Matt Damon Helps an Oddball SNL Find Its Swing

And Your Host…

Up top, I’m giving myself an up-top—I mean, Matt Damon was going to bring back his drunken bro-fascist SCOTUS hack Brett Kavanaugh, no question. It’s rare for a host to leap right into the cold open, but for three-timer Damon, his lauded impression of the accused sex creep and blackout drunk jurist was an obvious audience-grabber. Especially since the highest court in the land voted 6-3 this week that appallingly racist Jim Crow voter disenfranchisement is back, baby.

And yeah, since Damon himself monologued about it, it is sort of weird that he’s only hosted three times. It feels like the Damon-Affleck hosting bloc had a stronger presence over the years, but the Boston best buds only can boat a collective eight hosting gigs, along with a handful of cameos.

As it is, Damon is a committed dramatic actor with a mischievous streak, one of the traditionally most fruitful combos in the rotating host arsenal. Tonight wasn’t a home run, but there was, once again this season, some nice, offbeat writing involved, and Damon himself gave his signature all. Call it a batting practice double off the Green Monster.

There was some cue card-ery, but I’m never too harsh on a live host needing training wheels from time to time if they seem to be into the enterprise, and in his last sketch, Damon truly impressed by matching Sarah Sherman with some rapid-fire tongue twisting.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: I definitely spotted Season 51 MVP Ashley Padilla in the goodnights, scuttling my suspicion that she was absent from the live show this week. Only appearing in a couple of (excellent) pre-tapes, Padilla yet stole the show once again, cementing her place as number one on the call sheet going into next season.

Of the pair, I’ll take the kitty litter commercial by a whisker. Exploring the comic possibilities of that fancy cat dirt that purports to diagnose your li’l pal’s pee, the ad put me in mind of the similarly stellar pet food commercial where Cecily Strong and Seth Rogen’s belated switch to pricey dog chow can’t wallpaper over their buried feelings of inadequacy, as this one likewise dug into the world of designer pet products and the people who use them.

Or do they, as James Austin Johnson’s peerlessly deadpan unseen narrator continues to intimate that the unexpected blue coloring of the used littler means that someone in a couple’s placid suburban home is whizzing in the cat box. As the couple, Padilla and Damon commit completely to the reality of the situation, making each successive comic beat an uneasy hoot, Johnson’s all-seeing (even in the couple’s bedroom) narrator driving the premise with exquisite patience and timing.

It’s the perk of having someone like Damon as host that comic tension and actual tension can twist around each other, and Padilla matches him at every turn. As accusations fly (“I’m a woman—I’d have to squat so low!”) and the pitchman ratchets up the suspicion with every chipper voiceover, the ad becomes a tight little domestic travesty of commercial domesticity.

The Worst: Season 51 has been largely free from outright stinkers. Which isn’t the compliment it seems. There’s a leveling competence to the writing and performing this season that never lets the show rise too high or sink too low. Am I complaining that there generally hasn’t been a raggedy, scraped from the dustbin bummer each week? Sort of, yeah. SNL without sweat-soaked failures is SNL feeling too comfy.

My least favorite sketch tonight was a B-minus bit of character absurdity, as Kenan Thompson, Marcello Hernandez, and Damon played a trio of tough-talking neighborhood dudes whose shared lament about everybody acting so tough these days gradually reveals how their own bluster has fared in recent conflicts. Answer: not well, if you consider Kenan being forced to hold a dirty quarter in his mouth for all eternity and Damon getting a wheelchair-bound centenarian’s air hose stuffed up his backside at the supermarket.

There’s a loony escalation culminating when Hernandez brusquely relates the time his own confrontation with a neighborhood tough saw him “captured,” crate-trained, and eventually betrayed for laughs once his obedience had been secured through months of Stockholm syndrome and regular gummy bear rewards. Kenan likewise explains in measured parcels how the guy who kicked his ass in church was the priest, at his daughter’s wedding. The gentle jabbing of performative maleness is a little hazy, but the details pile up in the guys’ never-wavering tough guy talk in admirable silliness.

The Rest: So where are we on the spit take as a comic premise, post-Covid? (Note: We are not post-Covid.) Honestly, that’s all I could think about in the first post-monologue sketch, a single-joke take on those American Godzilla-verse movies where naval commander Damon just can’t stop swilling stuff into his mouth before radioman Mikey Day delivers some distressing monster news.

