Colman Domingo Brings the Vibe as SNL Embraces the Weird

And Your Host…

After the requisite “Where do you know me from?” bit common to all Saturday Night Live hosts not in the (non-animated) MCU, Colman Domingo took over with stylish ease. Commanding the SNL technical crew, theRunning Man star (Glen who?) changed the whole vibe—from some funky-smooth background music to a midlife-flattering boom shot, to some smoky “lighting for people of color.” (Legendary SNL keyboardist Leon Pendarvis approves.) “Look how adorable I am. My word,” the silky-gravelly Domingo marveled at one point, and I was right there with him.

A hard-working pro for most of his 56 years, Domingo’s got Broadway, TV, movie, and even sketch comedy chops to draw from. And while his first-ever episode eventually petered out on the writing side, the twice Oscar-nominated actor’s vibe carried a series of odder-than-usual sketches. If you’ve faced down live theater audiences, zombies, and both Candy- and Spider-man, all while making every fit look amazing, you’ve got what it takes to anchor a li’l old comedy show, is what I’m saying.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: Unsurprisingly, Domingo was at the center of my favorite sketch, a 10-to-One idea placed right before the first musical number. Domingo is one Henry Debris, a smoothly tweedy PBS science show host from the indeterminate past, whose every leading, “What if I told you..?” question leads to an inexplicable reveal that one of his stage props is actually a person in disguise. “How cool is that? I love stuff like that,” is the delighted host’s reserved assessment, and I agree.

There’s a touch of Phil Hartman’s cluelessly stiff Peter Graves to the conceit, although with Domingo’s fictitious Debris containing a wondrous little kernel of madness within. Part of that is the host—Domingo has such an authoritatively charismatic presence that we’re drawn into this loopy obsession along with Debris, each subsequent unmasked clock, bookcase, table, and ottoman hinting at deeper wells of eccentricity.

There’s a lilting rhythm to Domingo’s successive reveals that’s pure giggle-bait, even as the absurdity of the whole situation keeps us off balance. When he stares down the camera with a period-allowed cigarette in hand and orders all his disguised crew members off stage, the comic tension is irresistible, and the final twist when Andrew Dismukes’ tardy city councilor rushes in disguised as a vase to confess a confused erotic obsession ties a weirdly perfect bow on the proceedings.

The Worst: The Dead Poets Society sketch wasn’t terrible; Domingo’s take on the “throw your books away” free spirit schtick turns out to be ill-suited to math class. But hinging a sketch on one character continually stating, “[Insert silly sketch premise] is silly!” isn’t my favorite thing, and poor Andrew Dismukes got stuck being the teen killjoy who has to keep pointing out that, yes, five times five is always 25, even if you’re trying to impishly loosen up some uptight prep school kids in a school whose motto is “The learned boy shall conform.”

All that said, the other kids (Tommy Brennan, Marcello Hernández, Ben Marshall, Kam Petterson, Jeremy Culhane) were all energetically swooped into Domingo’s fanciful spell (beleventy plus cristalthree is floaty-two, naturally), and Kenan showed up to do one of his signature scene-swipes as a janitor who also digs what Domingo’s teacher is throwing out. (Of course five would be the dog in the one-two-three-four family. C’mon.)

The Rest: Domingo sported ironed hair and enough attitude to make Drag Race participants look like Katherine Heigl, as the gloriously named D’artagnan Meringue, an imperious fashion school dean who, alongside some students, witnessed a bank robbery. There’s not a lot to the premise (artsy types witness crime), but Domingo reigns majestically as he disdains reporter Ashley Padilla’s every attempt to get a straight answer about the suspect. (Describing the man’s attire as “boho derogatory” is lunatic on-point enough that any self-respecting copper should spot him right away.)

