On an episode that got better as it went along: Sabrina Carpenter was, unsurprisingly, a funny, charming and funny presenter (even though Saturday Night LiveThis week her writing was uneven again and Domingo had to leave) and her musical performances were skillfully choreographed and attention-grabbing. In other positive news, we all know that the more Ashley Padilla is used, the more likely it is that any sketch will be a winner as she is one of the strongest actors in recent memory. That's all that happened on SNL This week.
Cold opening
At the Olive Garden, Kelsey (Chloe Fineman) and Matthew (Andrew Dismukes) – aka the Domingo couple – celebrated Matthew's birthday. Following the departure of Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner, Kelsquad featured new fake singers, Ashley Padilla (who had Nora Dunn vibes) and Veronica Slowikowska, who hilariously turned Lady Gaga's “Abracadabra” into “Domingo”, prompting Marcello Hernandez to show up and piss Matthew off. For Domingo's sketch, which is one of the most divisive in the show's history, it was unsuccessful and difficult, and it wasn't the best idea for a cold open. This also marked the second week in a row that the host appeared in the cold open, which is very rare.
Monologue
Sabrina Carpenter was, as expected, hilarious and making fun of herself. Man's best friend album cover. She poked fun at her sexy personality, doing a little crowd work that proved the perception was correct, and faced the wrath of Kenan Thompson, who was part of a not-so-good cameo, and then the stilted little monologue ended.
Snack Homes
Carpenter, Chloe Fineman, Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska star as teenage boys who record a podcast about snacks. In fact, such podcasts about snacks from young people do exist and have their own charm and slang, and Wickline's Tyler, or “Uncle”, was funny because he had never eaten a vegetable in his life. Like many podcasts hosted by young Americans, this one welcomed President Trump into the pod, and James Austin Johnson delved into the experience more than ever. If you closed your eyes, you'd swear Trump was hanging out with some teenagers and giving them a hard time. Modestly, it was fire.
Plans
In this distant trailer for the horror film, Carpenter and Ben Marshall play a couple who are about to hang out when she realizes she has forgotten the plans she made with her deranged cousin and husband. With some funny observations about how annoying boring people can be, it worked very well, and it's always nice to see Marshall involved in something.
SHOPTV: Neck pillow
Mikey Day and Ashley Padilla played the Southern hosts of a shopping infomercial and welcomed Carpenter's Virginia Duffy, who was selling an ergonomic travel pillow. Much to the presenters' shock, Duffy's pink pillow bore a striking resemblance to a vagina, prompting the show's producers to blur it out. Things got even worse when the clitoris was highlighted on the pillow and hair appeared in the deluxe edition. Noisy, it was funny and well done.
GirlBoss Seminar on Female Confidence
Carpenter played a confidence workshop presenter who lectured participants while they danced. When her dance partners accidentally threw her out of a window, her speech and utterances suggested that she had suffered a concussion. Some technical problems aggravated an already minor situation (which is typical, at the time of writing this article SNL didn't even bother to post any clips from it, suggesting that even those were like: Hm).
Love High School
Although he missed the live performance, Bowen Yang appeared in a deleted music video dueting with Carpenter about teenagers arguing with each other at a school dance while hapless teachers and principals look on. A sweet and playfully innocent play, it was simply superb.
Sabrina Carpenter
Set in a young woman's bedroom, Carpenter fidgeted in underwear that said “It's Saturday Night” and a T-shirt that read “Live from New York,” singing into a microphone shaped like a hairbrush, and the Manchild production included a directed and choreographed sketch. Impressive stuff.
In a dojo-like setting, Carpenter and her band performed “Nobody's Son” with karate choreography and dropped at least two F-bombs, which typically resulted in FCC fines and a ban from competition. SNLbut maybe Lorne is mellowing with age, we'll see. Either way, it looked and sounded great.
Weekend update
Colin Jost started Update by mocking Trump for freeing disgraced Congressman George Santos, but the jokes were half-baked. Michael Che mocked Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for promising to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if the US gave his country missiles, and dug into a leaked group chat between racist Young Republicans and leaders, leading to a nice dig at Yost. Yost told us that Trump is leading us all here to hell, and Che ridiculed the president's words. TIME magazine cover photo. Yost reported on John Bolton's indictment, but joked about himself. Che gave a good talk about his Tinder matches, and Yost gave us a look at Los Angeles Dodger Shohei Ohtani's historic National League championship game with a nice callback from Santos.
Marcello Hernandez's character Movie Guy stopped by to discuss new and classic horror films, but as usual, he hasn't seen any of them, and it's a one-note joke he plays for us again, with some decent and charming touches on other aspects of pop culture.
Yost told us a funny joke about Spiritual Halloween and a wrong joke about a monkey at the zoo. After Che earned some groans over a Prince Andrew joke, Yost introduced us to new actor Tommy Brennan, who had just moved to New York and was doing some sit-ins for the occasion. Somewhat understatedly, Brennan told us about growing up one of eight people in Minnesota and how that experience helped him adjust to life in the city. Brennan's presentation was fair and capped off a relatively short update.
New washer and dryer
In a hardware store, Andrew Dismukes and Ashley Padilla played a couple who were helped by Kenan Thompson's salesman as they sorted through different washing machines with unique musical notifications. One set of cars actually had singers inside them, played by Carpenter and Veronica, which was awkward and ponderous, but also quite funny.
surprise pot
A surprise office birthday party led to a very awkward moment when Ashley Padilla's office co-worker, Laura, was so scared that she farted loudly (or sneezed?) and then had a nervous breakdown. Padilla is a miracle, turning a juvenile premise into high comedy art.
Social experiment
SNL writer and please don't destroy contestant Martin Herlihy seemed to walk us through a Nathan Fielder-style “rehearsal,” but his real-life simulation was actually a ploy about how people can be racist towards Frankensteins and the Cat in the Hat. Cam Patterson played the lone non-Frankenstein fanatic, but only because he had never heard of Frankenstein. Truly absurd, it was great because it had a SDA energy that is sorely lacking in the show this season.
