CREDIT: Will Heath/NBC

Jeffrey Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then organizes the sketches into the following categories: “Love It” (potentially Best of the Season-worthy), “Keep It” (perfectly adequate), or “Leave It” (in need of a rewrite, to say the least). Then he concludes with assessments of the host and musical guest.

Love It

Can I Play That? – The push to avoid having actors of one identity group play characters of any other identity group is, I believe, generally well-intentioned, and it has done real good in terms of achieving better representation in the entertainment industry. But it can also be taken to ridiculous lengths that forget that the point of acting is to (typically) play someone other than yourself. But at least the tying-oneself-in-knots and constriction that result from that ridiculousness are, we now know, a great formula for an SNL game show parody. This could make for a decent recurring sketch, considering that, even though the joke has already been fully established, these controversies and conundrums tend to keep cropping up.

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