
Although the Academy Award-winning Regina King requires no introduction, she can make use of (as all of us can) a little crowd work from Kenan Thompson’s hype guy. King made her Saturday Night Live debut last night, and also kept in mind instantly.
“King was good as well as the eager contestant of the MTV dating show, a confident Black woman so turned on at the thought of just how servilely worshipful a “cringey white dude in his early 40s” will be to her that she can barely contain herself.
That despite the three bachelors competing for her affections being, indeed, extremely cringey. Kyle Mooney (who lives in “cringey”) is the guy who keeps ostentatiously praising Black people, women, and Black women until co-host ego Nwodim appears to have a disgust seizure. Hair-plugged Alex Moffat is the aspiring musician one who keeps serenading King with personalized Sin Doctors lyrics.
But it’s Mikey Day’s punch-worthily self-conscious, riffing dork (“I’m crashing and burning!,” he vamps, in, again, a punch-worthy little singsong voice) that truly wins King’s heart. “Oh, I think I just got menopause,” recoils Cecily Strong’s other host at Day’s stream-of-self-consciousness impressions and not-jokes, but King, squirming in her seat at the thought of being the object of this goober’s awestruck gratitude makes the premise work as well as it does.”
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