Best Actress Mikey Madison Rides an Assured and Funny SNL to Another Win

And Your Host…

SPOILERS AHOY for how Mikey Madison dies in two widely seen movies.

See, was that so hard? But I kid the Oscar-winning star of Anora, [Redacted], and [Redacted] for her mid-monologue montage. As Madison joked about her characters’ fiery demises, “I played two very different characters who were set on fire, and that’s range.” On the episode following (and preceding, as Madison showed up in the cold open), the award winner didn’t get to show quite as much range as expected, but she did slip seamlessly into everything from a mob wife to a doctor to Squidward—and that’s range.

The monologue was of the homey and gently silly variety, with Madison showing off her adorable/embarrassing theme costume with her childhood pony and her real-life brother at various times. The pole dancing swap-out gag with a suspiciously muscly double didn’t dispel rumors about the Anora star’s acrobatic skills, but was a nifty bit of live TV magic.

In her first hosting stint, Madison was more one of the gang, which is its own kind of SNL badge. Some big stars (and winning Best Actress mere weeks ago proves that conclusively) stride purposefully into their resulting Saturday Night Live gig with grand plans and are greeted with deferential starring vehicle sketches. Madison, as perhaps befits a very good young actor suddenly thrust into the A-list, appeared content to join en ensemble.

And this episode was an ensemble event in the best way. Plenty of writer’s sketches, heavy on premise and short on splashy, catchphrase comedy, and elevating some mid-tier talents with much-needed and very funny star turns, the episode was a varied, funny, and consistently enjoyable night/early morning. That Madison was mainly just part of the action was a good thing for all concerned.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: I’ll go with the jury selection sketch. (See below.)

The Worst: Sorry, Barry the Midwife, I did remember you a little too well. (See below.)

The Rest: There really weren’t many sketches at all that don’t slot into their own dedicated categories elsewhere, so here’s to Andrew Dismukes’ gangster dad for being one of the few originals. After an elaborate if quick setup (two cocaine-dealing mob sons lament that their aging dad gets shot waiting for one last big score), the single joke is revealed to be the dying old man’s one regret—that he never tried out his stand-up comedy.

It, like the godfather’s as-it-turns-out hacky observational zingers, is a bit of a letdown, sadly. I love Dismukes on SNL, his boyish torch-bearing of the freak flag formerly held aloft by fellow practitioners like Will Forte and Tim Robinson frequently injecting some very funny and much-needed weirdo energy to the week’s proceedings. This one has hints of that, with the graphically bleeding-out (hail to SNL‘s squib technicians) old guy’s “Make that make sense!” catchphrase applied to middling material about subway signs, walking birds, and turtles/tortoises. That Madison’s mob spouse is only happy to reveal that she’s her dying hubby’s writer is an escalation that never quite lifts, with the single joke of the sketch similarly underwhelming. It’s not terrible—James Austin Johnson’s grieving son does feel it necessary to offer up a little constructive criticism about the premise of his dad’s turtle joke at one point, and Dismukes pausing mid-dying to stand ruminatively at the same window he was shot through made me laugh. It’s minor Dismukes, is what I’m saying.

The music video about New Yorkers hopping into every huge line to sample whatever viral dining sensation is trending that week is fashioned around a Pet Shop Boys techno beat. (Anybody else miss Flight of the Conchords as much as I do?) Bowen Yang, Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, and Madison dutifully join interminable queues for cronuts and other portmanteau treats like “palad” (pizza salad), “frasta” (fries instead of pasta), and, most upsettingly, “choda,” (cheese soda, which, if it exists, don’t tell me).

These things are always exceptionally well produced, and the payoff that everyone’s response once they get to the front of each”big dumb line” is that the proffered item was “fine,” was, well, fine. I appreciated Bowen’s freakout at the prospect of another long wait for some nonsense, and that he was brought back by an inexplicable cameo from a singer who turned out to be a Jonas Brother (so proud I guessed the family if not the actual person), which carries on the SNL tradition of throwing cash at a silly premise for the sake of the joke.

