SNL Reviews: Ariana Grande/Cher (12/20/25)

 One of my least favorite cast members on SNL is finally gone!!! To celebrate, I’m going to be doing a special one-off review of his last episode!

Cold Open: Trump Christmas Address

Donald Trump tries to distract from the Epstein Files by rambling about unrelated shit.

• Nothing has changed since my last review. James Austin Johnson (God bless him) still sounds uncanny as the President, but the actual writing remains as shitty as ever. Nothing more for me to say about this.

• Actually, I will say one more thing: apparently, in dress, there was some kind of Survivor parody at the start of this. I shudder to think of how much worse this could have been…

Monologue

Our host sings about singing gifts for her acquaintances.

• 

Games That Are Fun vs. Games That Are Not

 Here are some ways to tell if a game was made by people who care about consumers.

First off, we have Sony. Back when the PlayStation first came out, there used to be a lot of really fun and unique looking games.

I've never played any of these games, but I can tell by looking at them that they were made by people who care about gamers having fun. The covers alone make me want to check them out!

Spyro the Dragon was one of my favorites growing up. Despite the obnoxious "tude" on this cover, his design is still iconic to this day. 

Unfortunately, the good times didn't last at Sony. Starting in the late 2000s or so, a lot of their games began to take on a homogenized look.

I don't know about you guys, but if I saw images like these in a video game, I wouldn't want to play them at all.

Believe it or not, this comes from the same developers as the original Spyro games. Gone are all of the colorful, stylized levels and character designs. Now we have contests to see how "realistic" we can make our human characters. 

Doesn't this look fun??? I've always wanted to play a game where some girl is getting operated on!

Everyone loves Ratchet and Clank, right? Well, what if they were REALISTIC??????

Blech!!!! Haven't you always wanted to see the individual hairs in Ratchet's eyebrows? He looks like a rejected Pixar character!

Moving on from Sony, we have Ubisoft. Being a French company, they used to be fun and wacky.

Unfortunately, by 2003, they had only started making games that look like this:

Bland designs, bland washed out colors, and no fun.

Look at how gorgeous these 90s Capcom games were!

BUT NOW LOOK AT WHAT THEY'VE BECOME

If you see a game with extremely dark visuals, then it's a sure sign that it's not fun at all!

What Happened To Video Games?

 It seems impossible that I would even have to make such a remark, but it's true. Video games used to be so much fun!

And what would a classic video game be without Engrish?

I'm too young to have experienced the 90s heyday of games, but that doesn't mean I didn't grow up with some awesome fucking games myself!

So, what happened to gaming? Why does it suck so hard now?

Maybe this image will help you understand:

What the fuck happened here? All the color and warmth is gone, replaced with dull, "realistic" blandness. Reminds me of the Special Edition of The Killing Joke that took out all of the wacky psychedelic colors and replaced them with "serious" grays and blues. 

Battle for Bikini Bottom was one of my favorite games as a kid, but then they "remastered" it and added stupid meme shit to it. HEY, 'MEMBER THAT EPISODE WITH HANDSOME SQUIDWARD???? OOOOOOOH, I 'MEMBER!

SNL Cast News

 Just because I’m done reviewing the show doesn’t mean I’m not done talking about it, and just as well, because they just revealed some cast departures for Season 51.

First off, Heidi is out. This wasn’t a surprise, to be honest. I’ve been hearing those rumors all year.

A bigger shock to me is the departure of Michael Longfellow. If you know me, I’ve been complaining forever that they never give him any screentime. But then, I started hearing rumors a few weeks ago that he was being tried out for a potential run as an Update anchor. Wow, that sounds great! I’ve always wanted to see him anchor Update! But nope! Just a few days ago, he suddenly announced that he wouldn’t be coming back. I don’t know if he was fired or if this is a decision he made for himself, but it still sucks.

Devon Walker is also not returning to the show. I was actually expecting this to happen given how little they used him, but it turns out he actually decided to leave on his own. In his Instagram post where he broke the news, he implies that things were a little “toxic” for him backstage. I don’t know what he’s implying, but there might have been some personal reason for him deciding to go.

Lastly, Emil Wakim is also not coming back. This one makes me angry the most. Just when it seemed like things were finally turning around for him after his great performance in the Shane Gillis episode, they quickly went back to underusing him. And this wasn’t a personal decision, either. He implies in his farewell statement that he got a call from somebody telling him he was off the show. If that’s the case, that really sucks. He seemed like a really likable guy.

