SNL 50 Concludes With ScarJo, the Joke Swap, and a Suitably Underwhelming Finale

And Your Host…

Scarlett Johansson got some roses from her husband at the truncated goodnights tonight. And she’s certainly earned them. No not for being married to Colin Jost, you jerks. I’m sure they’re very happy.

Johansson was doing her seventh tour as host, reminding us in her monologue that she first took on the infamously daunting task when she was just 21. (In movie terms, that was Scoop, The Prestige, and The Black Dahlia-era ScarJo.) Johansson, apart from picking up a husband from the show, has always clearly enjoyed hosting, and she’s very good at it. Brassy, bold, and mostly fearless, the actress has always seemed up for anything and delighted to play with each cast over the years.

Of course, this is 2025 Scarlett, and her latest would-be dino-blockbuster aside, she’s certainly earned the honor of closing out a landmark season. Would that the episode were better, as SNL 50 closed largely as it began, with an underwhelming collection of so-so (and lower) sketches that felt less like a crowning achievement and more like the show clearing the decks of a season’s worth of middling also-rans.

The monologue, set to “Piano Man,” was another musical toss-off, a beyond-tired move no amount of mid-song lampshading can jolt to life. It was sort of cuddly and all, with the whole overstuffed cast eventually joining in for the big group sing. It’ll be the last time some of them will be in the building (look for the handicapping below), which is always a bit of a bummer, even if you can admit to yourself which cast members just haven’t clicked. (There’s a gag about Sarah Sherman discovering it’s her on the chopping block, but that ain’t happening.)

Throughout the rest of the show, Johansson’s usual comic energy was not enough to pump up some very wheezy sketches, sadly. Without a strong premise to anchor such a forceful presence, her performances mostly felt effortful and loud amidst all the klutzy mediocrity. Which may as well be the two-word tagline for SNL 50.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: Woof. Sometimes the format forces my hand, so I’ll go with Marcello and Bad Bunny’s energetic Spanish face-off for the top of a pretty low heap. Bad Bunny was terrific when he hosted, his energy and charisma forcing SNL to accommodate his second-language English with surprising effectiveness.

Here the joke is slightly undermined by some “b*tches be crazy” hackiness, but Hernandez and Bunny’s en Español commiseration in the form of the macho standoff their “crazy” English-only girlfriends (Ego and ScarJo) force them into is a nicely played two-hander. With the audience having to wait a beat for the subtitles (at least the non-Spanish speakers), each confession from the two fellas enslaved by their love of unstable hot women lands with that extra punctuation.

While we’re at it, Bunny’s hosting gig allowed both him and Hernandez a looseness and freedom that enlivened their sketches, here the two hopelessly entangled guys finding solace in the fact they’re not alone with these (again “crazy”) women within their Spanish language bubble. It’s breezy and confident (I loved Marcello’s death stare after Bunny has no choice but to throw him under the bus in his improvised translation to the glowering Johansson), and the sort of sketch that, on a better episode, would score somewhere in the middle.

The Worst: I’m trying to think of a way the movie intimacy coordinator could have turned me off more. For one thing, every time Mikey Day‘s trying-too-hard director said a singsong “sowwy” to his various indelicate blunders made me want to physically fight him. And Kenan’s coordinator doing a Kool-Aid wall-smash was framed so inelegantly that it felt almost apologetic.

The joke that a lesbian love scene has been assigned two experts completely unfamiliar with what lesbians do in bed, if it were to work at all, needed to lean into the absurdity of the premise rather than having Kenan and Johansson’s characters spouting every tired, snickering euphemism the writers could imagine. Buns and hot dogs, trains and tunnels, donuts and “tapping two vagoogoos” together—if the joke is two people ignorant of lesbianism, in execution the piece comes off like an entire writers room full of the same.

The one good moment comes from Kenan who, asked to visualize what it is two women might do, works through the mental image with a mobile little look of discovery before emerging to claim sincerely, “Well that is nice.”