We got a game show for the other non-repeater, with Madison hosting her own contest to ferret out the status of her new relationship in So, Like… What Are We? As with so many game show sketches, the title is the premise, although there are enough prickly laughs thanks to unfortunate, on-the-spot not-boyfriend Michael Longfellow. A lot of these sketches revel in the gag that contestants didn’t know what they were getting into, with here Longfellow (or “Justin from Hinge” as he’s known in Madison’s phone) forced to answer Madison’s understandable questions about why he hasn’t texted except to say “daddy hungry for butt” (all lower case) and why he refuses to post pictures of them together.

Longfellow is used a lot less than he should be this season, considering how his signature mischievous vibe can enliven a premise. (He makes a great evil game show host himself.) He shows that here, with his contestant shocked to discover that his bank account is being drained for not conforming to Madison’s expectations while yet being unable to overcome his unwillingness to give his occasionally booty call more. I get that game shows are a ready-made premise for sketch comedy—the rules are spelled out up top and the format’s familiarity allows for inspired escalation. But there’s not enough originality to this one apart from what Longfellow brings to the podium.

Please Don’t Destroy writers room sketches might warrant inclusion in the recurring sketch section, but as we’ll get to, that category is stuffed to bursting this week. The joke that the PDD guys confront the unexpected when that week’s host deigns to check into their tiny office has made for some great outings, but this one was just okay, as Martin, John, and Ben are faced with the inexplicable sight of Mikey Madison sleepily slouching onto their couch as a fully made-up Squidward.

Usually the guys are the butt of the joke, their supposed position as the trio of lowest-position nerds in the SNL pecking order mining their humiliation for self-referential laughs. Here they’re largely the straight men at first, as bemused as they are by the inexplicable casualness of their Oscar-winner guest nonchalantly explaining that she just woke up like this. Martin’s delivery of, “Why are you dressed as he?” is pitched with just the right note of understatement, and Madison rebuking John for joking about the time the “real” Squidward’s thighs swelled up from eating too many Krabby Patties elicits her own deadpan, “As a young woman in Hollywood maybe don’t comment on my thighs.”

But the payoff to the joke becomes an elaborate fast-forward depiction of Madison’s pitch for an HBO-style Girls-esque drama where she and the PDD guys are all dolled up as Spongebob characters, undergoing pregnancy scares and, in the case of John’s Patrick, some long-overdue neurological exams. Even spiritual sketch forebear Bad Bunny’s Shrek gets a shout-out, but the whole enterprise just isn’t one of the guys’ best.

Weekend Update Update

As noted below, there’s way too much awfulness in this country right now to expect Saturday Night Live to joke about it all. Sure, the show could do much, much (much) better at meeting the moment satirically speaking, but the cold open tonight wasn’t half bad, and Jost and Che did their part with some able zingers aimed at the heart of the ongoing Trump 2.0 fascist sh*tshow.

Like the cold open, Jost went for the big, dangling security bomb first, mocking Pete Hegseth and his incompetent cronies’ accidental reveal of classified war plans to a reporter (and any foreign power using their easily discovered online credentials to hack the unsecured public messaging app they were using). Jost joked that the crew (of people entrusted with the nation’s highest security clearance) had about as much texting acumen as his aunt, and mocked national security adviser Mike Waltz for claiming that his addition of The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg to the top secret chat involved Goldberg “being sucked in.” (“How do I suck a journalist off?,” was Jost’s suggestion as Waltz’s follow-up web search.)

Cheap joke? Sure, but that’s the sort of farcical world he and Che have to joke about at this point. When Che—referencing the Abu Ghraib-style torture porn of Kristi Noem standing smugly in front of dozens of caged shirtless men kidnapped by ICE and sent to an El Salvadorian prison without due process—jokes that it looks like the Homeland Security chief “is trying to beat a world record on OnlyFans,” is it a cheap joke sexualizing a female Trump official? Yup. It’s also matching obscenity with it’s twin, which as strategies in mocking smirking fascist phot ops go, is fair game. Jost does a callback showing the toddler who squirmed through the White House fence this week locked up in the foreground of those same photos, escalating a joke about this regime’s thirst for imprisoning anybody who steps out of line to appropriately outrageous comedy extremes.

