A quick primer for the younger readers of this recap: The late 1980s were a creatively fruitful time for “Saturday Night Live” where for some reason every third sketch was a fake talk show. Among the most popular of these recurring bits was a segment called “Church Chat,” in which a piously persnickety host known simply as the Church Lady (played by Dana Carvey) would roast celebrities of the day and accuse pretty much everyone of working in the service of Satan.
After a yearslong hiatus, “S.N.L.” brought back “Church Chat” to open this weekend’s broadcast, which was hosted by Paul Mescal and featured the musical guest Shaboozey. Carvey, once again clad in the prim attire of the Church Lady and seated in front of a stained-glass window, said he was back to “ring out the end of 2024, the most satanic year in history.”
“Everywhere you look, you’ve got 11-year-olds dressing up like that vixen Sabrina Carpenter,” Carvey proclaimed. “You know who’s the best carpenter? Jesus.”
Church Lady then introduced the first “Church Chat” guest, Matt Gaetz (Sarah Sherman), the former Representative from Florida, who last month withdrew from consideration as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s attorney general.
“Are you OK, Matt?” Carvey asked Sherman. “You look a little surprised to be here.”
“No, this is just how my face is,” Sherman answered.
Observing that the House of Representatives had recently voted to block the release of an ethics investigation alleging Gaetz’s involvement in “sexual peccadilloes,” Carvey said, “You better repent, Matt. There’s only 17 days left in Christmas.”
“You had me at 17,” Sherman said.
Carvey’s second guest was Hunter Biden, played by a fellow “S.N.L.” alum David Spade. “I haven’t been here in a while. I’ve been laying low a little bit,” said Spade, who last hosted the program in 2005.
“At least you haven’t been doing a podcast,” Carvey answered. (He and Spade are, in fact, co-hosts of an “S.N.L. “-themed podcast, “Fly on the Wall.”) “Easy there, Church Woman,” Spade replied.
Reflecting on the controversy over President Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter, Spade said, “They singled me out just because of who I am. Much like Trump, they went after me because of my last name. And all the illegal things I did.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” Carvey said. (This was the Church Lady’s catchphrase, the kind “S.N.L.” used to mint by the thousands in the 1980s.)
The segment’s last guest was Juan Soto (Marcello Hernández), the highly-sought-after Major League Baseball free agent.
Asked who he planned to sign with, Hernández said, “Right now, I hope the Yankees make me the best offer.”
Carvey said, “Well as a Christian, I have to ask you, why not spend your time and money helping the needy and the less fortunate?”
“You’re right,” Hernandez answered. “Maybe I sign with the Mets.”
Movie we’d actually like to see of the week
Roughly a year ago, movie musicals like “Wonka,” “The Color Purple” and “Mean Girls” were taking pains to hide the fact that their characters — gasp! — actually sang in these films. But now that more recent releases like “Wicked” and “Moana 2” have been harmonizing all the way to the bank, other movies are trying to get in on the act, like Mescal’s hit sequel “Gladiator II,” which is decidedly not a musical.
That hasn’t stopped “S.N.L.” from adding its own songs to “Gladiator II” in this parody trailer that features Kenan Thompson in Denzel Washington’s role of Macrinus, singing that “there’s no place like Rome”; and a rap battle between Mescal and Mikey Day that also lampoons the rhyming style of the Broadway composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, a one-time “S.N.L.” host. Et tu, “Saturday Night Live?”
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, riffed on the search for the gunman who killed the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
Jost began:
This week, New York City officials sent a tough message on crime: if you shoot somebody in the middle of the street, you better get on your bike, hop on a bus, and get the heck out of here, mister. The manhunt continues for the assassin who gunned down the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare on Wednesday. And it really says something about America that a guy was murdered in cold blood and the two main reactions were, “Yeah, well, health care stinks.” And also, “Girl, that shooter hot.” It’s also so crazy that the shooting happened three blocks from here in broad daylight and the guy just bicycled away. Probably because they have every cop in the city guarding our Christmas tree. The N.Y.P.D. now believes the suspect left the city on a bus from Port Authority. Uh, thanks, but a Port Authority passenger who looks like a murderer actually widens the search.
Che continued:
New York City police say that they were able to get the smiling picture of the suspect after the man apparently was caught on camera at a local hostel, flirting with a female employee. Whose name has been reported as Lucky S. Bechalive.
It ain’t him, babe, of the week
Can Timothée Chalamet deliver a compelling performance as Bob Dylan? We’ll have to wait for the release of this month’s biopic “A Complete Unknown” to find out. In the meantime, we already know that Chloe Fineman does a hilarious impersonation of Chalamet and James Austin Johnson does an eerily accurate rendition of modern-day Dylan. That’s reason enough for this sketch, which imagines the young actor and the seasoned musician meeting awkwardly at a red carpet premiere for the film. (A BuzzFeed host played by Heidi Gardner promptly asks Johnson if he had “a brat summer,” to which Johnson can only reply, in his best Dylan voice, “What?”) If rock royalty is your thing, the sketch also features Andrew Dismukes as Bruce Springsteen and Mescal as Bono, who, in league with Johnson, all prove to be strangely knowledgeable on the subject of “Gilmore Girls.”
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