Of course, none of the people who left were people that I wanted to see gone. As far as I know, Bowen and Chloe are staying. I was hoping Jane Wickline would be going too, but she’s a nepo baby, so that’s not gonna happen.

UPDATE: As soon as I posted this, I saw an article talking about this year’s new cast members. I haven’t heard of any of them, except for one: Ben Marshall, from Please Don’t Destroy, has graduated from the writing staff to a featured player. Unfortunately, this means that the trio has effectively broken up. Martin Herlihy is still a writer, while John Higgins has left entirely.

UPDATE 2: Like clockwork, I’ve already started to see people claim that the show is sexist because only one of the new hires is a woman. I saw one particularly autistic tweet call them a “whole lot of dudes”, as if their gender somehow makes them inferior. But at least they actually hired a new black guy to replace Devon, or else we’d get another one of those Kerry Washington as Michelle Obama situations.

Farewell to SNL (Part 2)

 So, now that I’ve gotten my history with the show out of the way, let’s talk about the highs and lows of my reviews.

Worst Episodes I’ve Ever Reviewed

Martin Short/Hozier (Season 50): Ugh, talk about a major disappointment. I was looking forward to this one because Martin Short is one of my idols and every other time he’s hosted has been awesome. Instead, what I got was a never ending parade of memberberries, rehashed sketches, and, worst of all, Melissa McCarthy’s fat ugly face.

Chris Rock/Megan Thee Stallion (Season 46): The first episode back in the studio after the pandemic hit…and it’s a giant load of ass. You know it’s bad when the only thing that raised so much as a smile from me was when Kate McKinnon got hit in the face in one sketch.

Will Ferrell/King Princess (Season 45): 2019 will forever be marked as the death of Will Ferrell’s career. Not only did his awful film Holmes and Watson win four Razzies, but he also starred in this Godawful piece of shit episode. It could have been just the thing people needed to wash the taste of Holmes and Watson out of our mouths, but instead, Will played second fiddle to a bunch of unnecessary cameos, cameos which actively took up too much time from the show, forcing them to cut out the best sketch of the night. As for the stuff that remained…well, I never want to see that Thanksgiving sketch ever again.

Ariana DeBose/Bleachers (Season 47): The only reason I’m putting this one here is because of one single moment that almost made me want to break the TV. I’m talking about that hideous Elmo commentary that Chloe Fineman did on Update. To this day, it remains the single worst thing I have ever seen at the desk. Yep, even worse than Baby Yoda and The Movie Guy.

Ryan Gosling/Chris Stapleton (Season 49): They should have called this one “Gigglefest 2024”, because that’s all everyone did for 75% of the episode. It all culminated with that stupid, unfunny, overrated Beavis and Butt-head sketch which lasted way longer than it needed to because of all the laughing and caused the highly-anticipated Papyrus II sketch to get cut. 

Amy Schumer/Steve Lacey (Season 48): Nepotism sure is fun, isn’t it? Without it, there’s no way this unfunny, plagiaristic fatass would ever have a career. Normally, the episodes she’s hosted have been fairly unremarkable. But this one reaches a whole new level of crap. In particular, there’s a “joke” she does in her monologue where she insults people with Asperger’s syndrome like myself. That moment right there set a bad tone for the rest of the episode, which was full of some atrocious material.

What’s the worst episode I’ve ever reviewed, you ask? You probably knew this was coming…

Elon Musk/Miley Cyrus (Season 46): Without a doubt, this remains one of the lowest points in SNL history. When you’re making the Paul Reiser episode from Season 20 look like a masterpiece, you know it’s bad. Musk himself was a bland, uncharismatic host, but it didn’t help that he had to star in shit like “Gen Z Hospital”, or…*sigh*…that downright hideous Wario sketch…which is one of the worst things I have ever seen on television.

Now let’s look at some of the worst sketches I’ve ever reviewed. I’ll be going through these in seasonal order…

Season 43

Aer Lingus (from Saiorse Ronan): Five minutes of bad Irish stereotypes.

Season 44

Kavanaugh Hearings (from Adam Driver): Taking up airtime with pointless celebrity cameos sure is fun!!!

Bayou Benny’s Liberal Lagniappe (from Seth Meyers): Did you know that people from Louisiana talk funny? That’s the joke! 