Jost picks up on this later when he breaks into a segment called “Hear Me Out,” where he once more picks up the baton of his white Karen alter Update ego to accuse the beloved Paddington Bear of being “an illegal immigrant” planning to “flash our straight children,” and demanding someone “call ICE on his Peruvian ass.” The joke doesn’t specifically reference anything from conservatives’ ongoing censorship of regime-unapproved art and history to the Trump-whipped anti-immigrant hysteria that’s seen legal U.S. residents swept up and facing deportation for legitimate protest against U.S. policies, but it doesn’t have to. That’s where we are, and the comedic vocabulary is evolving to encompass it.

When Che jokes about FBI head Kash Patel labeling vandalism against the shoddily made vehicles of the foreign-born oligarch and Trump mega-donor currently stripping the government for parts as “domestic terrorism” by flashing a photo of January 6th insurrectionists and noting, “which is a federal crime punishable by a full pardon,” it hits hard because we all understand where we are. Hypocrisy is the life’s blood of fascists because reality won’t support their moral idiocy. Truth offends fascists because it debunks every fact of their preening pronouncements, so satire’s function is to incorporate truth into the jokes. Fascism can’t abide mockery because then it’s slavering hero worship of its cultish leader crumbles in a flabby, sweaty pile of unsupportable nonsense.

With the Trump goons this week upping their threats to investigate major entertainment companies for unapproved Trump-ian messaging (aka portraying non-white, non-cis, non-straight people as actual human beings), the pressure on Saturday Night Live is only getting more and more intense and targeted. If Jost and Che turn away from the most pressing threats (to comedy, to democracy) on Update, it’ll be scrutinized as capitulation. Tonight they didn’t do that while being pretty reliably mean and funny.

Devon Walker had his best-ever bit during tonight’s Update. The guy’s been putting in the work without quite breaking through, so taking the bull by the horns is a time-honored SNL tradition going back to Bill Murray making a direct plea not to get fired after his shaky start on the show.

The bit is centered on a viral fitness video, so I’ll just digress to say: congrats on your fitness, and your virality. I’m not watching your video, but it was the basis for this very funny piece, so enjoy your success and your secure knowledge that you are younger, fitter, and more ambitious than I. Now go dunk your head in some more ice water.

Where was I? Oh, Walker is a funny dude who’s perpetually underused, so here’s to him for fashioning a bit about his supposed backstage rituals (he lives in his office and creates would-be viral, heavily product-integrated workout videos in the studio) and his understandable frustrations. At the end, Walker sweatily strides into Lorne Michaels’ office, is told his sketch that week was cut, and strides back out again, while a seemingly real cellphone video sees an NBC visitor mistaking him for Jay Pharoah, with Walker happily agreeing.

The piece works because of its energy and good humor about all this, with Walker showing off the charisma too often buried as straight man or second cop. He has a great runner mocking Michael Che for supposedly never actually being around the show any more. (Jost, on the other hand, is seen handing the workout-exhausted Walker a bottle of water.) Walker is one of those cast members whose SNL career is at the tipping point, and it’s clear he knows it. A piece like this might not vault him where he wants (and deserves) to be, but it’ll tip that scale.

Ashley Padilla’s another underused cast member who made a strong bid for a bigger profile tonight. Apart from making an impression in a few sketches, her appearance here as the Joann of now-bankrupt Joann Fabrics was a killer, the sort of inhabited and very funny characterization that makes audiences remember your name. This Joann is rightfully pissed at her long-standing chain’s demise, despite admitting that its wares largely consist of plastic plants covered in layers of dust and that it’s frequented solely by “capri-wearing women with dull husbands and a mean dog.”

Far be it from me to suggest that Joann’s outraged claim that “closing a Joann’s in the suburbs is like closing a Planned Parenthood in a college town—women will die!” is hyperbole, but Padilla makes her upset figurehead immediate and consistently funny in the specificity of her laments. (Honestly, if the lure of cashiers who are invariably “retired nurses with two wrist braces and the biggest breasts you’ve veer seen” doesn’t get people in the door, then what is America?)

Padilla’s creation is like the best Kristen Wiig characters, and, yeah, I think Ashley Padilla deserves the comparison. When she, scoffing at Jost’s reference to competing hobby shop Michaels, straight-facedly responds, “Let me tell you a little something about Michael… He raped me,” the delivery, complete with that pregnant pause and the way she holds Jost’s gaze, is as good as it gets. Toss in the little touch that Joann brought along her favorite giant sniffing marker and an appropriately bedazzled flask, and this bit represents another oft-slighted cast member throwing a hard, assured pitch to be taken more seriously.

