Phoebe Waller-Bridge Energizes ‘Saturday Night Live’, But Bowen Yang is the Breakout Star

Phoebe Waller-Bridge Hosted Saturday Night Live

Fresh off her big night at the Emmys, actress, writer, producer and all-around comedy stalwart Phoebe Waller-Bridge made her Saturday Night Live debut this weekend, and she brought an ample amount of energy to Studio 8H. Waller-Bridge is an experience comedian who knows how to work with the talented writers and cast of Saturday Night Live, and the result was an episode that was certainly better than the season premiere. But the most notable moment of the night came from a breakout bit from one of the new featured players.

Let’s dig into the Phoebe Waller-Bridge hosted Saturday Night Live with our full review.

The Best

The War in Words: William and Lydia -This sketch feels like it goes on a little long, but it’s the escalation throughout that makes it absolutely hilarious. Mikey Day’s growing panic about all the things that are going wrong back home while he’s at war keeps the sketch from overstaying its welcome. But the best part of this bit is that there’s no real explanation for Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character to be so weird and nonchalant about the continued bad news.

Mid-Day News -With all the racial tension there is among our culture today, it can be difficult to make light of it. But this sketch manages to do it extremely well as two black and two white mid-day news anchors start tallying up the number of white and black people committing the crimes they’re reporting on. It picks up in laughs when they each start making assumptions based on the crime’s location, the name of the perpetrator and more, especially when they take an unexpected turn. Alex Moffat gets the best moment of the sketch when he celebrates one victory in the whitest way possible.

Royal Romance – This is exactly the kind of sketch you love to see Kenan Thompson doing. This is basically his own version of Rudy Ray Moore, the man who Eddie Murphy plays in the upcoming movie Dolemite Is My Name. But instead, it’s Jimmy Jay Robinson, and instead of just parodying Moore, there’s the added layer of the character having a royal romance with Abigail, Duchess of Clerkenwell. Honestly, I would have loved to see this extended into a Documentary Now! episode.