Jack Black and "SNL" Revisited the History of Theater

Sometimes a Saturday Night Live host can surprise you; on their stints as host, both Adele and Charli xcx demonstrated excellent comic timing. This weekend, it was Jack Black’s turn in the spotlight; given that he’s been doing memorable comedic work for several decades now — and has sketch comedy experience going back to his time in Mr. Show — there seemed to be little question as to how he might fare as host.

Spoiler alert: he was funny! Black has a penchant for going big, and one of the episode’s highlights seemed designed for Black and Bowen Yang to direct a series of incresingly ridiculous glances at the camera. Another memorable moment came from a sketch in which Black, Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman played audience members at the first play ever produced.

The sketch feels like something of a riff on the likely apocryphal story of an early film of a train prompting audiences to panic. This is, after all, the first play — which means that Black is confused as to why his neighbor is portraying the king on stage and the patrons are horrified by an onstage murder. It’s a sketch that knows exactly what it’s doing and does it well.

This Week’s “SNL” Asked: Do We Have a Line Problem?

Are those baked goods really worth the wait?

The promotional spot for this episode, based around Black misunderstanding what “hosting” SNL entailed, was another good use of his skills. And between this and the “Anora fedora” bit used to promote last week’s episode, it’s nice to see the show using, well, sketch comedy to promote its sketch comedy.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…