Political Comedy Report

Amidst the creeping fascism hentai that is the daily slime of the Trump administration, the Pete Hegseth group chat national security fiasco is perhaps the easiest target for an opening sketch. But it’s still a massive, writhing, emblematically stupid and unmissable target, and the cold open doesn’t miss much of it.

The idea that a trio of gossiping teens (Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, and Madison) find themselves up to their pjs in top secret war plans thanks to Andrew Dismukes’ Pete Hegseth’s fidgety thumbs escalates nicely, with Bowen Yang’s J.D. Vance and Marcello Hernandez’s Marco Rubio heedlessly dropping “sweating Jordan Peele” GIFs and flag/eggplant emojis alongside the names of all undercover CIA agents, the real JFK files, and Trump’s plan to take the pyramids from Egypt in exchange for bombing Houthi rebels. “DO NOT SHARE!” is the recurring refrain.

The sketch hits the necessary beats. Hegseth celebrates with a drink, referencing very public speculation that the former blackout drunk/accused rapist Fox weekend host turned Defense Secretary’s pinkie swear to not drink while in charge of the most complex and powerful military organization in world history was just a goof/perjury. Yang’s Vance, parka-ed up for his lonely quest to find anyone in Greenland willing to listen to his pitch to become North Maine, admits he’s not having the great reception he was expecting from the angry Greenlanders. Marcello’s Rubio, finding out that the three unidentified chat numbers do in fact belong to three underage teen girls (one of whom it’s revealed is dating Matt Gaetz), demands they self-report to ICE for deportation.

It’s my argument that Saturday Night Live needs to be more engaged in the world around it. You know, the world where the United States is infested at the the highest levels with a cadre of white supremacist game/reality show hosts and sycophantic GOP cowards and accomplices to the death of representative democracy. That sort of thing. That said, a sketch show has to be funny, and this is. It’s narrow-casted satire on an obvious subject, but the subject is real and the execution is snappy and occasionally inspired. Yang’s Vance dismissively explaining that we’ll steal the Great Pyramid of Giza “with aliens or slaves” just like the ancient Egyptians did folds several layers of real-life stupid/evil into one joke.

And honestly when the reality is that the TV haircut and blackout drunk sex creep covered in white power tattoos who claims that the U.S. is now all about “merit” rather than that dastardly DEI presides over a thunderingly massive f*ck-up like this one, well, it’s hard to top. So grabbing onto the biggest, brassiest, booziest story and doing a decent little sketch about it is baseline comedy responsibility.

Recurring Sketch Report

A recurring sketch right after the monologue can mean a couple of things. Sometimes a character is so popular that there’s the sense the studio audience would start throwing things if they didn’t get their catchphrase fix. If, on the other hand, said leadoff hitter is acting teacher Theodore Strop, the motivations are a little murky.

Marcello Hernandez has become a breakout star this season, and I’m all for that. He’s engaging, energetic, and young. So very, very young. (He’s 27, but skews more “goofy teen brother.”) And if Strop, the full-of-himself commercial acting guru with three whole credits to his name (if you count being rejected for Sam Rockwell’s buzzy White Lotus monologue) is more in the energetic than hilarious column, it’s still a fun showcase.

Born no doubt from the writers and performers own struggles, SNL‘s long history of mocking the leech-like scammers and self-proclaimed gatekeepers of the acting world always carries the ring of authenticity. And if Strop’s useless tips are over the top (he highlights a fictional sneaker commercial with some very impressively silly feet-forward high stepping), one can imagine they’re only a few degrees escalated from the actual advice you pay two grand to learn at some never-was’ mini-mall acting emporium. Andrew Dismukes gets the thankless “hey, isn’t this weird?” role (call it the Mikey Day chair), but even there he and Hernandez come up with some amusing touches. (The unimpressed Dismukes shrugs and obliges when the irate Strop thunders, “Go to sleep!” at one point.)

Returning to my point, this sort of B-level repeater leading off the show usually signals a rather dire evening. Here, it didn’t, the sketch’s peppy chuckles ushering instead a uniformly entertaining show that took the sketch’s energy as cue to keep things fast, funny, and mostly original. (Despite, as we’ll see, there being so, so many recurring sketches.)