Cuban Vacation (from Seth Meyers): Heidi and Seth keep saying “Cooba” over and over and that’s pretty much it.

Season 45

Stargazing (from Kristin Stewart): The only joke here is “durr, the constellations look like they’re having sex!!!” NBC must have thought this sketch was awful too, because it isn’t on YouTube.

The First Thanksgiving (from Will Ferrell): I already briefly mentioned this one earlier, but this has to be one of SNL’s worst attempts at satire ever. I’m still baffled by it all these years later.

White Male Rage commentary (from Adam Driver): Melissa’s Update commentaries were never her strong suit, but the negative reaction this one got from certain sides of the political spectrum is what I believe to be the start of her downfall on the show. She never had the best airtime before this, but in her remaining two seasons, she was lucky enough to even appear in an episode.

Season 46

Vice-Presidential Debate (from Bill Burr): This was the absolute low point of SNL’s election coverage that year. When a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head during the actual debate, there was no way SNL could have avoided talking about that. So, what did they do? They had Fire Marshal Biden inexplicably teleport himself to the debate and it turns into a parody of The Fly for no reason. That is an actual idea that someone came up with for the show. I cannot think of any other debate sketch that comes close to this one in terms of suckage.

Headless Horseman (from John Mulaney): SNL wastes an elaborate set for an extremely juvenile premise…does the Headless Horseman ever use his head to suck his own dick??? Yeah. That’s the joke.

Mario Moments (from Dave Chappelle): Ball jokes are so funny, right guys? Let’s keep doing them for an entire sketch so nobody notices how blatant our product placement is!!!

A Kamala Harris Unity Seder (from Maya Rudolph): All of the Kamala simping this show did was embarrassing as fuck. Until the cameo she made this past season, this was the worst example of the trend, in which she and her husband (Martin Short wasted yet again) host some kind of TV special at their house, and is treated in the most kiss-ass way.

Wario Trial (from Elon Musk): No comment.

Season 47

Squid Game (from Rami Malek): Hey, guys! Squid Game is getting popular, right? Let’s do a shitty song cashing in on it without bothering to understand the show’s message!

Goober the Clown commentary (from Kieran Culkin): Cecily dresses up as a clown and repeatedly dodges the subject of abortion while doing clown things.

Cruz Street (from Jonathan Majors): A right-leaning version of Sesame Street where the joke is that Republicans are KUH-RAYZEE!!!!!

Elmo commentary (from Ariana DeBose): Chloe Fineman is unfunny.

MacGruber (from Will Forte): SNL ruins MacGruber by turning him into a crazy right-wing conspiracy theorist who rejects vaccination and drinks bleach.

Roe vs Wade (from Benedict Cumberbatch): The point they’re trying to make here is that we’d be stuck in medieval times without abortion…or something.

Johnny Depp Trial (from Selena Gomez): Once again, SNL tries and fails to take on a popular news story. In this case, they spend the whole time making juvenile poopy jokes.

Season 48

Grimace (from Miles Teller): Aren’t bisexuals funny, guys???

Joker (from Jack Harlow): Five minutes of the cast constantly saying “Joker” over and over in annoying accents.

Tammy the Trucker commentary (from Amy Schumer): Cecily does a pointless sequel to the clown commentary, but this time she’s a trucker!!!!!

Avatar (from Aubrey Plaza): Boy, those lesbians sure are funny!

Garrett From Hinge (from Travis Kelce): Probably the worst character Bowen has ever done, and this is the same guy who created “Bottle Boi”.

Season 49

Wired Autocomplete Interview (from Pete Davidson): Pete is humiliated for pooping his pants on the airplane. Was this a rejected Jonah Hill sketch?

George Santos cold open (from Emma Stone): I really fucking hate Bowen Yang.

Antisemitism Hearings (from Adam Driver): SNL tries to comment on the bungled response to antisemitism on college campuses, but instead makes the sketch about how WACKY Elise Stefanik is.

ABBA Christmas (from Kate McKinnon): Four of my least favorite cast members take a dump all over classic ABBA songs.

Dune Popcorn Bucket (from Ayo Edebiri): The sketch that marked the beginning of Marcello’s downfall, a pointless meme-referencing song that literally nobody liked.

