Photo: NBC/Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
Anora star and Best Actress Oscar winner Mikey Madison’s Saturday Night Live hosting debut was an opportunity to introduce her to a wider audience and let her showcase her personality outside of Anora and her other, more dramatic roles. And it accomplished that. In a monologue that stitches together mini-bits, we watch a montage of her previous roles (including two separate girls on fire). But in real life, Madison assures us she’s much more laidback. We learn about her horse girl past, including her invented backstory with her horse: “We were jailbirds arrested for the crime of stealing each others’ hearts. I know. It’s so hard to believe I was homeschooled, right?” Her twin brother even shows up.
But something was holding the episode back. Maybe it was that Madison seemed nervous and barely utilized during the episode. The show had her playing mostly periphery characters, with a couple of sketches featuring Madison more prominently. I wonder if it was because she is out of her element with comedy — she’s charismatic but not necessarily funny. I appreciated the desire not to pigeonhole her into Anora-related sketches, but perhaps it was a missed opportunity not to lean into it more. A teaser for this episode showed Sarah Sherman pitching an “Anora Fedora,” to which Madison, through bared teeth and a radiant smile, replies, “You guys will have other ideas, right?” Devastating and charming. I would’ve loved to see this as a full sketch.
To her credit, she was committed to the characters she played throughout the night, which ran the gamut: a cold open appearance as a teenager accidentally in that Pete Hegseth group chat, a girl who tried to cannonball into a pool off a balcony and misses, a star student in Marcello Hernandez’s acting class, a mob wife, Barry the midwife’s nemesis, to rattle off a few. I was really tickled by her entrance in Please Don’t Destroy’s digital short, where she was completely nonplussed by being head-to-toe dressed as Squidward (even if the rest of the short fell flat after transitioning into the live-action SpongeBob trailer, a nod to the Bad Bunny episode). She carried herself through the “So Like … What Are We?” sketch, where game show host Madison grills a guy she’s dating (Michael Longfellow) to define the relationship. The way she plays the character comes off as a little sad than funny sometimes, but she puts in an honest effort.
Despite being sparse in incorporating Madison, the episode was strong, with standout performances from cast members, especially Bowen Yang and Andrew Dismukes. Does Madison appear to be a naturally gifted comedian? No. Was she putting her whole ass into each sketch? Absolutely. She just won an Oscar and crossed SNL off her list — and we had fun! Let the woman rest.
Here are the highlights:
I’m glad they brought this sketch back. Marcello Hernandez always goes big, especially as the quintessential acting coach. Madison plays his star student to the chagrin of the rest of the class. Some standouts included the jokes about the acting coach’s credits, which included Wipeout (“Busted my face on a big red ball.”), What Would You Do with John Quiñones (“Did not help and was racist.”), and almost The White Lotus (“Auditioned for the incest scene with my biological brother, and I didn’t hate it.”). Fellow student Andrew Dismukes “going to sleep” at the behest of an annoyed Hernandez was also unexpectedly goofy.
There were so many great moments during this week’s Weekend Update. Ashley Padilla, as the titular Joann from Joann Fabrics, slipping off the brink and into the depths of the character? Yes ma’am. Her performance as a flask-swigging, marker-huffing, capri-wearing woman experiencing both silly and devastatingly high stakes solidified that she was hired for a reason. Devon Walker ribbing Michael Che about not being at work and incorporating the Ashton Hall parody as pre-tapes within the segment made Weekend Update feel more dynamic. Also, Che asking if Jost is okay after his Paddington takedown and Jost shouting “NO!” was probably the hardest I laughed in this episode.
Shot through a window, a mob scion (Andrew Dismukes) holds on for life next to his two doting sons (James Austin Johnson and Marcello Hernandez). And one of his many regrets? Not pursuing stand-up comedy. He bounces hack premises off his confused sons, and his wife comes in to double down on a catchphrase: “Make that make sense.” Madison’s mob wife character finally lets her play the diva that she is.
Bowen Yang’s midwife character comes back in a different flavor, this time pissed at being forgotten by an OBGYN (played by Madison) who he met outside a Hilary Duff Today Show appearance in the aughts while wearing “prescription New Year’s Eve glasses.” There were a lot of fun jokes and dynamic time jumps that packed a ton of narrative into a short sketch. Madison’s line reading of “serious” as “saaair-ious” and Yang’s reading of “furious” as “four-ious” made this one of the best sketches of the night. Yang and Madison ending with the Hilary Duff choreo was a nice way to wrap up the sketch.
This episode was heavier on the pre-tapes/shorts, but I’m not mad about it. This animated short by Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell about New York’s planners (voiced by Bowen Yang and Michael Longfellow) in 1620 devising confusing urban planning decisions dialed in on a simple premise that worked well, primarily through visual jokes like a frenetic drawing of the subway map and one of the planners circling “piss smell.”
• Props to “Big Dumb Line” for being a banger and for the Joe Jonas cameo. The British accents while singing made me almost certain that Charli was going to pop out at any moment. Also, loved the Amelia Earhart reference.
• Sarah Sherman’s projectile-vomiting while screaming in “Spring Break” was such a brief and potent moment of a goofy body horror exorcism. More!!
• So Morgan Wallen’s deal is that he’s a musical guest for the second time and also has multiple controversies? Shane Gillis but for music, I guess. Wallen walking out immediately after the show ended without engaging with anyone else does make it seem like something might have happened this week. I spent both of his performances wishing he was Doechii.
• I want to see Bowen’s “guy from the future” character from the “Jury Duty” sketch in his own standalone piece.
• New York should replace “Excelsior” with “B.O.N. P.A.G.O. L.O.C.O. H.O.M.O.”