I’m sure everybody followed some sort of protocols and all, but I found my pandemic queasiness battling the sketch’s intended explosive comic queasiness for supremacy as Damon spat first coffee, then smoothie, then yogurt all over the game Day. Apart from the anxiety all this fluid-swapping provoked, this is one of those big, knee-slapper SNL gross-out sketches that you’re either into or you’re not.

I sort of was, as the sketch (I imagine a Day-Streeter Seidell joint) made a point of having Damon’s no-nonsense captain call for each successive mouthful of ammo with amusing elaborateness. (“Can I get, like, a thick green juice that I like.”) Day mostly maintains his straight man composure, although, being Day, he can’t help but break in to explain the simple premise amidst all the goopy goings-on.

Still, there’s a knowing dumbness to watching Damon spoon several heaping mouthfuls of “runny, lumpy yogurt” into his maw while Day and the audience await the big, stupid laugh we know is coming. The final, four-way spitter could have been timed better, and I have a feeling that the final Godzilla reveal was intended to hose down Day once more instead of sputtering out in some CGI fire-spittle, but here’s to everybody feeling okay tomorrow.

The other Padilla-led pre-tape was the show’s nod toward Mother’s Day this year (not counting Marcello Hernandez’s dishy mom getting her flowers in the monologue). In Mom: The Movie, there’s “no conflict, suspense, or dramatic tension,” only the central character’s three grown kids happily moving home and showering her with praise when not doing a family conga line in the impeccable living room. (Oh, and Matt Damon as himself is her husband, whose idea of “going upstairs” involves a whole-family mom fashion show.)

For Mother’s Day, if you’ll indulge me, a story. My mom once went to see the Whitey Bolger biopic Black Mass on a rare trip to the theater. She just wasn’t a movie person, but a Massachusetts lifetime of listening to the exploits of the notorious Boston gangster piqued her interest enough to sit through the entire, R-rated mob flick. Asked about it afterward, mom complained that the movie—about an infamous , murderous gangster—was violent and too full of swear words.

I am smiling like a goof as I write this. Mom died a few years ago, and it’s one of my favorite (of a million) stories about her—even considering the inevitable subject matter of a movie she paid to see, she was disappointed that it was such an unpleasant experience. So Padilla’s mom glorying in a demographically targeted film where an aging suburban mom’s every meager wish comes true in all its Nancy Meyers beige-ness lands for me on this Mother’s Day morning. Padilla gleefully exclaiming, “Ahhh, that’s two!” upon her daughter’s announcement of twins channels some essential mom-ness with all the love in the world. Why can’t everything just be nice?

“Weekend Update” Update

Here’s where I’d state my objection that clever zingers about real-world atrocities only carry the weight of the comics’ convictions. But Jost and Che barely roused themselves to even feign giving much of a crap this week.

War, genocide, fascism, the downfall of participatory American democracy? Eh, let’s do some Spirit Airlines jokes. (To be fair, you have to get those last licks in on the failed budget airline.) The guys are good at their jobs. Their lines are quick and clever. When they apply their talents with conviction (or the semblance thereof), their style can be genuinely impactful. (Thinking of Che’s “fire hose” punchline about SCOTUS’ VRA-killing ruling last week.)

This wasn’t one of those weeks, though. A kickoff joke about shameless sycophant Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to a pope whose forthright condemnation of Rubio’s boss’ policies has exposed the cultish nature of MAGA was only there for a “Marco Polo” running gag. It was a funny gag—Jost and Che clearly enjoy getting loose and cracking each other up almost as much as we’re expected to. But there was so little of substance in the fake news tonight that it felt like some schools-out end-of-semester goofing from a couple of guys who are over it all. So Che joked about spiraling FBI head and incompetently drunken lackey Kash Patel’s funny eyes and un-convicted, spider-bit white supremacist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse got a fat joke.

(Oh, and Che got to mock women’s sports again, because that’s his thing.)

Of the three desk pieces tonight, I’m sad to say that Mikey Day and Marcello Hernandez’s dynamite-strapped “kamikaze dolphins” (based on a hopefully ridiculous Iran war rumor) can’t measure up to the inspired silliness of their dueling emojis of a few weeks ago. (Here’s to my lovely wife for spotting Day’s bobbing movements as the swaying of his “aerial tramway!” costume, something I’m ashamed I missed.)