Hypnotist (from Ayo Edebiri): Some kid who dresses like Julia Sweeney is hypnotized into revealing that he is bisexual. Once again, what does this show have against bisexuals????

Moulin Rouge (from Josh Brolin): More annoying Bowen shenanigans, this time in a parody of a movie that came out 25 years ago!

Beavis and Butt-Head (from Ryan Gosling): The media just went crazy for this sketch for some reason, even though it was just an inferior rewrite of a sketch from six seasons prior.

Doctors (from Ryan Gosling): Bowen and Ryan Gosling waste time by cracking each other up.

Good Morning Greenville (from Dua Lipa): SNL tries to get media attention by doing a sketch about Drake vs. Kendrick. It fails.

British Cavemen (from Maya Rudolph): In which Maya and several others make noises that sound like they have special needs.

Coffee Commercial (from Maya Rudolph): Maya keeps farting. That’s it.

Season 50

Moo Deng commentary (from Jean Smart): Bowen dresses up as a hippo and gets water squirted on him. No further comment needed.

Talk Talk (from Jean Smart): Bowen dresses up in drag and hosts a talk show. No further comment needed.

Both Sàbado Gigante sketches (from Nate Bargatze and Martin Short): Marcello parodies a long-cancelled show because his fangirls will eat up anything he does.

All three Domingo sketches (from Ariana Grande, Charli XCX, and the 50th Anniversary Special): Another annoying Marcello character, except this one randomly blew up on TikTok, to the point that he was getting harassed in real life to do the routine.

Family Bonds (from John Mulaney): A pointless sequel to one of my favorite sketches ever, made even worse when Kenan hijacks it with his overused mugging routine.

Spotify Wrapped (from Paul Mescal): Some ugly fat woman named Trisha Paytas makes an appearance in this Jimmy Fowlie “masterpiece”.

Five-Timer’s Club (from Martin Short): Nine minutes of circle-jerking over how awesome it is to take screentime away from the cast.

Parking Lot (from Martin Short): A perfectly serviceable sketch from Season 48 is rehashed, except this time we have Melissa McCarthy rubbing her fugly face against the window.

Drone commentary (from Martin Short): Bowen acts like an annoying queen while dressed up as a fucking drone.

Nosferatu commentary (from Dave Chappelle): I can’t believe I used to like Sarah Sherman. 

AI Software (from Timothee Chalamet): Timothee and Bowen do annoying things while everyone keeps explaining the “jokes”.

New York Musical (from the 50th Anniversary Special): I’ve hated every single one of these Mulaney Musical sketches, but this one is the absolute worst. It was way too long and had several extremely annoying moments, such as TWO women in drag!

Both Movie Guy commentaries (from Shane Gillis and Walter Goggins): Yet another character from Marcello where the joke is that Hispanic people talk funny.

Mother’s Day (from Walter Goggins): A heartwarming Mother’s Day message is ruined by Trump interrupting it with his unfunny rambling routine again.

Tiny Baby Shoe (from Walter Goggins): Jane Wickline attempts to recreate the success of “The Wishin’ Boot”, but fails because she is a horrible singer and the song isn’t funny.

Service Dogs (from Walter Goggins): PLEASE LAUGH AT THE CUTE DOGS!!!!!

Elevator (from Scarlett Johansson): What if Mike Myers and Kanye West had an awkward conversation with each other??? Too bad SNL already did this premise 20 years ago!!!!

Victorian Ladies At Lunch (from Scarlett Johansson): The final sketch I ever reviewed…and it’s about Victorian women eating disgusting shit.

Farewell to SNL (Part 1)

 My History with SNL

The Beginning

When I was young, the only exposure I had to sketch comedy was via children’s shows such as The Amanda Show and All That. Looking back at them, a lot of the humor has aged poorly (and is downright pedophilic in some places), but they were a great launching point.

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about Saturday Night Live, but I do remember the first episode I ever saw. From what I remember, my mom and dad were watching clips from the Taylor Swift episode a day after it aired. My brother and I noticed Kenan in some of the clips, and we marveled at the fact that someone we grew up with on Nickelodeon had made it to the big leagues. I can also remember watching clips from the Jennifer Lopez episode around that time as well, and I remember the hoopla surrounding Betty White’s hosting appearance, but that was about it.

