If Season 50 proved there was no beating Domingo, Season 51 delivered a different lesson: on YouTube, Saturday Night Live’s political cold opens still travel.
As of May 26—ten days after SNL’s season finale—the season’s most-viewed clip is “Pam Bondi Hearing Cold Open,” which has racked up 10.6 million views. The October sketch, which reunited former cast members Amy Poehler and Tina Fey as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, tops a final leaderboard in which cold opens account for seven of the season’s ten most-watched YouTube videos.
But unlike the show’s midseason YouTube rankings, Season 51’s final list wasn’t simply a Trump story. One of the season’s more interesting movers was “Parent Teacher Conference,” from Bad Bunny’s season-opening episode with musical guest Doja Cat. The sketch ranked eighth at midseason, but kept gaining ground, ultimately finishing as the season’s No. 2 clip with 9.3 million views.
Part of that staying power may owe to the sketch’s role as Ashley Padilla’s first breakout role in what became a season of breakouts for the sophomore-year featured player. And it wasn’t a one-off: two other prominent Padilla showcases, “Passing Notes” (with Ryan Gosling) and “Haircut,” also finished in the season’s top 20, while “Mom Confession” landed just outside it at No. 23.
The season’s political sketches still dominated the list, with “Hegseth and Patel Iran Press Briefing Cold Open,” “NYC Mayoral Debate Cold Open,” “Pentagon Press Conference Cold Open,” “Hegseth Iran Presser Cold Open,” “Trump’s Gas Prices Cold Open,” and “Kavanaugh Hegseth Patel Bar Cold Open” all placing among the top 11.
But while the political cold open remained SNL’s most reliable YouTube performer, the final top 20 also included character-driven and pop-culture sketches including “Parent Teacher Conference,” “Inventing Spanish,” “Heated Wizardry,” Melissa McCarthy’s “UPS Delivery Driver,” “Passing Notes,” “Stranger Things Promo,” “Shop TV: Pillow,” “Haircut,” and “Elf on the Shelf Support Group.”
Compared to last season’s YouTube leaderboard, Season 51’s biggest clips were also more modest in scale. Season 50’s No. 1 sketch, “Domingo: Bridesmaid Speech,” had reached 19.1 million views by season’s end, while Mike Myers’ “Elon Musk Cold Open” was close behind at 17.1 million. This year, only one sketch has crossed the 10 million mark so far.
The complete list with YouTube view counts as of May 26 follows below:
- “Pam Bondi Hearing Cold Open” (Amy Poehler/Role Model) — 10.6M views
- “Parent Teacher Conference” (Bad Bunny/Doja Cat) — 9.3M views
- “Hegseth and Patel Iran Press Briefing Cold Open” (Olivia Rodrigo) — 7.6M views
- “NYC Mayoral Debate Cold Open” (Miles Teller/Brandi Carlile) — 7.6M views
- “Inventing Spanish” (Bad Bunny/Doja Cat) — 7.3M views
- “Pentagon Press Conference Cold Open” (Melissa McCarthy/Dijon) — 6.9M views
- “Hegseth Iran Presser Cold Open” (Ryan Gosling/Gorillaz) — 6.5M views
- “Heated Wizardry” (Finn Wolfhard/A$AP Rocky) — 6.2M views
- “Trump’s Gas Prices Cold Open” (Harry Styles) — 6.1M views
- “UPS Delivery Driver” (Melissa McCarthy/Dijon) — 5.9M views
- “Kavanaugh Hegseth Patel Bar Cold Open” (Matt Damon/Noah Kahan) — 5.7M views
- “Passing Notes” (Ryan Gosling/Gorillaz) — 5.5M views
- “Cabinet Meeting Cold Open” (Finn Wolfhard/A$AP Rocky) — 5.3M views
- “Stranger Things Promo” (Finn Wolfhard/A$AP Rocky) — 5.1M views
- “Trump Iran War Address Cold Open” (Connor Storrie/Mumford & Sons) — 4.9M views
- “Shop TV: Pillow” (Sabrina Carpenter) — 4.8M views
- “Haircut” (Glen Powell/Olivia Dean) — 4.8M views
- “Trump Making Calls Cold Open” (Colman Domingo/Anitta) — 4.8M views
- “Elf on the Shelf Support Group” (Ariana Grande/Cher) — 4.5M views
- “Jeffrey Epstein Ghost Cold Open” (Will Ferrell/Paul McCartney) — 4.4M views
YouTube is, of course, just one platform where SNL clips can be viewed. Though view counts for other platforms like Instagram, Peacock, and NBC.com are not independently verifiable, NBC has said that clips from a given episode can draw, in aggregate, hundreds of millions of views across various platforms.
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