Adam Driver, despite all odds, brought Saturday Night Live into the New Year with a hilarious new start.
Coming off of its lengthy holiday break, SNL announced that the host for its first 2016 episode would be Adam Driver. This announcement not only sparked the interest of loyal SNL fans everywhere but of the host’s immensely successful Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Before the episode even aired Driver faced a few TV hardships with his first hosting gig considering the timing of the episode. Conflicting with the Packers/Cardinals game, SNL’s writers were forced to condense the episode causing for some shaky transitions and a short tribute to artist David Bowie. Despite this, Driver’s charming yet laid back nature reeled in the crowd’s attention and brought a rather solid episode for the show.
Driver immediately addressed his Star Wars character in his intro soliciting laughs for the reference to his raven locks that many deemed his character, Kylo Ren’s, best feature. But that wasn’t the only reference to the movie made in the night. Right after taking jabs at the previous football game, and the cause of the airing delay, the show provides a much talked about sketch, Driver and the SNL team combine the premise of TV show Undercover Boss with Driver’s Star Wars character and deliver a brilliant digital short.
Another two prominent sketches of the night included the “America’s Funniest Cats” sketch that brought together the talents of Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon, and the other was Golden Globes sketch. One of the two pre-taped sketches of the night, this one highlights SNL writer’s true prowess in taking excessive details and weaving them to tell a proper story to the audience. Driver pairs off with comedian Vanessa Bayer as a writer duo that has won their first award. The sketch brings in the family aspect of the award-goers and the narcissist attitude of the “winners” for the night.
The rest of the show followed through in proper SNL fashion, and the musical performance attempted to provide a tribute to David Bowie with the help of SNL alum Fred Armison. Although it isn’t confirmed that the tribute appeared to be rather short due to the initial delay of the episode, however many questioned the length and wanted to see more of the artist’s 1979 performance clip shown.
Even though the show had its ups and downs and has been facing a lot more scrutiny from fans based on humor and writing, it seems to have been a successful start for the year. Adam Driver’s general attitude of wanting to try everything was both endearing and refreshing, and led to some hilarious sketches. The episode overall provided great potential as to what both SNL and Adam Driver may be providing to the public in the new year.
