As soon as upon a time, having Justin Timberlake on Saturday Night time Reside would were an exhilarating factor. Within the mid-2000s, the pop superstar emerged as probably the most display’s favourite ordinary hosts, the type of mega-famous celebrity who gave the look of he can be down for the rest, similar to dressing up in a large mascot dress or placing his, ahem, dick in a field.

However the tide has became on Timberlake. He arrived on SNL this weekend as a musical visitor with an air of desperation. In the middle of seeking to reboot his pop-music occupation after 2018’s poorly gained album Guy of the Woods, his character has additionally gone through a cultural reckoning, particularly in mild of the revelations about him present in his ex Britney Spears’s memoir, amongst them that she were given an abortion as a result of he “wasn’t satisfied concerning the being pregnant.” She wrote that Timberlake attempted to serenade her together with his guitar whilst she used to be in ache, after which went directly to paint her as “a harlot who’d damaged the guts of The us’s golden boy” when they broke up. Between that and a reevaluation of his position within the Janet Jackson Tremendous Bowl scandal of 2004, during which he were given off reasonably scot-free whilst Jackson used to be pilloried, Timberlake has turn into emblematic of an informal mid-2000s white-male cockiness that doesn’t play as neatly in 2024.

Timberlake, alternatively, appeared to wish to use SNL in an effort to ease again into the general public’s just right graces, selling his new album, The entirety I Idea It Was once. And but when he popped out on degree all over the host Dakota Johnson’s monologue, he introduced much less self assurance and extra eagerness to remind audiences why they used to like him. Johnson cheekily instructed her former co-star from The Social Community that he used to be simply the musical visitor. “Smartly, if you need me to be in sketches,” he started to a spherical of cheers, “I’ve hosted ahead of.” He then mouthed the phrases 5 instances. “Yeah, neatly that used to be 10 years in the past,” Johnson replied in a line that made transparent that the writers had been acutely aware of how retrograde Timberlake now turns out.

Johnson endured that she used to be so satisfied he selected her display for his “comeback,” a phrase that appeared to rankle Timberlake. “Is that what we’re calling it?” he requested, ahead of launching right into a lewd funny story the usage of every other that means of the phrase come.

The real host of the night time, Johnson, became out to be a just right foil for Timberlake. Johnson’s herbal deadpan, which has made her a viral sensation, helped her play cool lady to Timberlake’s jittery wannabe all over the monologue. Her informal dismissal of him simplest additional highlighted Timberlake’s awkwardness. In the meantime, the most productive sketches featured Johnson’s dry supply.

In “Giant Dumb Cups,” a parody of the baffling Stanley Cup development, she let her personal monotone slide into that of an influencer who used to be, as she mentioned, “bodily or no less than spiritually blonde.” In conjunction with Chloe Fineman and Heidi Gardner, Johnson without problems doled out jokes concerning the absurdity of the jugs with a mild vocal fry. Retaining her Stanley close to her face, she poured in a bottle of Josh wine, an affordable logo that has additionally turn into a meme. “Get in there Josh,” she mentioned.

Johnson’s humor carries with it an a laugh sourness—she’s the queen bee you wouldn’t wish to go. That used to be on complete show all over the Please Don’t Break video during which she expertly dissed the comedy crew’s 3 contributors. Whilst they tried to rib her again, Johnson all the time got here out on best, describing them because the “lonelier island,” a connection with Timberlake’s widespread collaborators, Andy Samberg’s comedy trio The Lonely Island.

Nonetheless, Johnson’s energy additionally comes from her self-awareness. When she unleashed nepo-baby fees in opposition to Please Don’t Break’s John Higgins and Martin Herlihy, either one of whose folks have labored on SNL, she used to be pressured to recognize her personal legacy in Hollywood. The caricature resolved in a “nepo truce,” with all intoning, “a foot within the door and so a lot more.”

Johnson’s prepared sense of her personal position within the superstar ecosystem simplest put Timberlake’s depleted mojo in better reduction when he did finally end up appearing up for a caricature, miscalculating how nostalgia would play. He reunited together with his previous good friend Jimmy Fallon, every other celebrity who doesn’t have the give a boost to he as soon as did, for an version of “The Barry Gibb Communicate Display,” the long-running bit the place they’ve performed the sibling contributors of the Bee Gees internet hosting a political communicate display.

However of the entire sketches to carry again, “The Barry Gibb Communicate Display” gave the look of every other miscalculation. Finally, the brother whom Timberlake performs, Robin Gibb, died in 2012. What used to be as soon as a lovely spoof of ’70s icons now turns out like an exhumation of the lifeless. And that’s almost definitely no longer the type of affiliation Timberlake desires relating to his personal occupation.