This week’s Saturday Night Live opens with congressional testimony from three college university presidents on the subject of antisemitism on campus. Representative Elise Stefanik (Chloe Troast) immediately starts screeching at them about whether calls for genocide is considered acceptable speech or not, even as she declares: “Hate speech has no place on college campuses. Hate speech belongs in Congress, on Elon Musk’s Twitter, in private dinners with my donors, and in public speeches from my work husband, Donald Trump.” The academics end up dancing around an answer, thereby hanging themselves while handing the reprehensible Stefanik a rare public win.
While not a particularly sharp statement on the current global firestorm of antisemitism and Islamophobia, credit is due to SNL for recognizing Stefanik and her ilk’s hypocritical, manipulative, and bad-faith grandstanding for what it is. Troast – who the show seems to be pushing as a possible breakout star – is appropriately annoying and detestable in the role.
Adam Driver returns to host for the fourth time. The Ferrari star talks about his love for Christmas and a “very deep and personal relationship with Santa”. Displaying some impressive piano skills, he relays his Christmas list to Old Saint Nick, which includes new chinos, a gingerbread house, one of the new Tesla trucks to pair with his “teeny, tiny micro-penis”, and for people to stop coming up to him on the street reminding him that he killed Han Solo (“I didn’t kill Han Solo – wokeness killed Han Solo!”). Silly, sexy and smart, the monologue is a great distillation of Driver’s eccentric and singular charm.
An adults-only ski trip between friends takes a confusing turn when Driver and Bowen Yang’s gay couple announce that they’re trying to have a baby. The others assume they mean adoption or a surrogate, but nope – they’re just having lots of sex and hoping a kid will come out of one of their asses. It’s all a bit scattershot, but Driver’s catty performance is good for some yuks.
Then, Mikey Day and Driver play childhood best friends attempting to reconnect for holiday drinks. Via their text conversation, it’s revealed that Driver’s character is a notorious pervert (with an entire Netflix documentary about him) and conspiracy theorist gun nut. It’s overlong but wraps up with a clever joke about how Facebook has become a de facto registry for crazy people.
Things get tense at a Christmas party when Driver and Andrew Dismukes’s mustachioed suburbanites refuse to yield to each other’s “Beep-beeps” while setting the dinner table. They end up in a potentially fatal standoff, Driver relies on his intimidating frame and natural intensity, while Dismukes goes extra bro-y (a character type he’s good at).
The sassy, southern hosts (Day, Heidi Gardner) of a home shopping show welcome Driver’s chocolatier to pitch his chocolate Santa Clause treat. Everything is going fine until he unwraps the decorative foil to reveal an extremely phallic-looking confection. The expected suggestive fondling and double entendres follow suit, but things never get as risque as you hope.
Following musical guest Olivia Rodrigo’s first performance, the Weekend Update host Colin Jost welcomes Marcello Hernandez to talk about the epidemic of depression among young men. The young cast member speaks about his experience growing up as the only male in a house full of women, and how he had to live a double life as macho jock at school and “a proud, Latina woman” at home. Hernandez always makes the most of his standup routines on Update. Given how popular he is with the live audience, it’s a wonder they don’t bring him to the desk more often.
Later, the hosts are joined by Chloe Fineman, who stands in front of the desk in order to perform Julia Stiles’s so-bad-it’s-good “street-ballet” dance routine from the millennial favorite Save the Last Dance. She shows off some undeniably impressive dance skills of her own before being joined onstage by the real Stiles, who very gamely joins in on the joke.
Next, Driver plays an 11-month-old baby on his first plane flight. His giant head poking out from his tiny body (the effect reminiscent of the surreal 90s Nickelodeon program Weinerville) makes for a great visual gag, one supplemented by Driver’s intense and neurotic performance. Honestly, this one could have gone a little longer.
Rodrigo returns for a gung-ho performance of her song All-American Bitch, in which she makes a mess of a fancy tea party set. Then, we get a PSA from seniors who are tired of falling victim to TikTok pranks. Usually, when SNL takes on viral content and trends, it just ends up copy and pasting the real thing, so kudos to the writers for coming up with an original scenario this time. The result isn’t anything special, but Driver’s aged veteran yelling about how he “blocked doors with Governor Wallace” is probably the best line of the night.
For the final sketch of the night, the show goes back to the home shopping show well with a program peddling “Tiny Ass Bag”, which can hold individual items – one air pod, half-smoked cigarette, a reasonable amount of cocaine, the kids from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids – “and that’s it!” Rodrigo plays associate Georgia (“I don’t have a last name. Georgina – and that’s it!”).
Following a short tribute to the late, great Norman Lear, Driver, Rodrigo and Stiles stand center stage and take their bows. All in all, this was a solid episode, elevated by Driver’s expectedly excellent hosting and a memorable performance from Rodrigo. That said, considering the host/musician combo, it lacked the big show feel it might well have had. We can probably expect next week’s episode – the last before SNL goes on holiday hiatus – to take up that mantle.
