Chris Rock Knows How to Troll

During his fourth time hosting Saturday Night Live, Chris Rock brought a particularly magnetic and mischievous energy—one that showed his mastery of being a good-natured troll. In the show’s best moments, it followed suit: The episode was packed with sketches that feinted toward seemingly familiar premises before upending them, and many of Rock’s characters tapped into his punchy stand-up persona and button-pushing sense of humor. References that seemed outdated ended up feeling current; a sketch about a car based on Herbie, the sentient ’60s Volkswagen Beetle that hasn’t been featured in a movie in nearly a decade, wound up confronting the racism of older generations. The result was a night that was oddly refreshing for its idiosyncracy. Even the show’s most unpolished, truly not-ready-for-prime-time moments proved to be hilarious.

In Rock’s first (and strongest) sketch, he played an elf greeting customers visiting Santa Claus at the mall—only in his case, he was offering two Santas for them to choose between: one played by a white actor and the other by a Black one. The question was obviously meant to make people—especially white people trying to not appear racist—squirm, but Rock delivered every line like he was a salesman inviting his customer to embark on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “All you gotta do is tell me which Santa you want to go to,” he said, grinning. “Which Santa do you want your daughter to get a picture with, a picture you’ll cherish for the rest of your life?”

The couple he spoke with, played by Heidi Gardner and Mikey Day, probably shouldn’t have responded. But Rock, a seasoned comedian and SNL veteran, specializes in characters unafraid to rile others up into realizing their own hypocrisies. When Day’s character asked for the “regular” Santa, Rock feigned ignorance: “‘Regular’? ‘Regular’ as opposed to ‘extra crispy’? You’re going to need to be a little more specific than that.” His knowingness was reminiscent of one of his most popular SNL appearances, when he played a guest at a 2016 presidential-election-night party where most attendees assumed Hillary Clinton would win. Rock’s character, along with a character played by the episode’s host, Dave Chappelle, were the only nonwhite guests—and therefore the only ones who weren’t shocked that so many Americans would vote for Donald Trump, a candidate whom the other guests thought only “racists” would support. Unbothered, Rock smiled widely throughout the sketch while the partygoers around him grimaced. “Don’t worry,” he assured them sarcastically, “it’s going to be all white.”

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Rock’s opening monologue last night was playfully deceptive too. Unlike some of the other comics who have hosted SNL, he didn’t present what felt like a collection of bits he was excerpting from a forthcoming special. As he riffed on headlines, he baited the crowd into expecting mundane observations only to slip into a provocative punch line. He offered condolences for the family of the assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO, letting the audience fall completely silent at his apparent earnestness. Then he revealed his sadness to be an act: “You know, sometimes drug dealers get shot.”

Again and again, Rock toyed with the crowd’s expectations. As he mocked the outrage that some Americans expressed over Donald Trump’s reelection, the stand-up worked the room into agreeing with him about how unsurprising Trump’s win was, pointing out that America has long celebrated less-than-savory leaders. “People are like, ‘He’s going to be so undignified. It’s the presidency of the United States,’” he said. “Come on, man—this is not the most dignified job in the world. You know we’ve had presidents show up to the inauguration with pregnant slaves, okay?” He seemed poised to deliver a serious history lesson—and then he unveiled a more contemporary target. “And I’m just talking about Bill Clinton!” he said in an apparent reference to the former president’s misconduct in office. By the time he declared that “nobody knows how to get rid of people like a South African”—a joke about Elon Musk’s close ties to Trump, and Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants—the crowd was simultaneously laughing and groaning, swept up by Rock’s sheer confidence and rug-pulling delivery.

Later, that rebellious energy coursed through a sketch about a Secret Santa exchange. In it, Rock played a character who received what he considered “the best gift I’ve ever gotten in my life”: a cartoon portrait of him, drawn to look like he was a character on The Simpsons. He initially appeared to be the odd man out, the overenthused guy at the party who wouldn’t stop talking about what his character’s episode of The Simpsons would be like. But Rock imbued his role with such uninhibited certainty about his importance to The Simpsons’ lore that everyone started playing along. Instead of being about a bunch of observers helplessly tolerating their peculiar friend, the sketch became an absurd illustration of the way groupthink manifests.

But one of the most memorable moments of the episode came from something that seemed entirely unplanned. In “Gallbladder Surgery,” Adam Sandler guest-starred as a patient whose artery began spewing an absurd amount of blood onto the surgeons surrounding the operating table, who were attempting to fix the mistakes of an anxious nurse. As in the Simpsons sketch, one character—here, the nurse in question (Sarah Sherman)—was positioned to take over the bit with loony catchphrases. As the scene progressed, though, Sandler’s patient took over the spotlight because a technical malfunction forced the actor to say the same line three times while waiting for the blood-gushing mechanism to work. By the time Sandler finally delivered a series of fourth-wall-breaking lines—“Not sure what your role in this skit is, but so happy you’re getting airtime,” he told the doctor played by the new cast member Emil Wakim—the sketch had begun threatening to unmoor all of the performers. While they held it together, Sherman still managed to end the proceedings with a goofy punch line.

SNL produced a night of controlled chaos, in other words. Rock may not have been the strongest host this season, but the comic delivered an audacious monologue that seemed to inspire a similarly gleeful approach in the night’s sketches. Like the greeter introducing two mall Santas, Rock had no trouble trolling the audience with unpredictable turns. They kept guessing. And then they started laughing.