Melissa McCarthy remains an all-time great presenter and a master of suspenseful and physical comedy, while Dijon was an impressively inventive and daring musical guest on an uneven episode Saturday Night Livewhere some very funny ideas were mixed with some that didn't live up to their promises. That's all that happened on SNL This week.
Cold opening
The C-SPAN broadcast began with a call for Netflix to buy the channel and then moved on to Colin Jost portraying the deranged, high-strung, megalomaniacal Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He was hostile to the assembled press, which included Sarah Sherman, portraying disgraced Rep. Matt Gaetz, and at one point the alleged war criminal introduced a sleeping President Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, dreaming of Zohran Mamdani. It was all done quite well.
Monologue
Melissa McCarthy happily showed up for her sixth event and spoke to us in a husky voice about her love of Christmas music and her experience playing the “mouth bugle.” After calling up a piano and horn duet, she was nearly run over by Marcello Hernandez pushing a baby grand piano, then Kenan Thompson came in, leading to the cast singing along in what was a subdued finale to a tepid monologue.
Village market
Jeremy Culhane played a grocery store employee offering cheese samples to customers, and McCarthy played an overly grateful and emotional customer. After leaving the cheese stand, she returned to offer him something in return, and her backstory about her foster mom was disturbing. An awkward hug ensued before Mikey Day appeared as a work colleague to inform her that her six dogs tied up out front were harassing customers. It was strange and funny.
Helping hand
In a remote area, a boy helps an elderly neighbor, played by McCarthy, by clearing a path for her. As she watched him being bullied and mistreated, she tried to help him in the most extreme ways possible, which was darkly funny.
UPS Complaints
McCarthy played Donna, a UPS employee who was confronted by a co-worker duo played by Ashley Padilla and Mikey Day who needed to talk to her about a particular customer's complaints that were confirmed by doorbell camera footage. After Donna faked fainting, new videos were shown of her destroying and torturing the same house over and over again. Physical comedy feat of strength McCarthy, this turned out to be a fun exploration of another package delivery service.
Dijon
As usual, glamorous alt-soul star Dijon was surrounded by 12 colleagues, including singers and instrumentalists, to tear through “HIGHER!” It was vaguely reminiscent of Dirty Projectors and was visually and sonically attractive.
With significantly more upbeat and pop-oriented songs, Dijon and his team cut through the cheesy mix to create the cool, Prince-like “Another Baby!”
Weekend update
Colin Jost revealed Trump's dubious FIFA World Prize, and Michael Che made a good joke about football and ICE. Jost mocked Trump's MRI results, or lack thereof, and was booed for making a joke about Epstein, while Che suggested Kristi Noem may have eaten saliva. Che also made a weak joke about the Bronx.
Ben Marshall stopped by to play deeply tanned Lance, a redhead who just went on vacation. Lance spoke in gibberish in a sun-poisoned haze and eventually revealed that he had turned pale during a trip to Ireland. It was decent, simply because Marshall is so damn charming.
Che made a good joke about a Japanese egg salad sandwich, and Yost made fun of TikTok viewers. Yost had a good time Star wars barbed poncho and then told us about a raccoon who broke into a liquor store and got drunk, leading to Sarah Sherman appearing as a spoiled raccoon who at one point quoted Trump. A manic showcase with some good jokes, it really should have been about the mania that Sherman brings to the table.
truth or dare
Some Southern moms would gather for a game of Truth or Dare, which sometimes led to some of them pairing up to experiment with their sexuality. All the jokes here were about erotic shocks, which was difficult because the shocks became more expected, but there was also good writing.
Every Sunday dinner!
At a gathering of friends, McCarthy was in the company of Mark Andrew Dismukes, who was obsessed with the idea of a weekly Sunday dinner with all the people who were currently in his house. It seemed that Mark was a deeply troubled man who threatened self-harm with every new refusal, and Dismukes was a wonderful person in this.
Cousin Planet
Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska teamed up to create this high-concept music video that took advantage of the primitive video editing aesthetics of the early Internet. When you think about what happens to cousins after they leave your home after a holiday visit, Cousins Planet was excellent and helpfully answered questions most of us didn't even know we had.
Christopher and Guillaume
McCarthy and Bowen Young played a couple who were featured on a local news broadcast because of their holiday-decorated home. Tommy Brennan played the reporter, Ribbed Con-Dom, which was a very stupid joke name, but fitting for this pathetic time-suck.
