Rank: 3/5
“Saturday Night Live” aired its Valentine’s Day episode on Feb. 13 with Melissa McCarthy as host and no other than “Pablo,” or Kanye West as musical guest.
While McCarthy has hosted multiple times, and stars in numerous comedies, this episode was not as funny as it could have been.
The show’s cold open was a political skit where Kate McKinnon played presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The political sketches are topical, but recently have been less funny than the previous political sketches.
As McCarthy started her monologue, the show was already starting to lose the build up for the humor it usually presents the audience as she plugged her new movie “The Boss.” McCarthy then broke into song and dance about how many times she has hosted the show previously and skipped telling any jokes that usually provide a tone for what the rest of the show will be like.
The funniest part of the episode was a pre-recorded digital short that centered around Beyonce’s music video for “Formation” which released last week before Super Bowl 50.
The short made fun of people who have been over reacting to Beyoncé’s new video which embraces her heritage by the cast members ridiculing the song and making claims that Beyoncé’s music wasn’t for them. SNL did a great job of making light of the situation that has been heavily in the news.
The funniest skit in the episode featured a handful of cast members and McCarthy.
Each comic played members of a pre-selected audience who had their reactions filmed during a horror movie. The characters sat in a room and watched their pre-taped reactions to the horror film. At first the reactions were not comical, but once the screen showed McCarthy’s character’s reaction, the audience was laughing hysterically.
McCarthy’s reaction included her throwing her drink all over audience members, punching other characters and screaming at everyone as she ran out of the theatre.
Now for that part that many tuned in — Kanye West.
The performance featured a show-stopping group which included Kelly Price, Young Thug, The-Dream, Chance the Rapper, a gospel choir and many others. It was an interesting group that were all dressed in at least one thing from West’s Yeezy line.
Both songs performed were from the newly released album “The Life of Pablo.” The first performance was “Ultralight Beam” and the second was “Highlights.”
Both performances were a great choice to let West showcase what his album looked like. At the end of his second performance the rapper mentioned that “TLOP” was now streaming on the music service TIDAL.
West’s performance did not disappoint.