Becoming a Fan

Several years passed before I ever thought about SNL again. My true first steps towards becoming a fan of the show came when we all watched the 40th anniversary special when it first aired. I also taped a rerun of the first episode that aired the night before, and was quite disappointed by the lack of humor in the Muppet sketch.

Then, in 2017, I discovered Stooge and Bronwyn Douwsma’s excellent blogs. These were the final catalyst towards my becoming a huge fan of SNL. I started watching regularly beginning with the Saiorse Ronan episode, and I’ve never looked back. By that time, the show was balls-deep in the Trumpwin era with all of the gratuitous cameos and shit. This was a very different show from what I had witnessed just a couple years earlier, but that didn’t matter. I was able to find copies of older episodes to watch.

This brings us to the matter of my own blog. When I started it back in 2016, I just posted whatever the fuck I thought was interesting. But I thought it needed something of more substance, so, after getting inspired by all of the SNL review blogs I was by now very familiar with, I decided to write my own! 

History of My Reviews

Looking back at my oldest reviews, all I can do is cringe. They were written at a time when I had just graduated from high school, and it shows. While I’ve gone back and touched up some of my reviews after posting them to fix things, I’ve mostly left those ones alone to show how far I’ve come.

As the Trump era continued to get worse, so did my sanity while watching it. A lot of my reviews from Season 45 (the first one I watched in full) are full of me getting overdramatic for little to no reason. Example: the J.J. Watt episode, where I spent a large amount of time whining about the numerous sex jokes. This was also when COVID hit, and that also put a damper on my ability to focus on the show.

I nearly contemplated ending my reviews after Season 46, because it was just so awful. I had reached my breaking point with Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, who still rank among my least favorite cast members of all time. But then, something happened to the show that made me want to stick around…

When I first read about the new additions to the cast for Season 47, I didn’t think much of it initially. We had just come off of Lauren Holt getting fired after a single season of underuse, so what was stopping the show from doing that again with these guys? And then I saw the season premiere…and a certain big-nosed impressionist from Tennessee started to win me over with his solid performances. You know who I’m talking about, right? The one, the only, James Austin Johnson. 

Thanks to him and fellow newbie Sarah Sherman, as well as the new shorts from Please Don’t Destroy, this season had a much fresher atmosphere than the previous few. I can honestly say that Season 47 was the most fun I’ve had reviewing a season.

Alas, it didn’t stay that way for long. Season 48 was looking promising with the arrival of FOUR newbies. Unfortunately, a lot of the material came off as half-assed, and formerly reliable cast members like Kenan and Heidi started getting on my nerves. We’ll never know for sure if it could have gotten better as it went along, because it ended early due to a writer’s strike.

In Season 49, things only got worse. After the Christmas break, it just…fell apart for whatever reason. We saw an increase in the amount of rehashed sketches, pointless cameos, and an odd focus on trashy Internet culture (courtesy of everyone’s “favorite” writer Jimmy Fowlie). It was during this season that I began having thoughts about ending my reviews, but I wanted to give the show another chance for its fiftieth anniversary…boy, was I stupid…

Season 50

I made the decision before starting Season 50 that it would be the end for me, but that my opinion might change if the season turned out to be good. These hopes were quickly dashed when I saw the endless parade of cameos in the first few episodes, all culminating in a pathetic, last-minute appearance from Kamala Harris in the John Mulaney episode that may have cost her the election. 

The actual sketches didn't help much, either. We've gone back to the Season 29/30 route of basing a lot of them on trashy pop culture. I'm talking about shit like the Charli XCX talk show sketch in the premiere or that one where Trisha Paytas showed up for no reason. Oh, and I can't forget about all of the pathetic simping towards the TikTok audience when they brought back Domingo only FOUR episodes after he first debuted.

The Martin Short episode was when it truly set in for me that this season was never going to get better. So many baffling decisions here, including the decision to sideline most of the cast in favor of pointless cameos. 

There was a brief rise in quality around the time of the anniversary special, but this was short lived, and we quickly went back to everything sucking. That’s when I decided once and for all that this season would be my last.

Season 50 overview

 I gotta be honest, that was one of the worst seasons I’ve ever reviewed. We started off on an awful note with some of the worst election coverage ever, featuring a shitload of unnecessary cameos. This all culminated in probably the worst Christmas episode I’ve ever seen.

There was a stretch in the middle where we got some okay episodes like Chappelle and Gillis, but then everything got really bad again. I don’t know if it’s the supervisors to blame, but there is a serious lack of cohesion in the writing staff. I’m not surprised if they end up firing a bunch of people before the next season.

