of this one pre-tape, Paul Mescal the established star who can get laughs just by good-naturedly sending up his signature role and attempting that Wicked vocal run. It was a very silly, not especially clever piece. It also felt more like what Mescal was presumably aiming for than almost anything else in the sorta fun, slightly off episode.
Besides the lead-off earring sketch, which Heidi Gardner and Emil Wakim just sold the absolute hell out of, I enjoyed the all-male pirates revue, as a gaggle of bachelorette-party ladies (basically Domingo Minus Domingo) become confused by the level of historical detail in what they thought would be a thin pretense for a strip show. (Well, except Ego Nwodim, who really warms to the educational content.) And after all the guy-acting-weird sketches, it was fun to see a very old-fashioned '90s-style sketch that was just a vehicle for Chloe Fineman's Timothée Chalamet and James Austin Johnson's Current Old Man Bob Dylan to cross paths. Some people apparently aren't fond of Fineman's Chalamet, but I enjoy it, and Johnson's Dylan is caricatured with a lot more nuance and affection than about 90% of Bob Dylan impressions ever made (possibly including Chalamet's own?).
I try not to pay the SNL cold opens much mind; they're just so rarely better than OK, they're more a bonus if they're good than a detriment if they're not. And in theory, reshaping the week's obligatory political impressions into "Church Chat," reasserting the profile of the SNL's hot new featured player Dana Carvey, provides blessed relief from Trump exhaustion. But I have to ask: Has Carvey's Church Lady really landed since he stopped doing it during his first run on the show, way back in 1991? Weirdly, as the idea of a gleefully scolding and smugly judgmental arbiter of sinfulness has only gotten more prevalent in the culture (albeit in different shapes than than the televangelists of the 1980s), "Church Chat" hasn’t really kept pace, and has fallen prey to the same mission drift as a lot of the more likable SNL political and political-adjacent impressions: Are we supposed to laugh at the Church Lady’s fussy holier-than-thou attitude, or find it cathartic when she correctly calls out someone like Matt Gaetz as hellbound? The sketch could easily have it both ways if it were funnier, but as much effort as he seems to put into his other parts on the show, Carvey's heart doesn't seem to be in this particular character. (You know who was doing the best Church Lady Dance at the end of the sketch? Sarah Sherman. You know who also doesn't really have a Matt Gaetz, and hopefully won't need one in the future? Sarah.) Ditto Carvey's podcasting buddy David Spade showing up as Hunter Biden, trading on a physical resemblance and not much else. If we're doing these reunion-lite appearances week in and week out, shouldn't Spade be allowed to play to his strengths? And shouldn't a new Church Lady sketch be significantly funnier than a mildly amusing ad where the Delicious Dish gals shill for Capital One?! It might be fun to periodically revive a major recurring character like this throughout Season 50, especially given how few the show currently has in their roster. But if this is as good as it can get, maybe it's best to keep signature characters to those 60-second sellouts instead. Speaking of Carvey: It's shocking that they somehow avoided him walking onto that Dylan/Springsteen sketch as Paul McCartney.
Between her panicked mom of a college freshman, excited mom of a newly famous football player, and the proud, wine-drunk mom from last month's cut sketch, Heidi Gardner is really cornering the market on SNL moms, and for this she should be recognized.
Chris Rock joins the, uh, four-timers club, while Gracie Abrams remains in the popular singer parented by a movie director club.
