With a second solid writing and performance week in a row, Saturday Night Live was very entertaining, with a dynamic hosting turn by Ariana Grande, a forward-looking and nostalgic appearance by Stevie Nicks, and extra appearances by alums Dana Carvey, Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg. Here's everything that happened on SNL this week.
The Cold Open
Chloe Fineman appeared briefly as CNN host Kaitlin Collins, who immediately introduced us to a special political edition of Family Feud, which featured Kamala Harris's crew versus Donald Trump's. Andy Samberg played Harris's husband Doug Emhoff, Jim Gaffigan played Tim Walz, and Dana Carvey was President Joe Biden. On the other side, James Austin Johnson played Trump, Mikey Dey played Donald Jr., and Bowen Yang was JD Vance. With Kenan Thompson reprising his Steve Harvey, Harris and Trump squared off with a category about what you can find in your glove box, Harris won, and then her team took some absurd guesses at what the survey said. When Trump was called upon to answer, he did one of his so-called speech "weaves," all of which was pretty amusing.
The Monologue
Ariana Grande appeared to declare that she was only hosting the show and not singing at all, before proceeding to sing about not singing and not doing impressions of other musical performers. A theatrical bit of meta misdirection, this worked well.
Kelsey's Wedding and Domingo
During a wedding speech, bridesmaids, led by a character played by Grande sang a very off-key, off-colour song about their newlywed friend Kelsey, who was played by Chloe Fineman, and seemed to have had a fling with someone named Domingo during her bachelorette getaway. Of course, Domingo showed up at this wedding, which was funny.
My Best Friend's House
In this remote, dubbed a "Midnight Matinee," an elaborate musical movie scene featured Grande singing a nostalgic song about the smell of her best friend's house. A strange twist occurred when it turned out the good-natured patriarch was a serial killer, and this short went from pleasant to deeply disturbing.
Charades
At a family gathering, Bowen Yang played Josh, a new boyfriend of Michael Longfellow's Kevin, who irked his mom Diane (played by Grande). A game of charades got so heated that Josh and Diane actually got into a physical fight, which culminated in a surprising and funny reconciliation.
Celine Dion for the UFC
In this remote, Grande did a spot-on impression of Celine Dion speaking and singing, who announced that, following a recent NFL promo, she was signing on to be a spokesperson for the UFC, which was short but really well done.
Stevie Nicks
Over an ethereal blast of industrial pop, the iconic Stevie Nicks sang the politically charged "The Lighthouse," which seemed to both encourage young people, particularly women whose rights are being trampled on, to make their voices heard in the forthcoming U.S. election and also admonish them for not taking the matter seriously enough. Overall, for a protest song, this was topical, over-the-top, but ultimately affecting.
A curious situation occurred when a Steve Nicks photo appeared after a commercial break, which usually indicates we're going to get a second musical performance, but then nothing happened, the photo seemed stuck, and then another round of commercials aired. This suggests some kind of tech or other issue popped up, delaying the show. When the Stevie photo appeared again, we did see Nicks and her band, including Waddy Wachtel, and, after a bit of uncertainty between those two, the band played her old hit "Edge of Seventeen" in a convincing matter. Not sure what happened here, but something was up with this part of the show.
Weekend Update
Colin Jost launched Update with digs at Trump's Coachella rally, in which he strangely invoked Abraham Lincoln. Michael Che discussed Trump's decision to take part in a Fox News town hall before an audience of women, and later joked about Democrats losing Black voter support. Jost executed a rough abortion joke and then mocked Sarah Huckabee Sanders's criticism of Kamala Harris's motherhood.
Che introduced us to Happy Amazon Employee Monica, who was manically played by Ego Nwodim. A takedown of Amazon's labour practices, Nwodim infused Monica with desperate exhaustion and hyperactivity, which was effective satire.
Jost addressed LeBron and Bronny James being the first father/son duo to play on the same team with a good dad joke, and later, Che sang an R. Kelly joke, which Jost followed up with a Diddy dig.
James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman played Noel and Liam Gallagher fighting about whether or not the Oasis reunion will actually happen. The Gallagher brothers wrestled and insulted each other like 10-year-olds and found some common ground, which was decent.
Italian Renaissance
An Italian king was fielding cultural pitches during the Italian Renaissance when Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg showed up with Ariana Grande, who played an Italian boy named Antonio, whose parents may have had him castrated so that he could sing very high. Featuring some silly accents, outfits and wordplay, this was rather funny despite the dark subject matter.
Jennifer Coolidge for Maybelline
This played on an old SNL bit where a celebrity looks into a mirror and a cast member does an impression of them, so we encounter two of them. In this case, Jennifer Coolidge wasn't around but, Chloe Fineman and Grande faced off with their impersonations, and they were eventually joined by Dana Carvey, doing a Coolidge of his own. This was silly enough to work.
The Hotel Detective
In this satire of film noirs, James Austin Johnson, Grande and Andrew Dismukes played fast-talking adversaries who each surprised the other by flashing a badge and claiming to be from one convoluted investigative branch or another. As if he didn't already recall Norm Macdonald enough, Michael Longfellow closed this off by impersonating Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone (which Norm used to do), which made this a heady bit.