And Your Host…
In the run-up to her third Saturday Night Live hosting gig, Ariana Grande donned some vintage Bob Mackie to pay homage to sketch pioneer Carol Burnett while making the not-ridiculous case that she’s got the sketch comedy chops to at least make a great host. In her previous appearance, the pop/movie star showed off a genuinely thrilling blend of stage presence and versatility in one of those SNL showcases that suggested she could have been an SNL cast stalwart if the chips had fallen a different way. (Sure, she’d be about a hundredth as rich…)
Sadly, this third outing was a lot less assured—on SNL‘s part. Grande, a hard working performer since her pre-Nickelodeon days, might have come up through the child actor grist mill, but all that twinkling on demand has made her shine on a live stage. It’s easy to scoff at the ubiquity—the show paused for Grande ads for Wicked: For Good and NBC’s Olympics coverage—but not the talent. Would that this ninth episode of the season (and third live show in a row) could have overcome the end-of-year raggedness.
Grande’s monologue was a song (not a shocker) about not knowing what to get that one cousin’s boyfriend you only see at the holidays, a cute premise better suited for a holiday-themed “Back Home Ballers” or “Do It on My Twin Bed“-style music video. Don’t get me wrong—there was more effort put into this than most modern monologues, but apart from setting the Bowen Yang farewell tour tone, it wasn’t especially strong. (Grande did seemingly bury Domingo for good, although Marcello was given a few funny bits here in recompense.)
The rest of the show was a lot like that. A lot of residual goodwill (for Bowen, for the holidays, in recognition of a half-season’s worth of nerve-shredding hard work) buoying a raft of mostly mediocre Christmas material. Grande herself wasn’t given anything as juicy as her charades mom or that dynamite film noir sketch opposite James Austin Johnson and Andrew Dismukes. She busted out her Celine Dion again and donned her castrati costume to pipingly introduce Cher’s second number, but there wasn’t enough this time around for her to truly show what she could do.
The Best and the Rest
The Best: The support group for those Elves on Shelves gets the top spot, mainly by Christmas default. Up front, I’m not thrilled that the first sketch of the night relied on voice modulation for its elf-y protagonists. Maybe it was a tribute to the night’s musical guest, but in the storied history of SNL elf sketches (and it is storied), electronically enhances pipsqueak voices weren’t needed to land the jokes. All that aside, this one was pretty adorable. And dark. Adorably dark, as the inherent flaws of this genuinely creepy holiday tradition/marketing gimmick are written all over the stunned faces and broken limbs of Santa’s little spies.
The juxtaposition of silly elf names (Waffles Sillymuffin, Giggleboobs, etc) with the horrifying trauma their surveillance missions have put them through gets consistent laughs. Jeremy Culhane’s elf, stuck all over with gum and Legos, shrieks about being lost in the couch cushions, the elf mandate to remain Toy Story still seeing him vainly trying to make friends with abandoned AAA remote batteries.
Jane Wickline’s elf has a Phoebe Cates-in-Gremlins style tale of having to silently watch an injured old man writhe in agony for nine hours. Poor Mikey Day’s elf was adopted by an ASU frat, the debauched poses of the photos he’s brought causing Kam Patterson’s elf to explode in a cloud of naughty-thoughts confetti. (Elves also cry Skittles according to sketch lore.)
Grande gets her best acting opportunity as the elf whose tangle with the family cat sees her moaning (in chipmunk voice) about just having to “let it happen” as she was torn in two, finally crying, “I just wish elves could die!” while hugging her own disembodied legs on the sofa beside her. And don’t get Kenan’s candy cane-vaping elf started on pets, as his journey through his family’s dog’s digestive system has left him understandably grumpy. (Kenan Thompson railing against “that summanabitch dog” is worth all the effort.) On a better show, this would be some middle-tier holiday fun, but tonight it’s the top of the pile.
The Worst: An SNL holiday episode occasionally coasts on the expected jokes like a particularly gift-light sleigh. There, the agreement between show and audience, “we’re all just here to have a nice Christmas goof and then we’re out of here,” props up sketches that otherwise have no valid comic existence. Case in point, the Love Is Blind sketch. It’s not that there’s much left to be wrung out of the reality dating show rag at this point (especially this misbegotten thing) but the joke here is that Grande’s contestant has been unwittingly falling in love with the Grinch. Because, Christmas.
Are there good jokes to be made here? I mean, in the sense that great comedy can come from literally nothing, sure. But this one just trots out Mikey Day in his Grinch suit and pretty much calls it a night. (Grande’s aborted “What the f…?” response to the reveal is repeated twice, for extra live TV standards-bait.)