Here, Day and Hernandez are just as committed to the boisterous bit, with their costumed dolphins showing off some synchronized tail moves and dropping a lot of dumb dolphin puns. (They’ve been promised “72 sturgeons” in heaven once they complete their suicide bombing. You get it.) I’m enjoying Mikey Day’s mini-renaissance on “Update” this season, and it’s good to see Marcello have another decent showing after getting lost in the weeds for much of the season, but this one was just okay.

Recurring Sketch Report

Jeremy Culhane’s low-key emergence in his freshman season continues with a return of his uncanny Tucker Carlson on “Update.” Like James Austin Johnson’s Trump, it’s a meticulous, inspired impression of a true dirtball, aided in Culhane’s case by the freedom to pile on a dirtball sliding further into dirtball irrelevance. (No matter how hard the legacy media continues to prop up the internet-only, too-nuts-even-for-Fox self-promoter as he tries to sort-of distance himself from the sinking Trump.)

Carlson’s performative ire (punctuated uncannily by Culhane’s refrains of “What are we doing?, and “That’s the goal now” and a soulless cackle) fixes on this week’s Met Gala, his manufactured outrage attempting to conflate pampered celebrities playing dress-up with the end of white civilization, or something. For such a likable performer, Culhane can truly make you want to punch his Carlson right in the smirking kisser.

Culhane, freed from JAJ’s responsibility of channeling the prime threat to actual human civilization, can play around, taking his time with his Carlson’s signature confused looks and even more confused conspiracy rants. Sure, Carlson is still a duplicitous bigot and shameless clout-chaser, but at least he’s doing his schtick from the margins these days.

The online consensus seems to be that Jane Wickline is bad. I maintain that the admittedly unconventional Wickline is good. We are at an impasse.

In her latest “Update” keyboard ditty, Wickline’s purposefully tuneless tune is introduced as her apology for always being late. In practice, it’s a funny, deadpan screw you to everybody who won’t get off her back about it. There’s a long tradition of people screwing around musically on “Update,” where all pretense of newsworthiness is pitched in favor of an offbeat performer doing their thing.

And I’m here for Wickline—the single joke is that the unassuming Wickline belligerently asserts her right to show up, as the chorus states, 40 minutes late “with an ice cream cone.” Meanwhile, her annoyed friends, with their anxieties about missing movies and foolish ideas that friendship means more than scrolling your phone for a half hour get taken down in some amusingly offhand but specific retorts. It’s not a belly laugh, but it’s not meant to be. Wickline’s brand of weirdness works for me. And provides an element the show needs. So there.

Political Comedy Report

Here’s where Damon’s Kavanaugh meets up with his Trump regime fellow drunks in Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth and Aziz Ansari’s reprise of lat week’s Kash Patel. I’ll get to the performances in a second, but there’s a fundamental flaw here we need to talk about first.

Like I said/bragged, Damon’s Kavanaugh was a natural fit. The Republican-appointed conservatives of the Supreme Court this week destroyed the Voting Rights Act, essentially saying that, since racism isn’t a thing, protections against racial gerrymandering of voting districts aren’t necessary. Cue literally every Southern state drooling over themselves to do away with any Black-majority voting districts while another right-wing Supreme Court (a state one this time) said that the voter-approved Virginia gerrymander meant to counter GOP voter suppression was illegal. The hypocrisy is so blatant, the bigotry and fascist power-grubbing so egregious that no live comedy sketch series worth a damn could possibly ignore the latest existential threat to democracy in favor of a trio of cheap seats impressions centered on the subjects’ side hustle in drunken boorishness. You see where I’m coming from.

There’s a nod toward Kavanaugh and friends’ blatantly partisan and Trump-fluffing ruling, as Damon’s Kavanaugh holds up the new, tortuously gerrymandered Tennessee district that just eliminated that state’s one blue bloc. But the joke is that Kavanaugh was trying to draw a circle as part of his DUI checkpoint before the sketch settles happily into Saturday Night Live‘s groove of audience-baiting applause lines and celebrity mugging.

Is there still comic wine to be made from the fact that three of the most powerful Trump-allied people in the country are noted meathead booze-hounds with middle school petulant anger streaks. Sure, but that’s all SNL really gets into. The three actors are amusing enough—Jost’s admiring aside, “That’s a shape!” upon seeing Kavanaugh’s failed drawing and Ansari breaking the fourth wall to note that Patel’s personalized FBI director hooch is actually a real thing got the laughs they were going for.