Mocking the pretentious is most effective when those being mocked are too fabulous to truly care, and Domingo and preening students Hernández and Chloe Fineman (in an enormous, jaunty hat) remain immune to all skepticism, while school dean Mikey Days swans through the shot to deliver withering putdowns, and unfashionable student Jane Wickline’s helpful answers receive Domingo’s wrath. (“Gabby, you are not cut out for this—go to a normal college!”) Toss in a wraparound bit of silliness with JAJ’s straight-laced anchor trying out D’artagnan’s drip to hit on Padilla, and it’s all pretty enjoyable.

“Here, put on this pimp costume” has to be a Black SNL host’s dispiriting nightmare come true. That said, the funeral sketch in which the deceased grandpa of a “normal” white family is visited by grieving folks from the secretly kinky old man’s time “in the life” had some strong acting going for it. First up, unsurprisingly, is Padilla, whose chipper daughter greets every startling revelation made by her teen sons (Hernández and Culhane) with the same bland pleasantness.

Of the pimps in question (grandad had four, the same as the number of stars in the sky), fully three quarters were specific enough in their gaudy finery and silky sleaze to be genuinely amusing. (Colin Jost, emboldened by his Hegseth turn, should really stay behind the “Update” desk.) Kenan, JAJ, and Domingo (as Suede, Delicious, and White Cocoa, respectively) swan in to assure Padilla that her dad was not only a fine sex worker (or “boy whore,” as the dignified-looking old man preferred), but a very inexpensive one. When fellow prostitute Veronika Slowikoska fully makes out with the deceased in his coffin, we think that’s it for the necrophilia portion of the sketch, but then Mikey Day shows up from inside the gimmicked coffin as the horny white trash Muffin, and we’re doubling down.

Culhane and Hernández’s brothers have a funny runner where all the pimps swoon over the horrified latter’s earning potential while telling the smiling Culhane not to quit his day job. (JAJ delivers a wonderfully dismissive single, “Jake” before cruising away.) It’s a big, broad premise peppered with just enough absurdity to work better than you’d think.

The brave NASA astronauts of the Artemis II got a showcase in the form of Domingo’s poetic captain Vernon Glover, whose attempts to rhapsodize over the dizzying perspective offered from his lofty lunar perch keeps getting interrupted because his crew is exclusively made up of juvenile ding-dongs. With fellow astronauts Hernández and Day fighting over a floating can of Pringles and drawing on the sleeping face of crew member Sarah Sherman (likewise floating by in her un-Velcroed sleeping cocoon), it’s all Domingo’s Glover can do to try and read out his inspirational tributes to astronauts past.

The actual Glover’s space-bound appeals for us Earthlings to take a step back and appreciate our precious, precarious existence in the universe have touched even us cynics rooting for the next racist billionaire’s pet rocket to blow up on its un-crewed launch pads, but Domingo was left playing straight man for the most part. The real draw of the sketch was the movement and prop work, as everybody undertook their choreographed floating with confidence and only one stagehand’s hand was briefly visible holding a hat in place for Hernandez’s head to float into. Well, the floating and the gross-out jokes, as Hernández got his “pee-pee” stuck in the suction toilet and Day’s sneeze produced a truly repellent stream of zero-G mucus that was no doubt some makeup person’s pride and joy.

The Black barbershop for depressed white guys pre-tape gave Domingo, Kenan, and Patterson some room to relax and stretch, as their neighborhood barbers roasted their new clientele with amusing ease. Calling one new patron “Dahmer” and another “Li’l Epstein” is just the untroubled joshing these uptight whities need. That and to “kick back, talk a li’l mess, and get a drink on,” which sounds as nice as it does out of the standard white guy’s comfort zone. Watching Kenan and Domingo ease right into the sort of seen-it-all barbers who advise the divorced Day to “get a hundred pack, some coconut waters, and wear that ass out” might not be your standard therapeutic advice, but as the commercial for this cross-cultural experiment suggests, it couldn’t hurt.

‘Weekend Update’ Update

When Colin Jost kicked off tonight’s fake news with a supposedly real social media post in which Donald Trump promises to “f*** Iran right up their Strait of Hormuz” and signs off with, “Asalam alaykum, you crazy bastards!!!,” I reached for my phone. That’s where we’re at—even as Jost admits that the post was made up, literally nobody watching would have been shocked if it were true.

