SNL: Timothée Chalamet, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Cecily Strong (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot)

The eighth episode of the 46th season of Saturday Night Live (now concluded [the episode, not the season]) was hosted by Timothée Chalamet, who at 24 years, 11 months, and 15 days is the youngest host of the season thus far. Here’s another Timothée Chalamet factoid: on last week’s Card Sharks, there was a question in which a group of 100 women were asked if they thought “Timothée Chalamet” was an actor or a fancy wine, and more than half said wine!

The musical guest was Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. Everybody loves it when The Boss, Patti, Little Stevie, Max Weinberg, The Professor, and The Big Man’s nephew come to town, don’t they? I sure do!

I had cereal for breakfast while watching, but this time, my Honey Nut Cheerios were Medley Crunch.

The very first sketch headed to the Situation Room (Grade: 2 and a Half Coors Light Cold Activated Cans), as Drs. Fauci and Birx discuss the Covid vaccine rollout. And no, your eyes don’t deceive you, Brad Pitt hasn’t suddenly started looking like Kate McKinnon, but rather Kate is playing Fauci now, instead of Brad when he zoomed in back in the spring.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, I noticed during the Monologue (Grade: Spaghetti and Scratch-Off Energy) that Timothée Chalamet kind of sounds like the former Dr. Fauci. Anyway, he and Pete Davidson volleyed back and forth about their different New York origin stories. Chill vibes.

A Rona Family Christmas (Grade: I’m Afraid) felt almost too edgy for me to handle, even though it was very, very silly. I would’ve underlined and highlighted that “University of Phoenix in Person” joke.

That Lexus commercial parody (Grade: 2 Flenderson’s Oversized Bows) is one of those times when the comedy is pretty depressing and then it only gets more and more depressing. It still exists in the comedy realm, but dang, watching something like this too frequently could give me a stomachache.

Dionne Warwick is on Twitter now, and SNL would like us to know that, and it has made that announcement in the form of Ego Nwodim playing her on the Dionne Warwick Talk Show (Grade: 3/5 Tweets). I was really hoping we would get a reply from Snoop Dogg by the end. Pete’s MGK is my pick for best impression out of this bunch.

The pre-filmed music video “The Farm” (Grade: 3.5/5 Visual Gags) captures Timothée Chalamet singing to a Tiny Horse, and that of course reminds me of the time that the crowd went wild for Nic Cage playing Tiny Elvis. Anyway, there’s more than a little love for this here Tiny Horse as he goes on to do great things.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are here to perform some new music off of this year’s Letter to You, because hot damn, they’re still making great music decades into an unbeatable career. First up is “Ghosts” (Grade: 4/5 Christmas Decorations), and in addition to the craftsmanship nearly bringing me to tears, I also really appreciate how linearly the band members are arranged on stage.

Weekend Update seemed to be noticeably light on political material this week, so the visual jokes stuck out more than usual, particularly the lions in Hasidic garb.

Here’s one thing we know: Dr. Wayne Wenowdis (Grade: Welaughatdis) is very silly, almost too silly, but I can’t help but love this bit. Sort of like Pikachu.

Also providing guest commentary at the Update desk was Melissa Villasñor (Grade: 2.5/5 Things) as Dolly Parton, although she protested that she wasn’t actually playing Dolly. But methinks the lady doth protest too much. Of course, that protesting was the game of the bit.

The Holiday Baking Championship (Grade: A Chocolate Mess) was just the latest SNL example of a Food Network baking competition show gone very, very wrong. Interestingly enough, my favorite part was the moment when Alex Moffat’s host character seemed to call Kyle Mooney’s contestant character “Ralph Ralph,” as if he had the same first and last name. But I think what actually happened was that Ralph was the last word of one sentence, and also the first word of the next, and there wasn’t much breathing space in between. (I also laughed at the redundancy of “amateur college student.”)

For the XXL Rap Roundtable (Grade: Too Much Miscommunication), surprise guest Questlove pretended to be so upset that he had to whack Timothée Chalamet with his comb, but I suspect that in real life, he would actually be open-minded to white-boy “yee-yee” TikTok rap.

Bruce & the E Street whip out “I’ll See You in My Dreams” (Grade: 4/5 “Bruce” Chants) for Song #2, and I hope I do see them in my dreams! Little Stevie’s guitar looked strikingly yellow. Did anyone else notice that?

Dang, wouldn’t it be hilarious if there were an actual TV channel like Sportsmax (Grade: 4/5 Smuckers Space Jams) that insisted that the winless New York Jets were actually the greatest football team in the world? We don’t have to wonder if that’s true, the evidence of funny is right here in the last sketch of this SNL episode hosted by Timothée Chalamet!

Next week Kristen Wiig will host and Dua Lipa will musical guest on the December 19, 2020 show, which will be the closest that SNL gets to Christmas in 2020.