star!” 
 
 The big news that all the kids will be buzzing about is that rumored reboot of The Office that some people apparently really want and tonight’s host Steve Carell says wouldn’t work anyway, for some reasons having to do with “today’s climate.” In his opening monologue, Carell got the old “unexpected questions from the audience” treatment, as former The Office-mates Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, and Jenna Fischer all stood up to urge their former TV boss to sign on so they can get paid, already. Carell has had an effortless command of the voice of bland, oblivious authority since his Daily Show days, and he puts it to great use here, particularly in the moment when he regains his composure after Snowpiercer-ing a monkey’s arm. Comedians have wrestled with the question since the dawn of time, or at least since Arsenic and Old Lace, but it wasn’t until 2016 that Saturday Night Live found an answer: The only thing funnier than an unexpected corpse is the unexpected corpse of a parasailing instructor gently drifting back and forth with the currents outside the window of an underwater honeymoon suite. Of all its worst instincts, Saturday Night Live’s need to over-explain a premise is more damaging than musical monologues, game- and talk show sketches, and recurring characters combined. McKinnon’s impression is more about pitch-perfect sneering contempt than vocal verisimilitude, but it’s still a decent vehicle to mock Ingraham’s ongoing campaign against facts, actual reporting, and anything darker than eggshell. Advertisement 
 
 I am hip to the musics of today 
 
 Ella Mai has a pretty vibrato and some serviceable slow jams. “You can’t dismiss that idea simply because it isn’t true and sounds insane.” 
 
 
 
 Gardner’s dog-hating mom, feigning love for the huge new pet crowding her out of the RV: “Did you know that a dog can punch you?” 
 
 
 
 Che, suspiciously eyeing the picture of a handful of smiling black men standing with Trump as he announces some suspiciously not-racist-seeming prison reform legislation, states that, whenever he sees such a gathering, he thinks, “Oh lord, how much they sell us for?” 
 
 
 
 We’re off next week, gang.
– Saturday Night Live again deployed Kate McKinnon as Laura Ingraham to lampoon Fox News in its Cold Open, reports NBC News, lamenting how "celebrities in California are whining about some tiny wildfires, while our heroic president is under constant attack—from rain." Steve Carell stopped by to host his third time, in what the AV Club calls "a congested wheeze of an episode, packed with sketch after sketch of unimaginative premises, indifferently executed." Slate, however, likes a sketch in which Carell broadcasts from the space station as corpses float by a window in the background. And Mashable highlights a sketch of Carell as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which is "just an extended string of Trump burns, targeting his hair, his Twitter addiction, his bullying behavior, and his repeated failures as a businessman." Highlights in the gallery.