Saturday Night Live returns from hiatus with a send-up of the Trump administration’s shocking and humiliating Signal disaster. Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth (Andrew Dismukes), whipping boy Vice-President JD Vance (Bowen Yang), and frazzled secretary of state Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) discuss war plans, Trump’s imperialist goals, and the real JFK files in a group text chat that also includes Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg (Mikey Day) and three random teenage girls (Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, and the night’s host Mikey Madison).
The cold open includes a couple of good digs at fellow rightwing embarrassment Matt Gaetz’s predatory taste for young girls and Hegseth’s raging alcoholism, but this is woefully dull material for a scandal of this magnitude.
For her monologue, Madison celebrates the success of her film Anora (which nabbed five Oscars, including a best actress statue for her), the physical intensity of her past performances (including two separate death scenes where she was lit on fire), and her closeness with her twin brother “who looks like Ron Weasley on testosterone”. She promises to show off the pole dancing skills she learned for Anora, only to be obviously replaced by a buff guy in drag. Madison is obviously a great actor, but she comes off a little wooden here.
The first sketch sees the return of Hernández’s pretentious commercial acting coach Theodore Strop, who demonstrates his brash, distracting technique in between bragging about his 3 credits (getting injured during the filming of Wipe Out, being racist on an episode of What Would You Do?, and auditioning for the “incest teen” from White Lotus with his real brother). Hernández has been increasingly muggy of late and he’s at his loudest here.
A Weekend in New York is a music video about status-obsessed city slickers standing in a “big dumb line” for mediocre food and clothing (including cronuts, cheese soda, and Hypebeast collabs). Joe Jonas drops in for a soulful interlude. The concept is a good one – the Millennial/Gen Z obsession with/slavish devotion to viral trends certainly deserves skewering – but there’s zero in the way of actual laughs.
A judge attempts to assemble a trial jury from a pool of freaks, losers and perverts, including the CEO of “Google … berg’s Mobile Dog Grooming Services”, one of the people Caitlyn Jenner hit with her car, a deceptively conservative protester, a morning Zoo Crew DJ, a childless woman who’s double lactating, a Luigi Mangione groupie (followed by Mangione himself), Chloe Fineman as herself, and Benson Boone. It’s all very slapdash, but there are a few highlights, including Sherman’s “Bisexuals for Mass Incarceration” T-shirt and James Austin Johnson’s dead-on Jay Z impression.
is a teen soap. Two of the main characters have a hard talk about the future of their relationship, oblivious to the drunken, trashy chaos unfolding on the other side of their Floridian hotel window: puking, fist fighting, nudity, bone breaking, gator wrangling, and more. Like the sketch before it, the show is just throwing ideas against the wall. Some stick, most don’t.
Pop-country musician Morgan Wallen performs his first song of the night, then it’s time for Weekend Update. Right away, Colin Jost goes after Hegseth and co’s public blunder: “Of all the people to accidently add to the chat, it was the editor of the Atlantic. That’s like if you were planning a surprise quinceañera and you accidently CC’d Jared from Subway.”
Michael Che invites Devon Walker to the desk to discuss fitness influencer Ashton Hall’s morning routine. Walker claims Hall stole the whole thing from him, rolling a video of himself getting up at 3am to drink bottled water, give himself ice/food facials, and workout. As ever when SNL attempts to parody a viral video from social media, it just comes off as lazy. In this case it’s too bad, as clownish grindset hustlers like Hall are more than deserving targets for sharp satire.
Later, Jost brings on Joann of Joann Fabrics (Ashley Padilla) to talk about the company’s recent bankruptcy. She’s claims that “Closing a Joann’s in the suburbs is like closing a Planned Parenthood in a college town: people will die!” When Jost suggests that her customers can still shop for supplies at Michael’s Arts and Crafts, she delivers a jaw-dropper: “Let me tell you something about Michael. HE RAPED ME!” Guzzling from a flask and sniffing a permanent marker, she blames feminism for killing her business. This is a solid showcase for Padilla, who hasn’t been given much chance to shine until now.
An aging mobster and his two sons go to the mattresses ahead of a gang war. When he is gunned down by their rivals, he uses his final moments to voice his lifetime of regrets, foremost among them never making good on his dream of doing standup. He tests his material about beating up bus drivers, walking birds and bowling shoes to his nonplussed progeny. The live audience shares their reaction.
Wallen performs another terrible song, ending with an eye-rolling “Praise the lord and Go Vols!”
Next, Yang brings back his Barry the Midwife character from two seasons back. As before, he is offended that the OBG-YN delivering his patient’s child doesn’t remember meeting him 20 years ago. We flash back and forth through time as they continue to meet. Yang is at his most obnoxious here, the flashback structure is mangled by noticeably long transition title cards, and Madison is wooden. Up there with the worst sketches of the season.
A new Please Don’t Destroy sees the guys excited to meet Madison … until she shows up dressed as Squidward from SpongeBob Square Pants and pitches an idea for a live-action dramatic version of that cartoon. Three years of development later and we get a trailer Treading Water, with Ben, Martin, and John playing the other characters from the show. Cheap, lazy nostalgia.
So, Like, What Are We? is a game show where Madison’s host brings out people she is dating and forces them to answer the title question. This episode’s constant is a skeevy Hinge date who is blindsided by the whole thing. This wraps up before it has a chance to get going, but Madison is at her best here, probably because she’s been given an actual character to play for a change.
The episode concludes with the second installment of new SNL animated shorts, courtesy of the show’s creative director Leigh McG. Henry Hudson and a fellow Dutch explorer landing upon the island of Manhattan and plan a city “that’s too much and crazy”. The detailing of New York’s wacky structural design is a watered-down version of the popular Nate Bargatze George Washington sketches, while the animation style is a flattened-out version of John K.
While there were a few laugh-out loud moments throughout tonight’s episode, this was still one of the weakest of the season. Madison wasn’t given much to work with, but even still, live comedy doesn’t seem to be her forte. Teaming her with Wallen made for culturally incongruous viewing.
Speaking of Wallen, he awkwardly ditched the curtain call, brusquely jumping off the stage and stomping directly in front of the camera. Some of the cast members seemed taken aback by this. Already, people on social media are reading into it, claiming there was trouble between the performer and the cast/crew. Regardless as the veracity of that speculation, it’s the only thing people are likely to remember from this episode.
