As soon as upon a time, having Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night time Reside would have been an exciting factor. Within the mid-2000s, the pop star emerged as one of many present’s favourite recurring hosts, the sort of mega-famous celeb who appeared like he could be down for something, corresponding to dressing up in an enormous mascot costume or placing his, ahem, dick in a field.
However the tide has turned on Timberlake. He arrived on SNL this weekend as a musical visitor with an air of desperation. Within the midst of making an attempt to reboot his pop-music profession after 2018’s poorly obtained album Man of the Woods, his persona has additionally undergone a cultural reckoning, particularly in mild of the revelations about him present in his ex Britney Spears’s memoir, amongst them that she bought an abortion as a result of he “wasn’t comfortable concerning the being pregnant.” She wrote that Timberlake tried to serenade her along with his guitar whereas she was in ache, after which went on to paint her as “a harlot who’d damaged the guts of America’s golden boy” after they broke up. Between that and a reevaluation of his function within the Janet Jackson Tremendous Bowl scandal of 2004, by which he bought off comparatively scot-free whereas Jackson was pilloried, Timberlake has turn out to be emblematic of an off-the-cuff mid-2000s white-male cockiness that doesn’t play as effectively in 2024.
Timberlake, nevertheless, appeared to need to use SNL as a strategy to ease again into the general public’s good graces, selling his new album, Every little thing I Thought It Was. And but when he popped out on stage throughout the host Dakota Johnson’s monologue, he introduced much less confidence and extra eagerness to remind audiences why they used to like him. Johnson cheekily informed her former co-star from The Social Community that he was simply the musical visitor. “Effectively, in order for you me to be in sketches,” he started to a spherical of cheers, “I’ve hosted earlier than.” He then mouthed the phrases 5 instances. “Yeah, effectively that was 10 years in the past,” Johnson responded in a line that made clear that the writers had been conscious of how retrograde Timberlake now appears.
Johnson continued that she was so comfortable he selected her present for his “comeback,” a phrase that appeared to rankle Timberlake. “Is that what we’re calling it?” he requested, earlier than launching right into a lewd joke utilizing one other which means of the phrase come.
The precise host of the night time, Johnson, turned out to be a great foil for Timberlake. Johnson’s pure deadpan, which has made her a viral sensation, helped her play cool woman to Timberlake’s jittery wannabe throughout the monologue. Her informal dismissal of him solely additional highlighted Timberlake’s awkwardness. In the meantime, the most effective sketches featured Johnson’s dry supply.
In “Large Dumb Cups,” a parody of the baffling Stanley Cup development, she let her personal monotone slide into that of an influencer who was, as she mentioned, “bodily or a minimum of spiritually blonde.” Together with Chloe Fineman and Heidi Gardner, Johnson effortlessly doled out jokes concerning the absurdity of the jugs with a lightweight vocal fry. Holding her Stanley close to her face, she poured in a bottle of Josh wine, an inexpensive model that has additionally turn out to be a meme. “Get in there Josh,” she mentioned.
Johnson’s humor carries with it an amusing sourness—she’s the queen bee you wouldn’t need to cross. That was on full show throughout the Please Don’t Destroy video by which she expertly dissed the comedy group’s three members. Whereas they tried to rib her again, Johnson all the time got here out on high, describing them because the “lonelier island,” a reference to Timberlake’s frequent collaborators, Andy Samberg’s comedy trio The Lonely Island.
Nonetheless, Johnson’s energy additionally comes from her self-awareness. When she unleashed nepo-baby expenses towards Please Don’t Destroy’s John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, each of whose mother and father have labored on SNL, she was pressured to acknowledge her personal legacy in Hollywood. The sketch resolved in a “nepo truce,” with all intoning, “a foot within the door and a lot extra.”
Johnson’s eager sense of her personal place within the movie star ecosystem solely put Timberlake’s depleted mojo in higher reduction when he did find yourself displaying up for a sketch, miscalculating how nostalgia would play. He reunited along with his previous pal Jimmy Fallon, one other celeb who doesn’t have the help he as soon as did, for an version of “The Barry Gibb Discuss Present,” the long-running bit the place they’ve performed the sibling members of the Bee Gees internet hosting a political discuss present.
However of all the sketches to convey again, “The Barry Gibb Discuss Present” appeared like one other miscalculation. In spite of everything, the brother whom Timberlake performs, Robin Gibb, died in 2012. What was as soon as a cute spoof of ’70s icons now looks like an exhumation of the useless. And that’s most likely not the sort of affiliation Timberlake needs in terms of his personal profession.
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