Sometimes “recurring” is more of a genre than a premise, as the whole “heavy drama in foreground/wacky shenanigans in back” concept got a fun workout in “Varsity Valley Spring Break.” With Marcello and Chloe Fineman’s college sweethearts acting their hearts out in a Ft. Lauderdale-vicinity motel room while all manner of low-rent, Florida-branded chaos breaks out outside the plate glass behind them, the filmed piece returns to the well—or rather the eventfully splashed-in motel swimming pool.

As the CW-style romantic drama plays out in all its straight-faced melodrama, we see: an old woman mugged for her rascal scooter; a shirtless Mikey Day gleefully taking security guard Kenan’s pepper spray to the face and body; Madison’s very drunk girl splashing down on the concrete after missing the pool; James Austin Johnson’s other security guard going in the pool; the inevitable Florida gator; and lots and lots of vomit. (Marcello’s suitor, talked down from his hasty proposal by Fineman, finds out what happens when you cross from foreground to back—it’s lots and lots of vomit.)

On the recurring sketch genre front, I’m throwing the jury selection bit in here, too. I can’t recall whether the jury pool premise has ever happened, but I’m lumping this in with several of these all-hands-on-deck, quick-hit punchline numbers like the tenants meeting and the town hall that come to mind at 2 a.m. They’re reliable ways to give literally everyone some airtime, and, when done right, allow for the sort of rapid-fire parade of character turns that can help cast members stick out.

I loved this one, as beleaguered judge Ego presiding over the expected roster of New York weirdoes all wither desperately trying or not-trying to get on an upcoming jury. Kenan steals the thing, naturally, his mustachioed, grinning weirdo explaining how he would very much like to be the judge, or the star witness, before being dismissed. I know Kenan’s entered the drop-in stage of his illustrious, record-breaking SNL tenure, but, man can he make me smile just be popping up in a silly costume with the sort of still, portentous grin that makes me expect great things. (He pops back in later in a judge’s robe to try and steal Ego’s job, an expertly timed and blocked callback that lifts the sketch over the top.)

But it was already consistently fun, with most of the assembled loonies’ pitches distinct and unique enough to get a laugh before giving way to the next. Both JAJ and Chloe Fineman got to incorporate their impression skills—Johnson as a morning zoo crew claiming “essential worker” for his trade of pranking restaurants as Jay-Z, and Chloe as herself, desperately crying “Please, I need this!” as she’s carted off while trying out her Parker Posey in White Lotus. (A couple of cast members tonight appeared to be airing backstage gripes in sketches, and both times were very funny.)

Ashley Padilla shows up with two hungry breast pumps working at her, only to scoff at Ego’s assumption that she’s looking for a childcare exemption. (“I do this for me,” she explains contemptuously.) Sarah Sherman likewise claims offense that her appearance saw the judge assuming an anti-police bias, her “bisexuals for mass incarceration” t-shirt bringing up even more questions. And Michael Longfellow completed the sneering trifecta as his bondage gear-sporting prospective complains of his abrupt rejection, “It’s because I’m white!”

Heidi Gardner’s juror demanded to know whether Luigi Mangione was receiving her explicit nudes, while Emil Wakim donned prison orange as Mangione telling Gardner to please stop. Then waitress Jane Wickline (see what I said about everyone getting airtime) excitedly begged off since Jay-Z is coming to her restaurant. The whole thing was just snappy, clever, and well-written sketch comedy. I’m glancing knowingly at newly hired SNL writer Carl Tart, who made another welcome cameo as Ego’s baliff. (If Tart shows up as featured player at some point this/next season, I wouldn’t be surprised, although the comedy vet has more than enough street cred to just get hired for the cast already.)

Okay, there were a lot of recurring sketches tonight. Bowen Yang brought back Barry, his midwife whose obsession with perceived old slights distracts him from his duties while convenient time skips allow for quick changes into more and less elaborate wigs. Here, it’s Madison’s delivery room doc whose forgetfulness about their long-ago meeting sees the snippy Barry ignore his patient’s painful delivery to remind the flummoxed doctor about that time they both attended a 2007 Today show performance by Hilary Duff. (He was even wearing prescription New Year’s novelty glasses, for crying out loud.)