The Rest: Bursting into the Please Don’t Destroy guys’ office to find Ben, Martin, and John despondent from overwork and doomscrolling, Johansson asks if they’re sad because they only got, like, two pieces on this season. Not the best self-penned self-own in the team’s history, but not bad. (Ben whines that they got at least one more than that, but it wasn’t their strongest year.)

The ensuing, ScarJo-funded cheer-up vacation music video once more invites unflattering Lonely Island comparisons (PDD simply don’t have the same musical chops to play in that league) before the revelation that they’re flying into Newark brings the fun crashing to a halt.

The fact that Trump’s baseless anti-DEI FAA hatchet-ing has purged air traffic control to a white-knuckle horror every time anyone gets on a plane makes the mid-air chaos bite a bit harder, even if the revelation that the lone remaining Newark controller is played by Bad Bunny does undermine the racist motivation behind the ongoing disaster.

Johansson and PDD play nicely together though, her defiant rap verse cut short by some chastening turbulence, while the guys wonder if they’re famous enough to get mentioned in the “ScarJo is dead” headlines. (They’re not, as it turns out even she’s not 100 percent sure who they are.)

The newsroom sketch saw Johansson’s network newscaster fill-in trying to ape the pun-happy banter of her morning show colleagues fluff pieces, leading to jarring segues from jokey preamble to stories about sexual assaults and dead people. It’s fine, even if I was more amused by some odd touches around the fringes than the actual, over-explained central joke.

Kenan’s lead anchor addresses Emil Wakim’s dancing weatherman’s request to spice things up with a deadpan, “Shot taken, Keith.” And he delivers a tantalizing reference to the reason for Johansson’s fill-in by noting obliquely of his absent colleague, “Let’s just say she gave birth to something.” I don’t know and I don’t want to know.

But once the main joke is set up, there’s nowhere to go. Again, if the sketch leaned into the absurdity, it might have made more comic sense, with field reporter Devon Walker’s “I want my baby back” report of a child abduction at a Chili’s merely repeating the joke. Plus, grieving mom Heidi Gardner gets in on the premise, which only really works if the sketch had been elevating the weirdness.

I suppose it’s admirable that SNL resisted flooding this Season 50 finale with guest stars. Only Mike Meyers returned for the big send off, this time playing himself, stuck on an elevator with Kenan’s Kanye West in an even more uncomfortable pairing than their long-ago 2005 telethon appearance. (Ah, for the days when West’s egomania saw him spouting defiant truths as opposed to Nazi propaganda.)

Here, Meyers (rocking that white hair, I have to say) slips into his old groove, as he plays straight man to Kenan’s off-the-rails Kanye. (Sorry, Ye—even the completely nuts deserve to be called by their chosen name.) Kenan doesn’t really do a Ye impression (his fang-like Ye grill does most of the work). It’s more about the craziness than the voice, with his Ye happily telling the understandably nervous Meyers he’s in the KKK now and greeting Meyers’ claustrophobia in their stalled elevator car by commiserating, “I’m a few phobics myself.”

This sort of cameo and callback might have been a bigger laugh if Meyers hadn’t already primed us with his Elon Musk this season, but a lower-wattage cameo from an SNL all-star felt fitting for this season finale anyway.

Weekend Update Update

Everybody was waiting for the joke swap. With rumors swirling about Jost and Che’s future on SNL, each joke of tonight’s Update carried a little tingle of anticipation which never got paid off.

The regular jokes went for the duo’s signature alternating laugh and gasp lines, with a couple of jerk-off gags tossed in. Jost did address the whole MBS murdering a Washington Post reporter thing by noting how the Saudis’ pop-up McDonalds for the visiting Trump featured “the McJournalist” burger, while Che got what he came for with an O.J. joke that left the audience tittering anxiously.

Here’s to (presumably) new Update anchors next season—may they dig a little deeper.

Ego did a reprise of her Miss Eggy bit and although Jost teased the potential of another FCC fine, Nwodim’s stand-up bit wasn’t constructed to lead the audience over the cliff this time.

