The latest episode of Saturday Night Live opens with the long-awaited return of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character from his 90s heyday. The judgmental old biddy says goodbye to 2024, “the most satanic year in history”, and directs her ire at the likes of the Hawk Tuah girl (“Instead of ‘hawk tuey’ you need to walk to-y a church”), Wicked (“Lions and tigers and sluts, oh yes!”) and Sabrina Carpenter (“You know who was the best carpenter? Jesus!”).
We then move on to the interview section of her show, where she introduces scandal magnets Matt Gaetz (Sarah Sherman) and Hunter Biden (a returning David Spade, sporting a surprising silver fox look). Gaetz is only there for a minute, but Biden and the Church Lady get in some good sparring (the best being a clever bit about Jesus “walking around in a robe with no underwear hanging out with prostitutes”). Biden is the recipient of the Church Lady’s popular catchphrase, “Well, isn’t that special.”
Her last guest is baseballer Juan Soto (Marcello Hernández, doing a heightened Latin accent that is indistinguishable from all his others). Aside from one chuckle-worthy dig at the Mets, this feels tacked on for no reason.
It’s nice to see Carvey and Spade back front and center, although there is a noticeable lack of energy to this cold open.
Paul Mescal hosts for the first time. The Irish actor admits that he’s not known for comedy, rolling a reel of his many, many crying scenes. Then, he decides to clear up Irish stereotypes such as the nasty rumor that they have sex with their cousins (“That’s offensive and ridiculous – we have sex with our second cousins”) and their hatred of the British (“That’s not true, we just don’t consider them people”). The monologue is no great shakes, but it’s nice to get some good old-fashioned ethnic comedy.
The first sketch sees Mescal play a college kid home for the holidays. His uptight parents (Heidi Gardner, Emil Wakim) are shocked to discover he has pierced his ear. This leads to a prolonged freakout aimed at blue-haired, bisexual college liberals, with some slapstick violence thrown in for good measure. Gardner is very adept at playing high-strung characters older than she is. Wakim, not so much.
Despite earning $300m worldwide, Gladiator II has undergone reshoots and been retooled as a musical to cash in on the even bigger success of Wicked and Moana 2. Mescal stabs and sings his way through a gruesome battle, before engaging in a cringey, Lin-Manuel Miranda-scored rap battle with Mikey Day’s evil emperor. Mescal seems much more natural in this mode than he does as a serious action star.
Mescal and Ashley Padilla play actors shooting a commercial for an Italian restaurant. Padilla’s nervous newbie flubs a line that ends up working (“enjoy the pasta-bilities”), which impresses the director and producer, but drives her co-star into a jealous meltdown where he tries and fails to get in on the improv. The joke runs thin, fast, but Mescal’s angry rebuttals are solid.
A new Please Don’t Destroy sketch sees Mescal get emotionally attached to Ben, Martin and John after they nonchalantly say they love him. He takes this literally, painting a picture of a blissful life together where he’s their “daddy”. But the fantasy takes a dark turn when the local townspeople catch wind of them and form an angry lynch mob. The most enjoyable of the trio’s bits in a while.
A bridal party attend a pirate-themed all-male revue. They’re expecting some steamy, sexy action, but the guys on stage are so into their roles that they have turned the show into a highly detailed, historically accurate take on the “golden age of piracy”. Not a bad premise, and Ego Nwodim, who’s been underutilized this season, is good as the one member of the party who’s into it, but it goes on too long.
Musical guest Shaboozey performs his first song of the night, then it’s on to Weekend Update. Colin Jost reports on the manhunt for the assassin who killed the CEO of United Healthcare on Wednesday, noting that “it really says something about America that a guy was murdered in cold blood and the two reactions were ‘Yeah, well healthcare stinks,’ and ‘girl, that shooter hot!’”
Michael Che takes on the Hunter Biden pardon: “Hunter celebrated his pardon by celebrating waaaaay less than he used to.” Good digs at Trump cabinet picks/grotesque buffoons Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel and Billy Long follow.
Gardner and Hernández join the desk as the segment’s first and only guests, a newly signed pro-football player and his hot mess of a mom. Hernández is excellent as the dead-eyed, personality-free jock, even when he struggles mightily to keep from breaking after Gardner drops a line about showing “Shaboozy my Shapoozy” (you can’t really blame him).
Next, Mescal plays a man standing trial for robbery. He’s extremely nervous, especially since his lawyer (Andrew Dismukes) advised him to show up for the final day in court dressed in an insane costume – bright green suit covered in flame prints, red plastic Devo hat and giant beard. The lawyer calls the sole witness to the robbery to the stand and asks her to point out the culprit, only to stack the courtroom with 20 people dressed the same. This gambit does not work, nor does his later attempts to get the case thrown out by threatening to kill himself and offering to give the judge “oral”. There’s very little meat on this bone, but Dismukes is at his best playing a smug doofus.
Shaboozy returns to perform his mega-hit A Bar Song (Tipsy). I’m hard-pressed to remember the last time the studio audience was this audibly into the musical performance.
A group of friends discuss their Spotify Wraps, AKA, “the most embarrassing day of the year”. Mescal’s character is the only one not ashamed of his most listened to artists: Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and his number one by far, Satoshi Gutman, “the anti-instrumentalist sound guru out of Dundalk, Maryland”. We get treated to samples of the new-agey Gutman’s (Bowen Yang) song about being celibate, as well as an excerpt from his podcast, featuring a cameo from media personality Trisha Paytas. Annoying and pointless, with a guest star that I’d venture to guess way less than half the viewers watching will have any familiarity with, this is by far the worst sketch of the night.
The final sketch is set at the red-carpet premiere of the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. It starts off dire at first, with Chloe Fineman doing her annoying Timothée Chalamet impersonation, but takes a promising turn once James Austin Johnson shows up as Dylan himself. All he wants to do is hit the hot bar, but the Buzzfeed interview won’t “release him” from their inane questions. Fellow rockstars Bruce Springsteen (Dismukes) and Bono (Mescal) pop in. Johnson’s Dylan is his best impression – not just because it’s dead-on, but because he’s clearly a Dylan superfan who fills it with minutiae that only fellow fanatics (such as yours truly) will get. Unfortunately, they don’t give him the chance to really dive deep here. This would have been better if he had been the sole focus.
That wraps up an all-around decent episode. Mescal was a fine host, one you can imagine doing even better if and when he returns. The continued presence of Carvey – come on, Lorne, just make him an official member of the cast again already – and the return of Spade ahead of the next two episodes, to be hosted by Chris Rock and Martin Short, respectively – are finally giving this 50th season a proper big anniversary feel.