Oh, and I have to bring up the cameos. Every single episode had some sort of cameo in it. We’ve gone back to the hellscape of the Trumpwin years where cast members get shut out all the time due to all of the cameos taking away their scenes, as we saw this year when Mikey lost the Biden impression in favor of Dana Carvey’s corpse.

One last major thing that bugged me about this season was how it didn’t feel like an anniversary season to me. Sure, we got the awesome anniversary special, but other than that, you could put any of these sketches in another season and nobody could tell the difference.

Repertory Players

Mikey Day: Mikey’s time is clearly up. After getting the Biden impression taken away from him, there were a lot of times this year where we barely saw him. Add to that his unenthusiastic performances in most episodes, and you’ve got a cast member who’s just riding out the clock. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, because we did get some amazing Update commentaries from him near the end of the season. (Best moment: My Best Friend’s House)

Andrew Dismukes: Oh man, Andrew. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Once again, he gets my pick for the season’s MVP. In this season of member berries and lame rehashes, it’s good to see someone who always gave 100%. Amazingly, he also appeared in more sketches than anyone else!!! (Best moment: Bald man commentary)

Chloe Fineman: Was Chloe even in this season? Not that I’m complaining, but it seems like all of the roles she would usually have were given to other people. There were even some episodes that she didn’t appear in at all. If this is her last season, then thank the Lord! What a horrible cast member she was!!! (Best moment: NONE!)

Heidi Gardner: I’ve heard so many rumors about this being Heidi’s last season, and if it was, she sure didn’t act like it. This was probably one of her best seasons in a while, getting cast in so many “glue” type roles in sketches. Her Update commentaries are still a problem, but she didn’t appear there as much as she usually does. (Best moment: Office Christmas Party Extravaganza)

Marcello Hernandez: There were a lot of really stupid things he did this year (Domingo, Sàbado Gigante, The Movie Guy), but he also had some surprises here and there, like that sketch he did with Lady Gaga. I’d definitely be happy if he came back again, just as long as he doesn’t bring back Domingo. (Best moment: A Long Goodbye)

James Austin Johnson: JAJ continues to prove how essential he is to the cast. I wish the show would understand that, because there were a lot of episodes in the first half of the season where he barely appeared. There’s also the matter of his Trump impression…dare I say that it’s actually kind of growing on me? (Best moment: The Best of Snake Skin)

Michael Longfellow: I still don’t understand why SNL continues to misuse this wonderful performer. Instead, I’ve noticed that they would much rather make “jokes” about how little he gets used, like the one we got in the finale. (Best moment: TikTok commentary)

Ego Nwodim: Ego is just as good as she’s always been. The lack of Lisa from Temecula certainly helped, as well as her appearances on Update, which were consistently a highlight. (Best moment: Two Bitches vs. A Gorilla)

Sarah Sherman: I’ve run out of things to say about her. While she did a lot less annoying things this season, the edge that she used to have is completely gone now. I miss the bizarre, creepy shit she used to put on the air, but now we have awful audience-pandering moments like her “impression” of Matt Gaetz, and the less said about that fart CPR thing, the better. (Best moment: Friendly’s)

Kenan Thompson: Our eternal cast member was barely a factor this season. At some points, it got depressing how little he was used. On the bright side, I think he did a pretty good job when they actually did use him. Almost like he knows that his time on the show is up, so he’s giving more of a shit. (Best moment: Police Station)

Devon Walker: Poor Devon Walker. Once again, he has the least amount of screentime in the entire cast. What does the show have against this guy? I think he’s really funny whenever we do get to see him, and the Dave Chappelle episode was a great showcase for his talents. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they end up firing him. (Best moment: Evacuation Alert)

Bowen Yang: There were actually quite a few moments this year where Bowen genuinely surprised me. That being said, he also gave us some absolutely wretched material, such as that Charli XCX shit and his drone commentary in the Christmas episode. (Best moment: Trauma Support Group)

Featured Players

Ashley Padilla: As the season went on, Ashley gradually proved herself to be the most talented of the three newbies. By the end, she came off like a series veteran! I can’t wait to see what she does in Season 51!!! (Best moment: Joann commentary)

Emil Wakim: Generally, they only used this guy if they needed Muslim/foreign roles. That sucks, because I see potential for him. (Best moment: Doctor’s Visit)

Jane Wickline: Nepotism sure gets you far, huh? Not a single thing this woman did impressed me. She was barely a factor at all, and most of her lead roles were horrible musical numbers, which just makes me even sadder that they got rid of Chloe Troast. (Best moment: NONE!!!)