As I note elsewhere, there’s an art to plucking out just the right specimen of evil insanity to comically contextualize all this horror, and it’s always been pretty rare for Saturday Night Live to manage that. Instead, theirs is a scattershot approach, largely based in performance and personality, where, no matter how egregious the state of affairs, the same old smirky clowning is what’s called for. Jost’s bit of comedic slight-of-hand is the smartest stab at something different tonight.

The rest of Jost and Michael Che’s material goes as hard as it can without forcing the longtime anchors to break much of a sincerity sweat. Don’t mistake me—getting ugly and mean is what the situation requires, so when Jost cites Trump’s actual recent post (“Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy b*****ds, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah”) as sounding an awful lot like stereotypical terrorist language, Jost’s punchline (over a photo of Trump and Epstein) that he’d already been to paradise with 72 virgins is my kind of nasty.

Same goes for Che taking on Trump’s Justice Department’s crusade against “anti-Christian bias” by noting that it replaces the old strategy of “molesting it out of you,” and his joke about Melania Trump’s unprompted denials that she was ever trafficked by Epstein hiding the fact that Donald picked her “out of her shipping container.” Going high when your targets work exclusively in the sewers is a sucker’s game, and Jost and Che are determined to at least drop a few grenades down there. I can appreciate that.

Still, choices get made. The fact that this week anti-science eugenics enthusiast RFK Jr. cut off all funding for life-saving vaccine development got a miss in favor of Jost making fun of the anti-vaxxer’s speech impediment. That’s the wrong kind of going low.

Correspondents Hernández and Patterson brought some endearing enthusiasm as two rowdy kids from the back of the school bus. Ostensibly there to talk about inflation, it’s all an excuse for a couple of young goofs to goof, youngly. Suckering authority figure Jost into”deez nutz” jokes, while hacky, is always fresh to young males, and the two actors enjoyment at getting to cut loose with the sort of juvenile roleplaying they’re barely too old for is infectious. (Patterson, lost in the shuffle all season, is as engaging as he’s been so far.) Channeling this sort of obnoxious teen stuff can be trying, but this is played with enough authenticity and commitment to make me not hate it.

Recurring Sketch Report

None! Someone performed the “Colman Domingo/Domingo” banishment ritual just in time, it seems.

Political Comedy Report

[Nelson Muntz voice]: I can think of two things wrong with this Cold Open.

The first is not really SNL‘s fault. The sheer volume of horrors, atrocities, and world-imperiling idiocies toxic-spilling from the Trump regime is going to flood comedy writers’ overtaxed brains. The Cold Open tonight fast-forwards through [checks notes] Trump’s bug-nuts insane-person social media posts; the impending ouster of yet another loyal female scapegoat; Melania’s nobody-asked denial that she in any way was a victim/agent of pedophile procurer Jeffrey Epstein; an illegal war prosecuted by a drunken frat bro Fox News host; and more.

Is it incumbent on professional sketch writers to sift through all this reeking hate-sludge and open criminality and find a single, unifying hook to craft a meaningfully focused political cold open? Well, if you want to get all pedantic about it. But I can sympathize. (SNL UK dug into the Melania stuff with offbeat specificity while using her appearance there to spill over into wider issues, which provides a better roadmap.) Or rather, I could sympathize if…

Second: Saturday Night Live didn’t keep playing the same old tunes. Things are not normal, and doing sketches as if they were makes SNL look especially irrelevant.

Make no mistake—Trump, Pete Hegseth, and all the rest of this cabal of thankfully incompetent cretins are buffoons. They are also, to a person, actively working to destroy American democracy on behalf of the oligarch class, demonizing every vulnerable population white people can reliably be manipulated to fear, literally murdering people in the streets opposed to their racist cruelty, silencing media critical of the regime, creating a for-profit concentration camp system in pursuit of a white supremacist agenda, and basically undoing whatever pretensions the United States ever had to freedom, justice, and aspirational participatory democracy. Guess which aspect Saturday Night Live chooses to focus on.