But here’s the thing—SNL continues to treat cold open political sketches as the superficial impression-fests that have served in the past. We’re into some dark and uncharted territory (the GOP is already moving the pieces to nullify the expected Blue Wave by literally cancelling elections in several states), and treating these three admittedly ludicrous targets with the same old schtick leaves so much on the table satirically that this is another cold open shoving the show toward utter irrelevance.

I’m sure the sketch will get the morning-after clicks—a couple of ringers will do that, and viewers are conditioned to count this broad glibness as a real “that got ’em!” targeted strike. But Jost’s now-ubiquitous Hegseth will glance off the actual blowhard SecDef like a spitball. The current regime is literally targeting late-night comedians for elimination, one-by-one. I’d say SNL should be prepared for lapdog Project 2025 FCC chair Brendan Carr to come after the show next, but with this being the level of easily shrugged-off satire, it’s likely not necessary.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Padilla. JAJ. Culhane. There’s your nucleus for Season 52. All very good actors playing around in the sketch form.

Marcello Hernandez is bouncing back.

Pick out some souvenirs now, Tommy Brennan and Kam Patterson.

10-to-Oneland Report

Now this was a 10-to-One sketch. After a few shoehorned-in filmed pieces closing out the last few shows, Damon and Sarah Sherman shined as a couple of bickering marrieds in the high concept scene, “The Crumbling Marriage of Two Auctioneers.”

Somebody’s weirdo idea being performed at full throttle in the last slot of the night is an SNL institution, at least on a good night. So much of the historical “post-‘Update’ SNL is a dumping ground” griping misunderstood the fact that, once the plugs have been made, the bills paid, and the celebrity impressions packed away, Lorne sometimes hands over four minutes right at the end for some nerds to get strange and conceptual. (Of course, some years the last half of the show is just a dumping ground.)

Here, the simple joke (married auctioneers marital woes emerge in rapid-fire auction-speak) isn’t embroidered upon, it just is. Sherman and Damon make a fine match, each having clearly rehearsed the hell out of their disillusioned couple’s ratcheting patter. (“Can I get a smile, can I get a hi, can I get a hello?” the caught-cheating Damon speeds through his wheedling diversions.)

With the kids and JAJ’s on-the-make neighbor (“We can do it upside-down, on all fours, from the front, from the back, from the side…”) all chiming in with the same rat-a-tat delivery, the sketch never pauses for a breath until the silly-sweet ending.

And I’ll actually break format to toss the next-to-last sketch in the same stylistic bucket. Damon plays an awkward substitute teacher, whose last-day attempt to bond with his sullen students through some boom box-aided classroom dancing goes about as well as could be expected.

What marks this out as the second 10-to-Oneland sketch of the night is the students’ commitment to patient silence in the collective face of Damon’s dad-style gyrations and dogged attempts to call out each completely uninterested student by name. A premise is a starting point, not a destination, and the sketch makes its choices with deliberation and judgment as the kids (apart from a breaking Chloe Fineman at one point) maintain stone faces and Damon never wavers in his teacher’s increasingly desperate but never expressed panic at how terribly his palling-around is going.

There’s a punch line of sorts as one student commiserates with another over the reveal that Damon is his dad, but there too, it’s Andrew Dismukes’ resolute stillness in his misery over his father’s all-devouring humiliation that sells the bit.

Stray Observations

• I was going to get cranky about Noah Kahan rhyming “marry rich” and “ordinariness,” but after looking up “The Great Divide”‘s lyrics I see that he swapped out “ordinary sh*t” in deference to TV. Oh wait, that rhyme doesn’t work either. Man, you had two chances.
• I’d say that having an actor still under a sexual assault cloud caused SNL to soft-pedal the accused rapist status of both Hegseth and Kavanaugh, but the show probably wasn’t going there anyway.
• Yes, Tucker Carlson makes his home at least part time in my beloved Maine. Look, if we could toss him into a dingy and set him adrift off Monhegan Island without a paddle, we would.
• I don’t know what the style’s called, but Damon stripping those modest shoulder-holes from mom Padilla’s sensible top as a prelude to lovemaking is the sort of detail that makes a good sketch better.
• I wonder if Sarah Sherman is pissed that Day and Hernandez are getting all the good funny costume “Update” pieces recently.
• Episode Grade: Another oddball, writer-driven B.

Next Week: Season 51 closes out with legendary alum Will Ferrell and legendary all-around friend-of-Lorne Paul McCartney.