It’s a funny enough conceit, with Nwodim immediately ditching her supposed topic (Newark Airport) to do a tight and over-the-top few minutes on airline food. There’s an admirable gusto to Ego’s bluster, mocking hacky stand-ups while clearly having a blast being one. It’s the sort of character she does so well on places like Comedy Bang Bang and so rarely gets to do on SNL that I wish I liked this one better.

And then the joke swap. Once more, we didn’t get any definitive good-byes from either Jost or Che, the annual tradition instead kicking off with a Che-penned pitch for Jost to take over Lorne Michaels’ job. (“Retire, bitch—let me run the show” was just the first of two such jokes Che made his partner deliver.)

The popularity of these things isn’t a shock. The odd couple nature of prep school Jost with his self-described “punchable face” and the too-cool-for-the-room Che mines racial tension and each anchor’s carefully manufactured persona with cathartic glee.

Still, the rules of the game deflate some of the squirminess—as harsh as some of the cross-pollinated jokes get, there’s a just-joshing chumminess that makes it more naughty than pointed. Sure, Jost makes Che lay claim to being a drink-drugging date rapist, and Che turns the tables by flashing a picture of bonobos over Jost shoulder before making him echo white America’s complaints about Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, but it’s all in good, mischievous fun.

That said, there was some tension over the last one of these, when Che crossed over from mocking Jost to making specific, graphic references to Johansson’s post-delivery body. So you know payback was coming, with Jost (I’m assuming) writing a handful of jokes for Che to deliver right next to the smiling Johansson about him selling crack, having extra nipples, and never having seen “a human vagina” in person.

Che always has a misogynistic streak to his humor (see tonight’s “junk in the trunk” reference) which he passes off as “just playin’—or am I?” bad boy schtick. Here he and ScarJo hug it out, he and Jost delight in their shared live embarrassment, and the perhaps final joke swap sends another SNL audience home happy.

Recurring Sketch Report

Bowen Yang is still straight, y’all. That’s the recurring bit of tonight’s reprise, which repeats the joke without worrying too much about variations. (I will never complain that the resolutely unfaithful hetero hunk Yang’s main squeeze is still Gina Gershon, however.)

Here, the only fun variation comes from Yang ordering an obligingly clueless Colin Jost out of the 30 Rock elevator so Yang can mack on a deeply receptive ScarJo, while Johansson’s mid-clench dirty talk calling Yang “Mr. Moo Deng” and the fact that Yang doesn’t remember inviting her over after the show just repeats jokes from the first go-’round.

It’s fine (I know I keep repeating that, but, well…), even if there’s nowhere to go with the joke that the out-and-proud Yang is only faking it “for clout.” Or at least nobody at the show could think of any.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the TV interview sketch was a repeater, but my 3 a.m. Google skills have turned up empty. Even if it’s not a repeat, it feels enough like one. The joke: vapid TV entertainment reporters ask very different questions of male and female stars.

The execution: It’s fine. Marcello plays up his adorable puppy dog thing as the adorable puppy dog TV star lobbed questions like “Do you like music or pictures?,” while his female costars are peppered with buckshot about their personal lives and appearances, Bowen and Johansson’s reporters’ glaze-eyed cruelty passed of as just what the internet is asking.

There’s satire here, although nothing particularly original in conception or execution. I did like the running joke that Ego Nwodim’s actress keeps getting blindsided by news even she wasn’t aware of. (Jokes about getting written of a show hit harder on an SNL season finale, I’d imagine.)

And Yang and Johansson’s questions (eventually devolving into unnervingly robotic clichés) get just absurd enough for a laugh. (Heidi Gardner’s flustered actress is asked, “If you could vote one religion off the face of the earth, which one would you pick?,” while Sarah Sherman’s gets, “You just got married—why isn’t your husband a Ukrainian refugee?”)

