This week’s Saturday Night Live starts off the same as the last several Mother’s Day episodes have, with members of the cast – Bowen Yang, Marcello Hernández and Kenan Thompson – standing front and center with their mothers. Mercifully, we’re spared their treacly tribute when Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) barges on stage and kicks them to the curb, proclaiming: “It’s me again, invading all aspects of your life.”
Trump rambles about Pope Leo XIV (“We hope he does what we want … otherwise I’ll have to send JD back to do his thing”), trade deals (“Question: can a country go out of business? We’re gonna find out”), and his newly appointed US attorney for Washington DC, Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro.
This brings out the ever-sloshed Pirro (Cecily Strong, reprising her popular impersonation), who is proud to be joining “this group full of Russian assets, boozehounds, and people famous for the little baby animals they killed”.
She’s eventually joined by a fellow member of Trump’s “AA team”, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost). Jost doesn’t even attempt to impersonate Hegseth, instead coming out just so his one-time Update co-host can spew wine (and bourbon) in his face. It’s good to see Strong back, doing what she does best.
Walton Goggins hosts for the first time. The character actor is having his moment thanks to his recent brooding turn on The White Lotus. Goggins admits that he was initially stoked to become a sex symbol at 53 years of age, until he googled himself and read some of the headlines: “Hollywood’s Newest Heartthrob Is a Greasy, Depressing Little Man Whom No One Saw Coming”.
Pivoting to heartfelt sincerity, Goggins dedicates the rest of his noticeably short monologue to his mother, who he pulls from the front row to share a dance with on stage. In proper Alabaman style, they cut short their waltz and start barn dancing.
We travel back in time to Philadelphia, 1789, as the original Congress finalizes the first amendment to the constitution. After settling that, they move on to the next most important right, per Goggins’s shady stranger Matt: “Guns.” There’s no one better at playing eccentric sleazebags than Goggins and he’s cooking with gas here, but unfortunately the sketch ends before it ever gets going.
On a trip to the Central Park zoo, Jane Wickline finds a single baby shoe on the ground, which leads her on a musical quest to find the tot who lost it. It turns out to belong not to a baby, buts Goggins’s tiny-footed weirdo. He expects a new romance, only to be coldly shot down. His White Lotus co-star and real-life bud Sam Rockwell pops in as an eavesdropping balloon animal vendor. It would have been nice to see more of him and Goggins together.
Next, Goggins’s sassy waiter Alvie cuts in on a Mother’s Day brunch between two older women and their adult sons. His playful flirting quickly crosses the line to outright sexual advances, much to the mothers’ delight and their sons’ disgust. Goggins gets some good lines – “Just ‘cause your momma baked you doesn’t mean other men don’t want to see the oven”, “Calm down, boy; you got to spend nine months inside your momma, I’m just trying to get 20 minutes” – but as with the earlier Congress sketch it ends too abruptly.
A preview of a new stage show has some surprise members in the audience: 20 (real) dogs who, as part of their service animal training, must sit through a full-length play. Within the first few moments of the incestuous, Tennessee Williams-esque drama, the dogs start bailing. Their trainer explains: “This is their first time seeing a bad play.” The mix of cute canines and purposefully bad special effects brook laughs from the live audience, but like storebought dog bones, there’s no meat here.
Musical guests Arcade Fire perform their first set of the night, then it’s on to Weekend Update, where Jost reports on the new American pope: “Conservatives are already complaining that this pope is too woke … the reality is, there are no woke Catholics. If you’re a woke Catholic, you’re just not Catholic anymore.” A little later, Michael Che earns groans for his own take on the papacy: “President Trump says Catholics loved an image he posted of him dressed as the pope last week, but I just find it hard to believe anyone in the Catholic church would be into anything so juvenile.”
The first update guest is Hernández’s Movie Guy, an excitable usher who hasn’t seen any of the big new releases, although he’s happy to share his opinions on pop culture figures such as “Carly So Handsome” (Scarlett Johansson) and “Gary Fields” (Garfield). There’s no throughline here, it’s just an excuse for Hernández to do his usual accent work.
Then, Jost brings on A Guy Who Just Walked into a Spiderweb (Mikey Day). Ostensibly there to discuss the Trump tariffs, he instantly freaks out and starts flailing around while ripping his clothes off. Day really commits to the pratfalls, flinging his body around with reckless abandon. Very simple and very stupid in a good way.
At the Deathly Diner, a spooky themed restraint at an amusement park, a vacationing family are disappointed by how sloppy and poorly thought out the experience is. This is true of the sketch itself, one of the worst of the season.
Arcade Fire perform their second song before the show wraps up with a Dan Bulla short about a young executive (Andrew Dismukes) being made partner in his firm over drinks at his boss’s luxury apartment. His excitement turns to horror when he uses the restroom and discovers a Squatty Potty, which leads to hallucinations of his associates struggling on the toilet. Things turn downright prehistorical by the end. As in previous Bulla shorts, the animation is impressive but that special something that Saturday TV Funhouse and Lonely Island segments had is missing.
Thus ends the penultimate episode of Saturday Night Live’s 50th season. Goggins made for a good enough host, uber charismatic and naturally funny as he is, but the show could have and should have given him more to work with. Hopefully, he’ll returns before too long. The rest of the episode was middle of the road, with a couple of memorable bits – Day’s Update segment, Rockwell and Strong’s cameos – and a few duds. Next week’s finale has a lot riding on it.