I do admit that Day has some fun—I liked the way he playfully twiddled his long Grinch fingers over Grande’s arm. And if there’s going to be a joke about the Grinch’s seemingly absent genitals, at least some thought went into making the explanation as weird as “it’s a corkscrew, it’s in my butt, and it hurts her and me.” (He also calls out the cultural insensitivity of referring to him by the insulting nickname those Whos in Whoville bestowed upon him—his name’s Neil, people.)
But the old SNL formula where everyone points out the absurdity of an absurd joke with confused/disgusted looks on their faces is what all this was leading up to and, combined with the disposability of the reality show premise and the abrupt ending, it all adds up to not much.
The Rest: If you’re going to do a Home Alone joke in 2025, you’ve got to have a good reason. Is watching Kevin’s array of Jigsaw-worthy booby traps bloodily dispatch his entire returning family in gory detail justification enough for the 35-year-old bit? Well, Grande makes a cute Macauley Culkin (she’s got the dewy-eyed li’l guy’s reunion face down pat), and the resultant mayhem undercuts the joyful season with the grisly gusto of previous SNL holiday movie pre-tapes, a proud tradition of cutting through the treacle. The joke that Kevin McCallister’s facility for maiming is a serious serial killer red flag has been done to death, so it’s up to the sketch’s buckets of moderately inventive Rube Goldberg gore to push the joke over the top. The twist tries to undo some of the horror, but we all know what we saw.
When a former alum has already done a gloriously straight-faced parody of that David Bowie-Bing Crosby Christmas song alongside his comedy running partner, referencing it for a new sketch had better be better than yet another sampling of quick-hit impressions.
That was my takeaway from the otherwise serviceable holiday duets pre-tape, a makeup-heavy mixed bag of the sort of “everybody gets a turn” pieces usually centered around unlikely movie auditions and the like. As the opening narration alludes to the original unlikely song pairing, “We here at Peacock thought, ‘Let’s just to that!'” And so they did.
Ranking the barely-there impressions, I still hear James Austin Johnson’s majestically on-point Bob Dylan blurting “Relinquish me, Buzzfeed!,” so I’m on board there as he mumbled alongside Grande’s full-throated Katy Perry. Sarah Sherman does a small-sample decent Kate Bush. (Justice for Yoko Ono, though.)
Marcello’s laconic Bad Bunny paired nicely with Dismukes’ bombastically folksy Bruce Springsteen. I liked the runner about one-flip pony Benson Boone eating it all over the tree-strewn set. And Jane Wickline got to send herself up by duetting with Lil Jon on one of her low-key keyboard ditties. The real killer came from Grande (as Celine Dion) and JAJ’s Andrea Bocelli, both in glorious voice extolling the joys of Hanukkah. As with a lot of these holiday deals tonight, it’s tough to work up any animus at the slightness of it all, even if the piece was more of a makeup department triumph than a writing one.
And one more Christmas sketch, why not? Seeing Kenan decked out in a styling red suit and white beard in a courtroom sets us up. He’s Santa on trial? Or a fake Santa? Or a guy, in this case, caught stealing sacks of women’s panties and shoes who, representing himself, sings a Black Santa-themed version of Cher’s “Believe.”
I kept expecting this one to take off—in an unexpected direction, with surprising twists—but nope. Kenan’s just a guy who likes ladies underthings and whose underwhelming musical defense immediately sways judge Ariana Grande, leading to a triumphant line-dance where everybody (extras included) strut off the stage in happy holiday unison. Like a lot of tonight’s sketches, the obvious end-of-term relief and Christmas cheer evident in everybody’s demeanor makes it hard (but not impossible) to get too crotchety.
Weekend Update Update
Look, Weekend Update has suckered me before. The idea that Michael Che sprung the annual joke swap on co-anchor Colin Jost on-air is too dishy a live TV prospect to take on their say-so. (I’m still pissed about the faked spontaneity of Dr. Wenowdis.) The joke swap is such a click-grabber of a bit that it’s nuts to think the show was not doing one, but there was Jost, blushing and stammering and repeating more than once that the segment wasn’t in dress rehearsal, so who am I to be all cynical? So let’s just all, for now, accept that this was an act of Stefon-esque live cue card f**kery and enjoy.
I’m of two minds about this sure-fire audience favorite bit. On one side, it’s the natural and explosively funny end game of the decade-long Jost-Che mismatched buddy comedy, a chance for the preppy white guy and the wiseass black guy to do an on-air roast of their perceived public personas. On the other, it’s an exercise in deliberate button-pushing that trots right up to “just saying what we’re all thinking” edgelord comedy.
In the usual joke-off, Jost makes Che implicate himself as a supposed deadbeat sex maniac and woman-hater, while Jost is made to channel every privileged white d-bag bigotry he’s supposedly harboring behind his SNL liberalism. That maybe there’s a touch of the true in some of the pals’ digs at each other (or their on-air character) lends the segment its bite, even as the recurring predictability of the schtick dulls the teeth.