Political Comedy Report

I guess it’s something that several “non-political” sketches tonight slipped in a jab about the current slide into kleptocratic fascism from time to time tonight. (Johansson’s newscaster puns “Hasta la vista, baby” before segueing to a story about another infant being deported by Trump’s ICE goon squads.) Since it’s the last episode and all, I’ll reiterate that a show with a guaranteed hate-watcher in chief who is currently threatening said show by name after each flabby cold open should be doing a hell of a lot more.

Moving on, James Austin Johnson’s Trump over the past few appearances has pretty much given up. Or rather the show has given up trying to give this world-class impressionist anything but the most cursory material to work with, instead turning this Trump into a toothless stand-up comedian. (Like last time, this Trump pauses mid-rant to take stock of how he’s doing with the crowd.)

Emil Wakim gets to play Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman without the sketch (if I may) dismembering the guy who ordered the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi—or the American president now happily gushing over his new pal and business partner.

Jokes about Trump accepting a $400 million jet-bribe from Qatar is passed off with an “airlines amirite” hand-wave, while the oppression of women in his hosts’ countries is likewise passed off as a Melania in hiding reference. When Johnson’s Trump breaks the fourth wall to kick an audience member out of his seat to do some crowd work, the Trump as sub-par stand-up conceit is complete.

Johnson’s characterization is amusingly shallow, and far less biting or interesting than the online shorts that landed him the coveted job. Even Johnson seems tired of the gig, his parting joke about it being a coin toss whether or not America will still exist by the time Season 51 rolls around in the fall sounding like a bit of wistful, wishful thinking.

I imagine there are writers at SNL who’d love to be doing these cold opens better. From his previous work, I know Johnson would as well. But that’s just not Saturday Night Live‘s thing any more, as much as its self-mythologized reputation would like to claim it ever was.

With a lionized millionaire octogenarian setting the tone and the rules, SNL isn’t interested in rocking the boat, not really. While Donald Trump and his minions literally seek to drive all media critical of his regime off the air, even these watery swipes at Trump’s most obvious characteristics and actions might count as courageous—if you’re grading on the most remedial curve. But SNL loves to coast on its “edgy” rep while Lorne Michaels’ own regime assiduously protects its own interests from actual risk or retaliation. That’s not edgy, that’s as dull as it gets.

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

The big group sing in the monologue portrayed everybody as a happy puppy pile of camaraderie, with only a joke about the relative number of Ego vs. Michael Longfellow sketches giving vent to any of the end-of-year anxiety underlying the fun. Season 50 is over, and we didn’t get any in-show revelations about anyone leaving, so that’s a whole summer’s worth of second-guessing and headline scanning for SNL fans who are into the sport.

I’ll let the fine folks at SNL By the Numbers break down the stats for this season, but you don’t have to watch SNL with a stopwatch to gauge who’s got Lorne Michaels’ favor and who’s likely one-and-done. Or multiple seasons-and-done.

I’m historically terrible at predicting this sort of thing, so I’ll restrict myself to saying that nobody in this cast is detracting from the show. (Believe me, that’s not always the case.) I’ll also say that nobody in this cast is so essential in their work or their drawing power to be completely safe. It’s that sort of cast.

Jost and Che are the most likely exits, although the anticipated send-off with Jost’s other half in the house never materialized, so who knows. Kenan joked about leaving in the promos this week, while the episode itself took winking jabs at Sarah Sherman and Ego getting the axe. For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of the three are going anywhere.

Chloe barely appeared tonight. Same goes for Devon, both performers having been used less and less in the back half of the season, so that’s a worry. Emil had more to do than usual. Same goes for fellow featured players Jane Wickline and Ashley Padilla, which says more about how little they’ve been used than it hints at their futures.

We could do this all day (and no doubt will all summer), so let’s get to the real issues. One—there are too many people. It makes this sort of toting-up guessing game each week too much of a thing and doesn’t allow en ensemble to truly form. As tough as it’d be for a lot of people, cutting back to single-digits would force the cast to expand their role on the show and the show to find new ways to write for a stronger core. As it stands, everyone is fighting for scraps, and the show feels disjointed and lacking an identity.