I’ll admit that this was the one repeater that grated on me a little tonight. The joke really isn’t strong or variable enough (apart from wig length and elaborateness of the flashback details) to warrant a franchise. Yang loves to embody this sort of spoiling-for-offense bitchy character, clearly, and I do appreciate the needlessly complex flashback and -forward structure to such a nothing premise. (The detail that the past Madison showed up for 2007 Duff in her scrubs as Conan’s on-set OB-GYN is just odd enough to be amusing.) But on a night where the recurring sketches overcame familiarity with originality, this one didn’t do enough to justify itself.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Walker and Padilla and Longfellow—good show. Keep it up, gang. Emil and Jane, keep plugging away it it.

Of the more established cast, I’ll salute Ego Nwodim here. Her eminently sensible judge may have been riding herd over the real funny weirdos, but Ego is really good at making something out of seemingly thankless roles and she managed to make exhausted competence funny. Kenan being Kenan in that same sketch was great enough to get a mention, too.

10-To-Oneland Report

Okay, here’s my gripe with the SNL animated shorts. (What, you thought I wouldn’t gripe? Do you know me?) I get that Saturday Night Live wants to try new things, especially since the undeniable necessity of morning-after YouTube viral success is a major ratings driver. (However “ratings” are calculated at this point.)

But there’s nothing especially groundbreaking about turning a sketch idea into a static, Adult Swim-style animated short. The look of this one—about two 16th century sailors (voiced by Bowen Yang and Michael Longfellow) sketching out eerily accurate plans for the gridlock-inducing, tourist-baffling chaos of present-day New York street and subway layout—intermittently cuts from low-res cartoonish to alternate angles of hyper-creepy, Ren and Stimpy-close-up grotesquerie for a queasy laugh.

It’s effective enough for what it wants to accomplish, but in the service of an ultra-specific New Yorkers’ lament about the supposed hellhole they live in. (The second such sketch of the night.) And it’s… fine. I keep noting all the references because the sketch is built on stuff and styles we’ve seen, while the actual premise of the sketch could have been done live without any rewrites, which makes me question why the animation at all, apart from SNL wanting to build this element into the show. I get it, but the purist/old coot in me doesn’t particularly like it. Particularly as the final sketch, which, as the formatting of these reviews protests, has its own vibe to honor.

Stray Observations

Did I, as a country music not-follower, Google “is Morgan Wallen still racist?” when the musical guest’s booking was announced? Sure. Were the results more or less, “eh, Darius Rucker says he’s not any more?” Again, sure. It appears that Wallen’s “I was just being drunk and hanging with my friends” excuse for slurring racial slurs on temporarily controversial cellphone footage is enough for Rucker and Lorne Michaels, as is his “my bad” for the time SNL ditched him for (again drunkenly) defying Covid precautions at the height of the pandemic. Plus, he concluded his second pleasantly agreeable number tonight by proclaiming “Praise the Lord and go Vols,” so that should shut me up. Look for Lorne to announce a Shane Gillis/Morgan Wallen episode booking later this season!

Two White Lotus references tonight. As somebody who’s been banging the Mike White drum for many lonely years, all the breakthrough pop culture cred couldn’t happen to a nicer and more deserving guy.

In the jury sketch, Madison tries to claim celebrity privilege as “one of the people Caitlin Jenner hit with her car.” Never a bad time to remind people that the “I’ve got mine, screw other trans people” hypocrite killed someone.

Jost and Che were uniquely on tonight. Some favorites:

“After the attack, national security adviser Mike Waltz texted the fist emoji, the flag emoji, and the Tesla emoji.”

jost, showing Waltz’s fist, flag, and flame emoji

“But there’s one millionaire oil man who still supports Donald Trump-Diddy!”

Che, on reports of oil execs skepticism about trump

“The genetic testing company 23and Me says it is bankrupt, and also 2 percent Cherokee.”

Jost

“And ironically the album doesn’t slap.”

che, on Will smith’s new record

“This story is brought to you by Plan B—get them before they get you.”

jost, on teens charged with trying to murder their mother over banning their wifi

Episode Grade: A Solid, team-effort B.

Next week: Jack Black returns to host for the fourth time alongside the musical guest team of Elton John and Brandi Carlisle.