He’s beloved by some and reviled by others, but even if large numbers of people rise up in protest against him, he proved this weekend he is here to stay: Domingo, the irrepressible womanizer played by Marcello Hernández on “Saturday Night Live,” has now graduated from a recurring character on the program to being at the center of the opening sketch.
This week’s episode of “S.N.L.,” which featured Sabrina Carpenter as both host and musical guest, broke with the show’s tradition, in recent years, of opening with a topical political sketch and instead began with its latest entry on Domingo, the Lothario who is perpetually romancing Kelsey (Chloe Fineman) — much to the chagrin of her hapless new husband, Matt (Andrew Dismukes).
Assuming you don’t know already know the character’s history by heart, we’ll quickly recap: Domingo was introduced in a 2024 sketch in which a group of bridesmaids (including Ariana Grande) at a wedding reception sang an off-key parody of Carpenter’s “Espresso” about a tryst with Kelsey, the bride. The segment became an unexpected viral hit, leading to further installments where Domingo crashed the newlywed couple’s babymoon and — on the “S.N.L.” 50th-anniversary special — a vow-renewal ceremony for Kelsey’s parents, played by Molly Shannon and Martin Short.
This week Carpenter (who appeared in that last sketch) was there to help Hernández, Ashley Padilla, Veronika Slowikowska and Sarah Sherman sing parodies of Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” and Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” — all of which implied further infidelity with Domingo.
As a frustrated Dismukes told Fineman at the end of the sketch, “I’m serious, this is strike six.”
“Hey, babe,” she replied, already grinding up against Hernández, “it won’t happen again.” But if “S.N.L.” has taught us anything, you can be pretty certain that it will.
Trump to the rescue of the week
Don’t be too quick to dismiss this offbeat sketch, which begins as a parody of a video podcast by adolescent boys who share their slang-ridden reviews of their most- and least-favorite foods. It’s pretty funny — and eerily convincing — to see Carpenter, Fineman, Slowikowska and Jane Wickline play earnest young goofballs who debate whether Twizzlers are “washed” or “fire,” and which vegetables are G.O.A.T.-ed. (As Carpenter’s character so aptly put it, “Some vegetables are fire and some vegetables low-key be a fruit.”)
But of course there’s a twist: The podcast’s celebrity guest is President Trump, played by the resident impersonator James Austin Johnson, who, despite the strange milieu, ends up fitting right in.
Though he couldn’t name a favorite vegetable, Johnson offered his endorsement of Little Debbie (“We like Little Debbie. She does tremendous work. It’s awful what happened to her”). He said he favored the brand’s Christmas Tree cake. “You know, it used to be seasonal,” he said. “But I very smartly made a call and now we get it year-round.”
“Dang, that’s so fire, sir,” an awestruck Fineman said to him.
“It is,” Johnson answered. “It’s very fire. It’s very fire.”
Musical sketches of the week
Alas, Bowen Yang was not on hand for this week’s broadcast — he was in Los Angeles as an honoree of the Academy Museum Gala, which meant he couldn’t reprise his recurring role as George Santos, the disgraced former congressman whose fraud sentence was commuted by President Trump on Friday. But Yang was still able to appear with Carpenter in a recorded music video about teenage students who find fully clothed (but still very inappropriate) ways to get intimate with each other at a school dance.
Carpenter also had a further chance to chime in with Slowikowska for this sketch in which they played a washing machine and clothes dryer that sang various jingles in different musical styles. (It was very late when we watched this sketch but we’re pretty sure that’s what we saw and heard.)
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on topics like President Trump’s commutation of Santos’s sentence and the fallout from a racist and homophobic group chat among young Republican officials and activists.
Jost began:
Yesterday President Trump finally released what everyone has been asking him to release. George Santos. The former Republican congressman who had pled guilty to fraud and something called aggravated identity theft, which I think is when you push someone into a closet and switch clothes with them, is now free and will face zero consequences. But Santos says that he’s a changed man, and he even released a photo of his new prison body. [His screen shows an image of what is obviously Santos’s head pasted onto a very muscular body.]
Che continued:
Volodymyr Zelensky has said that if President Trump provides Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, he will nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. You know, the prize they give you for selling missiles. There was outrage this week over a leaked group chat between Republican leaders which praised Hitler and referred to Black Americans as “watermelon people.” The chat was named “Jost Family.”
Jost went onto say:
While traveling on Air Force One to the Middle East to celebrate the cease-fire, President Trump told reporters, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven.” Then he paused for 10 full minutes waiting for someone to say, “That’s not true.” Because Trump can’t go to heaven. He’s far too busy down here, running hell.
Che added:
President Trump announced that another boat from Venezuela that he said was smuggling drugs was blown out of the water without warning. And you may not think that’s a big deal right now, but one day soon you’ll look at yourself in the mirror and realize you’re out of cocaine.
Weekend Update desk segment of the week
Nothing topical or timely this week, but since this was already Hernández’s show, we’ll give him further props for the latest visit from his recurring character Movie Guy, a well-meaning theater usher who comes to discuss new films (but has somehow never seen any of them). Even though you can see his puns coming a mile away, there’s something almost timeless about the character’s sheer persistence and his naïvete. He explains in broken English his fondness for modern horror movies whose titles tell you what the movie is about, “Like ‘Scream,’ everybody scream. ‘Smile,’ everybody smile. And ‘Saw,’ everybody saw. Except me. I did not see ‘Saw.’”
Dave Itzkoff is a former Times culture reporter.
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