We Asked the Internet How Dakota Johnson's SNL Went. The Internet Said 'Weekend Update.'
Four days on, the YouTube numbers are in for Johnson's third hosting turn. The news desk won, one sketch broke out, and a hardcore band from Baltimore did just fine.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min readDakota Johnson hosted Saturday Night Live on October 3, her third time, which in that building makes you a regular, like a fellow at a bar who has his own stool and nobody remembers his real name. Turnstile, the Baltimore hardcore band, made their debut as musical guest.
Now, I could tell you how the episode went. But my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it, so instead I went and looked at what people actually watched again, which is the only honest review there is. A man will lie to you about what he likes. His browsing history won't.
The winner, by a wide margin, was Weekend Update. The political segment sits around 2.6 million views on SNL's YouTube channel. Update also has a Zelda and Grand Theft Auto bit near 1.8 million, a shark loose in a flooded New Jersey street past 800,000, and a matchmaker named Debbie Mush giving Michael Che dating advice around 670,000. I've never taken dating advice from anybody named Mush. I'm told it's the only kind that works.
So the desk carried the show, and that's no accident. Update travels well. You don't need to know a thing about the episode to enjoy a man behind a desk saying something rude about the news. People have been doing that in barbershops for two hundred years. NBC just has better lighting.
The sketch the people picked was Mean, Scary Girlfriend, past 2.2 million views. SNL apparently agreed, because they posted a separate behind-the-scenes video about it, and a show doesn't make a sequel to a thing nobody watched. Get Ready with Me cleared a million. Throne of the Dragonborn is gaining. Amazing Tales of Truth is under 600,000, which means it may have done better in the room than it did in the world. That happens. It happened to most of my marriage.
Turnstile's two songs have several hundred thousand views apiece, which is a fine haul for loud men on a show mostly watched by people trying to stay awake.
The verdict: a sturdy episode, held up by its news desk, with one sketch that got out of the building. Next week Shane Gillis hosts, and if you know anything about Shane Gillis, you know the clip numbers will be very interesting, and the comments section will be a war.