Amy Poehler returns to Saturday Night Live for her first hosting gig in 15 years. She’s front and center for the cold open, playing Attorney General Pam Bondi, testifying before the Senate judiciary committee. Bondi is combative from the start: “My name is Pam Bondi, I spell it with an I because I ain’t gonna answer any of your questions.”
She busts out her burn book to hurl personal insults at the senators (“Amy Klobuchar, your ass out here sounding like a Pokémon”) while doing everything she can to avoid answering questions about Trump’s various scandals.
She brings out fellow mean girl cabinet member Kristi Noem (Tina Fey, sporting fake cosmetic surgery that is indistinguishable from the work Noem has had done), who dismisses the fact that the current government shutdown is Republican’s fault: “That makes me laugh more than the end of Old Yeller!”
You knew that with Poehler hosting, Fey was bound to show up. Pairing them off as Bondi and Noem was the obvious and right choice, with Fey’s caricature being particularly on point.
During her monologue, Poehler celebrates her new podcast (“I’m a podcaster now and if that’s not a recession indicator I don’t know what is”) and notes that tonight’s episode marks 50 years to the day that the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired.
The Rudemans is a sitcom about a super stand-offish, sarcastic family who all “talk like they’re a cashier at Buffalo Exchange”. There’s not much here beyond that initial setup and a couple cheap pratfalls.
This is followed by a commercial for Non-Non-Alcoholic Beer, “the first non-alcoholic beverage that’s over 96% alcohol”, allowing drinkers to get wasted while still reaping the social benefits of sobriety (at least until a cop tries to administer a breathalyzer test).
Next, Poehler is Miss Lycus, the Fast Psychic. With a “hard out at 7”, the clairvoyant talk show host rushes through desperate people’s questions as quickly and brutally as possible (most of her answers being some variation of “He’s dead” and “Drowned”). This is Poehler’s absurdist bread and butter, and the rare case where the rushed nature of a sketch is a plus.
Television audiences’ latest soapy obsession, The Hunting Wives – the “straight but lesbian, horny Republican murder drama” – is back for its second (rushed) season, featuring lots of thigh-squeezing, gun drawing, and “more, you know, ‘great’ writing’”. This season also introduces a new character, played by Poehler’s Parks and Rec costar Aubrey Plaza. Even with the guest stars, this sketch manages to give most of the female cast a chance to bounce off one another.
Then, Poehler plays a pregnant corporate manager continuing to work up to and through her due date. Her water breaks during a meeting, but rather than going to the hospital, she jumps into a birthing pool in the middle of the office and, with the help of her crunchy hippie doula and supportive husband, births a fully grown businessman. A funny idea, but it feels rushed (in a bad way this time).
Musical guest Role Model takes the stage for their first song. A surprise walk-on and quick shimmy from Charli xcx pops the audience. Then its time for Weekend Update, where Colin Jost celebrates the ceasefire agreement in the Middle East while also lamenting the federal invasion of Chicago: “Only Trump could Freaky Friday Chicago and Gaza.”
Michael Che introduces the segment’s first guest, Rhonda LaCenzo (Sarah Sherman), a panicky New Yorker outraged over the likelihood of Zohran Mamdani becoming the city’s next mayor. Apoplectically claiming he’s a “hipster jihadist” and “an Isis-trained millennial nepo baby from Uganda”, while also admitting to having detailed sexual fantasies about the “Bolshevik Tik Toker”, it turns out she’s from Long Island and can’t even vote in the election. It’s a funny (and only slightly exaggerated) sendup of Big Apple Islamophobia, yet one can’t help but find it odd that, in light of the next (presumed) administration, SNL choose to lay off cast member Emil Wakim over the summer, given he was the only guy they had who could have played Mamdani.
Later, Jost welcomes popular returning guests Grant (Marcello Hernández) and Melissa (Jane Wickline), the couple you can’t believe are together. The loud, dumb bro and shy, nerdy wallflower talk about their shared love of fall (“the time when the trees lose their hair”), their respective Halloween costumes of Mike Wazowski and Sylvia Plath (“because it’s the one day you can dress like a slut”), and annual sexcapades (“I take him into the bedroom, light my candle, and jackle on his lantern”).
Then, Poehler crashes her old stomping grounds to challenge Jost and Che to an old-fashioned joke-off, evening the odds by bringing on both of her former Update co-hosts (“my first wife and second wife”) Fey and Seth Meyers. A great treat for fans of Update, and an appropriately-star studded moment for the golden anniversary.
During paid advertisement for their law firm, attorneys Billson & Lieberman promote their “combined 50 years of legal experience”. They are suddenly interrupted by Lachlan Mulchburger, a “jacked and old as hell” rival lawyer who literally bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to announce that he has even more years of legal experience under his belt. Almost as soon as he appears, he’s interrupted by elderly triplet attorneys who are even older and more experienced. The game of senior one-upmanship continues via Billson & Lieberman clones (whose synced up line delivery makes for the best gag of the night), a law practicing Dracula, and an ancient talking tree named Yggdrasil who once represented Zeus.
Next, Poehler plays a wife and mother going through menopausal mid-life crisis by dressing and acting like an angry goth teenager. Her emotional outburst over her “twisted reality” – “Raising two kids, taking care of my gaining parents … vision blurry, nerve pinched, pelvic floor on the ground…F my life!” – is vintage Poehler, although everything else about this one is forgettable.
The night’s final sketch takes place during a masterclass at Juilliard, where a successful composer duo (Poehler and Bowen Yang) discusses the process behind their haunting instrumental themes for several acclaimed television dramas (including Severance and The Gilded Age). To the confusion of the students, their first drafts are all hokey rap songs a la Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which feature wildly inaccurate lyrics about the plot of the shows. This is a much less funny version of the classic Roundball Rock sketch from 2013.
Despite going out on a flat note, this was still a good episode, with expectedly strong hosting from Poehler and a number of fun cameos. On the one hand, this would have made for a much better season premiere, but on the other, it was the right choice to hand this historic episode over to a sure hand.
