The last time Chris Rock hosted “Saturday Night Live,” I’m convinced, it made him into an A-level comic.
An extended monologue that was part of his peerless 1996 “Bring the Pain” HBO special and tour suddenly made a star out of the failed cast member, who came in with Chris Farley and David Spade in 1990 and left in frustration in 1993. Back then his target was O.J. and its reactions in a monologue that was just as extended as the one Saturday.
In the intervening 18 years, he’s had his ups and downs in comedy specials and movies but is using “SNL” again to give his career a turbo boost. It began with a monologue that was meant to provoke as much as it was made to make us laugh, and he succeeded in calculating just enough time to make of the new Freedom Tower (or the “I Ain’t Ever Going In There Tower”), which he made clear was not a 9/11 joke. He did do a bit about the Boston Marathon bombing that seemed a little dated (but suggesting there would be problems at Sunday’s New York Marathon was probably a little out of line).
Still, he was sticking his neck out there and was probably behind the sketch in which members of ISIS present their plan in front of “Shark Tank.” It was pretty edgy stuff that worked.
Rock played an old man for a lot of the sketches, in his daughter’s room doing a too-sexy dance for her YouTube millions, or later on another one of those “How’s He Doing?” talk shows (in which black pundits show they’d never pull support from Obama no matter what). Its main point was to show that they could staff an all-black skit of a half dozen if they wanted to.
Having a black host (who makes suggestions) meant that cast members like Jay Phahroh and especially Sasheer Zamata and Leslie Jones had their best shows to date.
Somebody on staff seemed to have just discovered Uber and the taxi service was mentioned in no less than three times.
The lasting impression of the show, though, will be the pop music references, from the great Taylor Swift Onset Vertigo that showed hipsters fainting when they realize they like her music to, of course, the biggest moment of the night, a one-shot eight minute Prince medley with 3rdEyeGirl that, like Rock, showed him at the top of his powers decades on, ready to use the power of “SNL” to propel himself further.