Deprived of comebacks this time, it’s the Colin Jost piñata show, a vein of Update comedy the show has lived on for a long time. The Jost jokes harp on the same strings: Jost as secret racist, Jost was a molested altar boy, and Jost as opportunistic leech on the side of movie star wife. (Here doubled down with Che’s assertion that Jost is just waiting to trade Scarlett Johansson in for Wednesday‘s Jenna Ortega.) As for the supposed surprise of it all, I’ll wait for the next tell-all, but this got the job done.
[Note: in a LateNighter exclusive, apparently everybody at SNL is holding firm that this was a genuine, live goof on Colin Jost.]
None of these shenanigans left much time for newsworthy jokes. Nothing about Trump’s plan to start a ludicrous war or the White House lifting SNL content to prop up its ethnic cleansing campaign in defiance of copyright. The Epstein files got a couple of fleeting jokes (the House of Cards/Spacey connection was news to me, but checks out), RFK’s plan to strip gender-affirming care turned into a Castaway reference(?), and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ damning revelations about the gaggle of sociopaths running the country turned into Jost’s preemptive joke about Che being a drunk. Gotta get to the fun stuff.
Kam Patterson’s been largely absent of late but this Update piece as Che’s 12-year-old nephew isn’t the way back in. The joke that the overly adorable tyke is plotting a violent Christmas assault on Santa’s house (and wife) is tonally jarring (bet the over on how many times Patterson says “bitch”) and Patterson isn’t, as yet, a confident enough performer to steamroller it into something palatable. There just isn’t enough of a joke beyond the abrupt switch from cloying child to vengeance-bound home invader. The whole piece just feels icky.
Recurring Sketch Report
Bowen’s departure brought back the always welcome Aidy Bryant, even if the pair’s trend spotter characters have never registered with me. I’m with Che basically, who addresses the catty duo’s hot-or-not holiday-themed pronouncements by noting, “I still don’t understand who you guys are or what you do.”
In the outsized characters making snap judgements Weekend Update field, they’re no Jebidiah Atkinson, is what I’m saying. This was all an excuse for Aidy and Bowen to smoosh their beaming faces together and be cute, which, hey, I’m not going to complain much. I miss Aidy, I’m about to miss Bowen, and if these two cuddle-buddies get one last chance to riff vaguely about Christmas trends, then so be it.
Mainly because there SNL has gotten so much use out of that dance/acting studio set, I’m putting the dance class sketch in the recurring category even if I can’t 100 percent recall if Marcello Hernandez has taught a class there. Still, the whole vibe of sticking it to artsy posers who adopt a know-it-all air because they’ve choreographed three Jardiance commercials is awfully familiar.
The form does allow for some giggle-induing swanning about, even more so when you’ve got an irregularly applied soul patch for instructors Marcello and Grande to start swapping between them. This iteration tries to set out into a bit more absurd territory, although only intermittently and with intermittent success.
As someone who complains (a lot) about SNL‘s reliance on the “look at those weirdos being weirdos” structure of too many sketches, having the sketch turn into a dance-off between two teams of loons should shut me up. And yet here I complain, since abandoning the one-team-breaks-normality template requires a better balancing act than we get here. We expect the teachers to be arch and physical in their trim leotards while the class acts bewildered, so when student Ashley Padilla shows off her preferred dance move that approximates her favorite part of pooping, it’s at least novel if not especially satisfying formally. I did appreciate Jeremy Culhane’s student futilely attempting to refute the “how you dance reveals how you make love” maxim—it’s the “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” that sells it.
Political Comedy Report
JAJ’s Donald Trump had the entire cold open tonight. Normally, SNL parcels out Johnson’s still-stellar Trump impression via ensemble sketches or absurdist interruptions, but here it’s all Trump as he addresses the nation. JAJ’s ramping up the doddering as the actual Trump’s obvious decline proceeds apace, this Trump’s string of rambling confessions emerging as just one piece of the unraveling patchwork that is his mind.
There’s a futile normalcy to Saturday Night Live‘s political comedy in these increasingly dire days, an insulated assurance that this is just another silly president with his peccadillos and his quirks. You know, rather than a literal traitor, wannabe tyrant, blatant crook, and adjudicated rapist desperately and unsuccessfully using the federal government in all its branches to launder his filthy participation in perhaps the most egregious child sex scandal the country has ever seen. Complaining that Saturday Night Live isn’t rising to meet the moment even as said power-mad creep wages war against anyone who dares make fun of him is to pray to a comic deity you debunked a long time ago, so I’ll just say that JAJ is a very good impressionist.
