Can a first time hosting SNL be said to be years in the making? This week, the answer to that question was yes. As Glen Powell explained in his monologue, he had originally been scheduled to host the show four years ago, a plan that was upended when Top Gun: Maverick‘s release date was postponed. Powell did make a cameo last year when Sydney Sweeney hosted, but this was his first time showing what he could do at the center of an episode.
Overall, Powell showed off a solid range of characters, including a ponytailed middle-aged dad in a country video, an excitable Norwegian actor and, well, Liam Neeson. And in one sketch, Powell managed to make a strong impression with no dialogue at all.
The premise? A group of young adults visits their grandmother (played by Ashley Padilla), and shows off AI technology that can add motion to old family photos. What begins fairly innocuously, with an image of Padilla’s father (Powell) smiling and waving, quickly takes an increasingly unsettling trip into the uncanny valley. This was not the first time SNL has riffed on the gulf between AI hype and the hallucination-prone reality; it’s probably not going to be the last, either.
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The “Twisters” star whipped up a perfect summer ‘fit. Here’s how to recreate it.Earlier this week, an AI-powered app called 2wai came under fire for an online advertisement that was ostensibly designed to be heartwarming but instead played out like a cautionary tale about using technology to reanimate deceased loved ones. It’s not clear if this sketch is intended as a response to that — but it’s a good reminder that sometimes, old family photos are perfectly fine the way they are.
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