James Austin Johnson plugs away like the professional he is, his absurdly good mimicry skills at least making his Trump more singular than the material around him. JAJ’s Deadpool-esque habit of commenting on the show itself (“All three of those were played by Ashley. It’s an interesting detail,” is his aside about SNL‘s Noem, Bondi, and Leavitt) is perhaps the freshest bit, which doesn’t say much for the satire. Jost is clearly enjoying having a non-“Update” character in his douchey Hegseth, but the alpha a-hole schtick is getting as old as having JAJ’s Trump do a greatest hits version of the week in Trump outrages.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Culhane is leaning into his unassuming presence for more and more airtime. A stealthy scene-stealer at times, the open faced featured player is carving out a niche, with two pieces tonight hinging on his supposed unimpressive physicality/personality. It’s not a bad sign, honestly.

On a similar theme, I enjoy Wickline. After a “Wait, she didn’t get fired?” period of viewer adjustment in her second season, she, like Culhane, makes her seeming performing ungainliness a sly weapon. In the fashion sketch, her normalcy is the punchline, while her “Update” piece as a Gen Z sex expert who knows precious little about her subject played to her strengths as well as any outing so far. (And the advice, “One: have fun. And two: no raping” is succinctly funny.) Neither she nor Culhane are poised to become huge SNL stars, but sometimes its the weird, less-telegenic character types who prove invaluable.

Probably the most integrated Patterson and Brennan have been into the show so far. I don’t envision either making it to next season, but at least they were good in bigger roles.

This was likely Hernández’s busiest show of the season, and while I continue to maintain that he needs to add some new pitches to his arsenal, he anchored more than a few sketches well.

10-To-Oneland Report

Rather, make that two minutes to one, as the Beastomorphs pre-tape butted into what is often reserved for a little pre-commercial, pre-Goodnights band-vamping.

The piece itself is another chance for Sarah Squirm to come out, finally, as Sherman plays the fourth member of a team of teen heroes whose ability to change into animals gets her stuck midway between human and frog. Make that farting frog, as Sherman keeps trying to fart herself back to normal just as Domingo’s villainous Lord Chumungus arrives to smite everybody.

There’s a lot packed into a briskly silly two minutes, lots of it fart- and poop-related. (Domingo’s adult despot does wish to put his “thang” in Sherman’s frog-hand, but that’s just a sign of respect where he’s from.) Meanwhile, Sherman, whose career in boundary-stretching gross-out comedy has largely been sanded away in her time on SNL, clearly relishes getting to be grotesque and off-putting.

Stray Observations

• I imagine that this episode will score on the low end, ratings-wise, which is genuinely a bummer,checking the trends of late sees off-the-path hosts chalk up more interesting outings and more meager numbers.
• I know people are busy, but Domingo has so many connections to SNL royalty (McKinnon, Fey, Forte) that it would have been cool for them to lend some cameo support and bump up the viral, morning-after numbers.
• Musical guest Anitta, while largely unknown in America, is so popular in Brazil that her intimate tattoo wound up reforming corrupt music industry practices there.
• At least the dreaded specter of a Colman Domingo/Domingo sketch was left as a promo joke.
• Jost, on Trump claiming Iran “doesn’t hold any cards” in negotiations: “They’re literally holding a strait!”
• I’m nearly 100-percent sure the Hostess people were not paying product integration money for Che’s Donettes joke.
• Domingo’s Goodnights speech was cut off just as he was dedicating his big night to “all the little boys in inner cities, who…” Damn you, Beastomorphs! (Watch the unedited version below.)

Thank you, Colman Domingo and Anitta!!
Goodnight! pic.twitter.com/OKcUSeYAMx

— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) April 12, 2026

Episode Grade: a very vibe-y B.

Up next: We’re off until May 2, when Olivia Rodrigo gets the challenging double duty assignment. Maybe NBC will pony up so the excellent “Drivers License” sketch can hit the inter-webs once more.