The public service aspect of SNL‘s Trump material—to simply list off some of the horrible stuff he and his white supremacist, Christian nationalist cronies are up to—at least emerges in Johnson’s performance with a coherent little snap. Apart from the doddering (“Cross to tree,” his Trump narrates at one point), this Trump implicates himself with a series of “what are you gonna do about it?” confessional asides that paint a compelling portrait of a man so used to getting away with unthinkable crimes that he no longer feels the need to even pretend to hold back.
His Christmas message speaks of the Nativity, but with Middle Eastern kings bringing planes and golf course deals instead of frankincense. Mostly, the rant is about the most recent release of some heavily redacted Epstein files, with JAJ’s Trump musing of his former wingman in (alleged) child rape, “Terrible man and I didn’t know him and I liked him a lot.” Again, as character work goes, the conception of Trump both as lifelong predatory crook and present-day addled old coot reveling in his cultists’ willingness to write him a moral blank check isn’t terrible…as far as it goes.
Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings
Bye, Bowen. I’ll miss you, you beautiful weirdo.
James Austin Johnson (might have had the makeup department to thank tonight, but he’s carrying this show as much as anyone is at this point. And I think that’s a good thing. JAJ’s not the cheap seats belly laugh guy that usually steps up, but seeing a character actor enliven a few sketches a week is a welcome change. (Apparently he appeared in his 300th sketch this week, so good on him.)
Ashely Padilla’s been right there along with JAJ, but has slipped back into the pack the past few weeks. I’m not worried—like Johnson, she’s got the acting skills to bring a sketch character into immediate focus and a willingness to go for it.
Almost at the halfway point of Season 51, it’s not looking as rosy for featured players Tommy Brennan and Kam Patterson. Veronika Slowikoska has shown flashes (and can sing). Jane Wickline continues to doodle off in her own little weird world. Ben Marshall seems like he should have made more of a mark considering his experience. Of the newbies, Jeremy Culhane’s made the biggest impression, delivering a handful of admittedly lower-key winners. Hang tough, everybody. I’m rooting for you.
10-To-Oneland Report
After a raggedy final show of 2025, it was only fitting that Bowen Yang’s farewell was a little ragged, too. His half of the “Bells Will Be Ringing” duet with pal Ariana Grande was off key. That egg nog machine was clearly supposed to get more malfunctioning laughs. And the self-referential-ness of it all overwhelmed any semblance of a sketch. But I’m not a Neil Grinch.
Sure, I’m a cynical lifelong fan of Saturday Night Live in all its contradictory forms. But I know—or imagine I know—how much the experience of joining, and then leaving, the show means to a performer, and Yang certainly earned the hell out of this final showcase.
LateNighter‘s Bill Carter ably eulogized Bowen in preparation for his last show, but I’ll add that Yang kicked over barriers that shouldn’t have still been a thing, and became a star. His line here about owing whatever success he achieves hereafter to his time on SNL is the sort of thing people say in this situation, but I got emotional along with Bowen—those barriers to success and acceptance for a queer Asian actor aren’t gone, and he’s fully aware that this exit from the show that launched him is hardly a sure thing.
All the backstage airing of grievances was done with requisite good humor and (mostly) forgiveness. Sure, some of what Bowen Yang brought to SNL—as he and Grande bantered— was great, some was rotten, and a lot no doubt got cut. And if SNL‘s “white, 100-year-old audience” (according to Che on Update) was sometimes resistant to the unabashedly, joyfully, unapologetically gay stuff, well, as Yang’s airport egg nog-slinger put it, “It’s not for everyone but the people who like it are my kind of people.” Other goodbyes have featured more of an all-hands on deck farewell, but I can’t imagine Yang would have it any other way than to set up a Lorne appearance only to reveal that Cher is his real boss, singing him off with the blessing that he’s “perfect for me.”
The show will go on. That’s what it does. But Bowen helped form much of what this iteration of Saturday Night Live is, and the hole he’s leaving is going to feel a lot bigger than some people imagine.
Stray Observations
Noting more to say about tonight’s R.I.P. card, as third-ever SNL host and all-around mensch Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were murdered by their troubled son, Nick. If you or a loved one is undergoing mental health and/or substance abuse crises and you need help, call 988lifeline.org/.
Because Kenan is cool, he’s the one cast member who tossed his prop socks into the audience at the end of the monologue song. Enjoy those socks, you lucky audience member!
Cher is 79 (same as Trump), and if her reliance on auto-tune suggests necessity rather than artistry and her wheeling out “Run Run Rudolph” for her second number felt like it could have come from a 1970’s Cher variety show, I’m not going to do anything but marvel.
Episode Grade: A nog-abetted, Bowen-saluting B-Minus.
Up Next: Everybody rest up—our next episode isn’t until January 17 when we kick off 2026 with Finn Wolfhard and A$AP Rocky. Out of those two names, how can “Finn Wolfhard” sound more made up?