Two—there aren’t any true standouts. It pains me to say it because I’m not a monster (I swear) and because I’m genuinely fond of most everybody in the current cast. But there’s nobody on SNL these days who truly commands attention any time they appear on screen. And Saturday Night Live needs stars. It needs character actors too (James Austin Johnson and Ashley Padilla being prime examples), but the show lives and dies on the crackle of undefinable energy a truly charismatic live performer brings to a long, long season—and this cast hasn’t had one since Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong left.

It’d be different if SNL were committed to character-based, writerly sketches where nuanced character work were valued over star turns, but those have always functioned as seasoning to the real meat that is a slam-bang star vehicle. Where to find such people? Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that the show hasn’t had one lately.

To make the hard choices (and there are some very hard ones), here’s my Season 51 cast:

[As yet unknown charismatic superstar(s)—good luck]
Kenan (as long as he wants)
JAJ (he’s stuck with Trump, but expand him into the Parnell/Hartman everyman role]
Dismukes (keep bringing the weird, kid)
Sarah Sherman (if the show allows Sarah Squirm out to play more)
Marcello (if he’s pressed into better roles—being cute isn’t enough)
Ashley Padilla (Wiig-like potential)
Bowen
Carl Tart (jumping from the writers room)
Update: Padilla and Tart

10-To-Oneland Report

Weirdly enough, I spent the hours leading up to this season finale writing about my feelings on Season 50 and looking at how this—let’s be honest—anticlimactic 50th season fits into my own half century-long connection to the show. The weird part is that an obscure sketch from 1979 called “Bad Clams” featured more prominently that even I expected. I have no explanation.

And so I thought it fitting (from an on-the-nose metaphorical standpoint at least) that bad clams featured prominently in the last sketch of Season 50. A bunch of Victorian ladies gorge themselves on a heap of appalling British period dishes, with the blood pudding appetizer only a warm up to jellied eels, intestines, variously slaughtered adorable animals, and, yes, very bad clams.

Heidi, Sarah, Chloe, and ScarJo all donned era-appropriate garb and twittery accents and pigged out with barely concealed disgust on prop food that dyed their teeth black and dribbled from their mouths in a gushy red glop.

Looking back to that ’79 season’s finale, it was there that Alan Zweibel came up with Lord and Lady Douchebag, a bit of raspberry-blowing indelicate low comedy to bid a long and troubled season a hearty and disreputable farewell. (Almost literally everybody left right after that.)

There’s nothing so quote-worthy here, although here’s to everyone for mostly keeping it together amidst all the grotesquerie and rubbery prop food. (Poor Chloe Fineman had it the worst, while Sherman positively delighted in chowing down on an enormous fake brain.) SNL and gross-out comedy for its own sake is a time-honored tradition and, coming as this entry does at the end of a resolutely mediocre Season 50, at least the cast got to make a few people sick on their way out of town.

Stray Observations

About those truncated goodnights, Latenighter posits that the full farewell—posted on the show’s social media—saw a tearful Bowen Yang as at least possible proof that this was his last show. Hmm.

Bad Bunny’s two numbers were cleverly produced and theatrically choreographed accompaniment to a pair of excellent songs. Plus, in the first, perched on a girder and eating his lunch in oversized overalls, he looked exactly like a Mario Brother.

He also did a nifty bit of prop work in each, timing out mouthfuls of food/gum just right to get to his next verse.

“President Trump has signed an executive order giving refugee status to white people from South Africa. Huh. You know, I could have sworn that white people had it good in South Africa. Must be the Mandela effect.”

Michael che, with a thINKER

“According to a new tell-all book, Biden’s inner circle revealed they were worried the president would need a wheelchair in his second term. Especially after they were all done stabbing him in the back.”

Colin Jost, funnier if he hadn’t finished four years of “biden is old” jokes

Episode Grade: C-Plus.

Season Grade: B-Minus.

And that’s SNL Season 50, everybody. Thank you all for watching and reading along with me, and for LateNighter for having me. As much as I’m a crabby old bastard, it’s always an honor, and a lot of fun. See you in the fall.