By trying to do a little less this season, “Saturday Night Live” arguably did its job better. During its 50th season, with all the hoopla surrounding its golden anniversary, the mother ship “S.N.L.” program could sometimes feel like an afterthought, overshadowed by all the celebratory specials and its own history.
This year, in Season 51, with none of those distractions to worry about, “S.N.L.” got back to the bits, characters and talent that make it what it is. It found clever ways to satirize the Trump administration without making President Trump the focal point of every segment, minting at least one classic sketch in the process. It said goodbye to one of its most valuable cast members, with humor and tears, and still moved on smoothly without him. And it kept finding legitimately funny reasons for men to dance and take off their clothes.
Join us now as we take a fully-clothed look back at some of the most memorable moments of the past “S.N.L.” season.
Sketch of the season
In the parlance of an earlier “S.N.L.” era, “Mom Confession” had everything: an inherently political conceit (conservative mother gingerly voices her regret about voting for Trump, and her liberal children freak out); clever camouflage to wrap this premise in the gentle guise of a family gathering; and — oh yes — the perfect, patient timing of Ashley Padilla to make said mom an instantly memorable (and meme-able) character. To the writers’ credit, they haven’t tried to repeat the character. (Yet.)
Recurring character of the season
There are few comedians as good at impersonating President Trump as James Austin Johnson is, but does every cold open have to feature this character? It seemed like “S.N.L.” was going to test this theory, until it was handed a strange gift.
After more than 20 years at the show, a dozen of them as an anchor at the Weekend Update desk, Colin Jost turned out to have just the right mixture of preppy looks and fratty rage to play Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an increasingly visible figure during the invasion of Venezuela and the war in Iran. Like a shot of beer with a pint of whiskey dropped into it, Jost gave the cold opens a whole new flavor. Glad to see things are finally going his way.
Good sports of the season
After the U.S. men’s and women’s Olympic hockey teams both won gold medals at this year’s winter games, their paths diverged: When President Trump invited the men’s team to the White House, he joked awkwardly that he should invite the women’s team, too, or he “would probably be impeached.” Soon after, the women’s team declined to attend the State of the Union address, citing previous commitments. Both teams were put in the uncomfortable position of having to address Trump’s remarks, repeatedly, and Hilary Knight specifically called them “distasteful”:
“S.N.L.,” of all places, helped to quell the controversy. When the “Heated Rivalry” star Connor Storrie hosted the show, he was joined onstage during his monologue first by the brothers Quinn and Jack Hughes (from the men’s hockey team) and then, in a show of unity, by Megan Keller and Hilary Knight (from the women’s team). Knight still got in a friendly quip when they were all onstage, noting that the “S.N.L.” appearance “was going to be just us, but we thought we’d invite the guys, too.”
Farewell of the season
Many influential “S.N.L.” performers didn’t get to say goodbye before they left; they just quietly moved on (or got fired). Fortunately that wasn’t the case with Bowen Yang: After almost eight years at “S.N.L.”, Yang — the celebrated imitator of former Representative George Santos and the iceberg that sank the Titanic — got a well-deserved send-off in a sketch that cast him as a soon-to-be retiring attendant at a Delta One airport lounge. The sentimental holiday-themed setup let Yang, who was serving eggnog, receive kudos from his castmates, sing with Ariana Grande, and hear Cher, playing Delta’s CEO of Eggnog, tell him he was “a little bit too gay.”
All-around episode of the season
Colman Domingo, an Oscar nominee for “Rustin” and “Sing Sing” and a star of shows like “Euphoria” and “The Four Seasons,” may still not have been widely known to “S.N.L.” viewers when he was announced as a host for the show. But the actor — a one-time co-star of Kate McKinnon’s on “The Big Gay Sketch Show” — felt like he was already a member of the Five Timers’ Club when he made his hosting debut on April 11.
Domingo’s standout characters included a fierce fashion professor mocking a criminal suspect’s attire; a street pimp who shows up at a wake to share not-so-subtle clues about what the deceased man did in his life; and Henry Debris, the cerebral host of “The Knowledge Hour,” a PBS show where every piece of furniture is a person in disguise. (You know you just double-checked the chair you’re sitting on.)
Cameo appearance of the season
Giving perhaps his most sincere and probing performance in a career full of them, Stellan Skarsgard delved deep into complicated family history and enduring questions about the nature of art when he appeared alongside his son Alexander on “S.N.L.” (Sure, he was also pretty good in “Sentimental Value.”)
Though Johnson had impersonated Stellan Skarsgard earlier in the season, a perfect opportunity to bring out the genuine article — sitting forlorn in a bathtub, wearing a white suit — arose in a recurring sketch about Scandinavian cinema. Later in the episode, the son and then the father (with belly bared), appear in a new installment of “Immigrant Dad Talk Show,” an honor surely as great as getting one’s first Academy Award nomination.
Weekend Update desk character of the season
In his rookie year on “S.N.L.”, Jeremy Culhane, a frequent face on the online comedy platform Dropout, has made entire meals out of seemingly single-serving Weekend Update characters: For example, Mr. On Blast, who punctuates his emphatic opinions with air-keyboard flourishes and entire dance routines. But Culhane’s pièce de résistance was his strangely hypnotic impression of Tucker Carlson, the conservative media personality, whom the actor successfully summed up with an adenoidal laugh and a few repeated conspiratorial turns of phrase. (“That’s the rule. That’s the goal now.”)
Mini-trend of the season
Men in sex work have made for memorable “S.N.L.” characters going back at least to the days of Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. And somehow the show found two new wrinkles on this theme in the same season.
Ben Marshall and the host Josh O’Connor played a hilarious pair of sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party. (They begin their PG-rated act by asking, “Do we have consent to enter your home?”) A few weeks later, Storrie played an injured stripper trying to dance through his pain after getting hit by a car on the way to his gig. Big props, too, to the women — Padilla, Jane Wickline, Veronika Slowikowska, Sarah Sherman and Chloe Fineman — who played the straight-faced bachelorettes in these sketches.
Special relationship of the season
Throughout the history of “S.N.L.”, plenty of other sketch shows have come and gone that have tried to imitate or compete with it. So at first glance there was no reason to expect that an authorized spinoff like “Saturday Night Live U.K.” would fare any better. (Were they just going to do “Unfrozen Caveman Barrister”?)
However, to the delight and surprise of everyone other than Keir Starmer, “S.N.L. U.K.” has capably justified its existence in its very first season. A talented group of British performers and writers (who are more seasoned than the shaggy original “S.N.L.” staff) has already produced some enduring bits of pop-cultural silliness — like a domestic squabble between Mario and Princess Peach, presented as kitchen-sink drama — and several topical political sketches in which even we unschooled Americans can grasp the humo(u)r.
Dave Itzkoff is a former Times culture reporter.
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