A little over a year has passed since the record appearance as host of “Saturday Night Live” (one of the best that season, to be fair), Ariana Grande is back again to show off some of her talents: facial expressions and comic timing, dance moves and, of course, her amazing singing voice.
But she also showed plenty of grace, ceding the spotlight to her Wicked co-star Bowen Yang, who confirmed ahead of this week's release that he was leaving SNL midway through its eighth season. At several points on the show this week, especially final sketch about a retiring Delta Sky Club employee It served as Ian's emotional farewell, and it was clear that Grande understood the mission: it was Ian's night, not hers.
That doesn't mean Grande wasn't great. She began with the monologue “All I Want for Christmas” and played the Elf on the Shelf, cut in half in cheerleader sketchexchanged the costume's soul patch with Marcello Hernandez as one of the two drama dance teachersand, perhaps most memorably of this performance, played Macaulay Culkin's character Kevin in an extremely bloody parody of Home Alone.
She dated the Grinch (Mikey Day) in “Love is Blind” Reunion Sketchplayed a judge in a courtroom scene featuring Black Santa Claus (Kenan Thompson) before playing Katy Perry and Celine Dion in promo for Peacock special it's a mixture of different singers, like the viral video of David Bowie and Bing Crosby's “Little Drummer Boy.”
But in his last show as an actor, Ian also appeared in almost every sketch, from a brief appearance in a Home Alone sketch to playing Yoko Ono in the Peacock skit special to reprising his Trend Forecaster character in Weekend Update with former cast member Aidy Bryant.
If Grande wasn't as reserved as last time (she laughed a few times), it didn't really matter because she was just as funny, energetic, and scarily accurate in all her impressions. It felt like Grande was there not so much to promote the new movie “Wicked” but to help a friend say goodbye.
Musical guest Cher appeared in Young's “Delta Sky” sketch as his boss and performed “DJ, play a Christmas song” And “Run, run, Rudolph“- Grande introduced the latter as her Castrato character, Antonio. Title card before farewell in honor of Rob Reiner, who was killed along with his wife Michelle Singer Reiner in their home last week..
Unsurprisingly, President Trump (James Austin Johnson) had a lot to say in his holiday address to the nation, as well as hugging a Christmas tree (“Remember when I did that with the flag? I'm hugging the tree now”) and reading his remarks aloud, a fun new feature in Johnson's masterful impression. Trump reminded the country that “Arctic immigrants are coming through our chimneys and stealing our milk and cookies,” and discussed recently voted to change the name of the Kennedy Center.now “No Homo Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” declaring that this is just the beginning. His name will be on the Trump Washington Monument, the Trump Lincoln Memorial and “Big Elphaba”, his name for the Statue of Liberty. Why are there so many names on things? “We had to remove it from so many files,” he said, referring to the heavily redacted file. recently released Epstein files. Johnson's impression gets increasingly vague and even more meta, but he continues to make random pop culture references, which this week included “Indigo Girls,” “The Hunger Games” and the video game “Metal Gear Solid.”
Grande's monologue briefly touched on the idea of bringing back old sketches like “Domingo” from her last appearance before defiantly declaring, “When something is perfect, it doesn't need a sequel.” She talked about the difficulty of finding gifts for people she doesn't know well, like her cousin Steve's boyfriend, which led to an entire musical number set to the tune of “All I Want for Christmas” in which Ian and other cast members offered gifts such as vouchers for a back massage or a box of raw oysters. The lyrics weren't easy to understand unless you had subtitles on, but Grande did one hell of a job singing the Mariah Carey song.
Best sketch of the night: Take a Bow, Bowen.
Was this the funniest sketch of the night? No, it'll probably be an Elf on the Shelf cheerleading squad or a Love Is Blind reunion. But Ian's final sketch about an elderly Delta Sky Club worker handing out eggnog and working the last shift was heartfelt and sweet. Even a casual fan of Yang and “SNL” would have a hard time not choking up as Yang talked about his time on the show to his wife (Grande), who responded, “All the egg head you’ve cooked over the years.” Some of them were great. Some of them were rotten.” “And a lot of it was cut,” he replied. Bowen broke down several times while expressing his love for the people who work on “SNL,” and sang a version of “Please Come Home for Christmas” with Grande through tears. “Eggnog is kind of like me—it’s not for everyone, but the people who like it are my type of people,” he said to thunderous applause. When he said he wanted to come out on top, she replied, “Oh, everyone knows you're the bottom.” Sketch End: Cher appears as her boss at Delta and tells him, “Everyone thought you were too gay. But you know what? You're perfect for me.”
Also good: Holiday duets you never knew existed
When you have Grande, it's hard to resist a slew of celebrity impressions, especially if they involve singing. For this piece, random performers team up in duets to try to recreate the magic of a David Bowie and Bing Crosby song.Little drummer boy“with varying degrees of success. Grande and Johnson have been paired twice: as Katy Perry and Bob Dylan, and then again to complete the sketch as Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion. It's impossible to overstate how well Grande imitates other singing voices, but the surprise here is how well Johnson holds her own as Bocelli. Other standouts: Hernandez as Bad Bunny, Benson Boone's backflip (probably a stuntman and not a cast member; we never see his face) and Veronika Slowikowska as Björk.
Weekend Update Winner: Mistletoe, You're on Guard!
Cam Patterson did well Michael Che's 12-year-old nephew Tysonwho is torn between being a nice kid and threatening Santa Claus for not bringing him a bike for Christmas last year. And this year sharing holiday jokes was strangely one-sided, with only Michael Che writing never-before-seen jokes for Update co-host Colin Jost to read. But Bryant, returning to reunite with Young for their headline appearance at Trend Forecasters, won the week. They focused on mistletoe, musical intros with the words “1, 2, 3, 4!” and in “Chinese Trends” – orange chicken. The duo repeated their catchphrase: “Go to sleep, bitch!” to each of these outgoing trends before declaring that pride flag waving, Marge Simpson hair and Michael Che are out. Of course, a stunned Michael Che was shown with a big blue wig and small pride flags in his hands.