Michael Che and Colin Jost: I’ve lost all patience with them. While not official yet, this is most likely their final year behind the desk. If it is, it’s about time, because Update has been on auto-pilot for way too long now. I’m sick of their constant unprofessional giggling and inside jokes. There needs to be a change, and fast.

As for the best and worst episodes of this season, it was really hard for me to pick the best, because so much of it was just awful. But I’ve tried…

Best episodes: Ariana Grande/Stevie Nicks, Bill Burr/Mk.gee, Dave Chappelle/GloRilla, Shane Gillis/Tate McRae

Worst episodes: Jean Smart/Jelly Roll, Charli XCX, Martin Short/Hozier, Walton Goggins/Arcade Fire, Scarlett Johansson/Bad Bunny

Best sketches: A Father’s Promise (Cut), My Best Friend’s House (from Grande), Charades With Mom (from Grande), Monica commentary (from Grande), The Hotel Detective (from Grande), Skydiving (from Keaton), Beppo (from Mulaney), Harvey Epstein (from Mulaney), Monologue (from Burr), The Best of Snake Skin (from Burr), Bald Men (from Burr), Thanksgiving Baking Championship (from Charli XCX), Paul Mescal is Daddy (from Mescal), Brilliant Lawyer (from Mescal), Bald Guy commentary (from Rock), Monologue (from Chappelle), Evacuation Alert (from Chappelle), Police Station (from Chappelle), Pop The Balloon (from Chappelle), Medcast (from Chalamet), New Barista Training (from Chalamet), Andrew’s Puppet Dad commentary (from Chalamet), Black Jeopardy (from 50th Anniversary), Anxiety (from 50th Anniversary),  Bill Murray commentary (from 50th Anniversary), Scared Straight (from 50th Anniversary), Monologue (from Gillis), CouplaBeers (from Gillis), Dad’s House (from Gillis), The Sound (from Gillis), Doctor’s Visit (from Gillis), A Long Goodbye (from Gaga), Pip (from Gaga), Lord Gaga (from Gaga), Friendly’s (from Gaga), Jury Duty (from Madison), Joann commentary (from Madison), Mikey Madison Is Squidward (from Madison), Love Match (from Black), One Uppers (from Black), both “Miss Eggy” commentaries (from Black and Johansson), Herpastopper (from Hamm), Icebreaker (from Hamm), Two Bitches vs. A Gorilla (from Brunson), The Greats (from Brunson), Spiderweb commentary (from Goggins), Boss’s Bathroom (from Goggins), Local News Stories (from Johansson)

Worst sketches: Cold Open (from Smart), The $100,000 Pyramid (from Smart), Moo Deng commentary (from Smart), Talk Talk (from Smart), Cold Open (from Bargatze), both Sabado Gigante sketches (from Bargatze and Short), Mile High Burger Challenge (from Bargatze), Bridesmaids (from Grande), Maybelline (from Grande),  The Kamala Interview (from Keaton), ShopTV (from Keaton), TikTok (from Keaton), Cold Open (from Mulaney), Port Authority Duane Reade (from Mulaney), Family Bonds (from Mulaney), Cold Open (from Burr), Rorshach Test (from Burr), Cold Open (from Charli XCX), Babymoon (from Charli XCX), Wicked Auditions (from Charli XCX), It Girl Thanksgiving Special (from Charli XCX), All Male Revue (from Mescal), Spotify Wrapped (from Mescal), Grandpa’s Magic Car (from Rock), Gallbladder Surgery (from Rock), Five-Timer’s Club (from Short), Parking Lot (from Short), Airport Parade (from Short), Weekend Update (from Short), Cold Open (from Chappelle), Immigrant Dad Talk Show (from Chappelle), Nosferatu commentary (from Chappelle), AI Software (from Chalamet), Dog Run (from Chalamet), The Lawrence Welk Show (from 50th Anniversary), Two Best Friends From Who Gives A Fuck commentary (from 50th Anniversary), New York Musical (from 50th Anniversary), both Movie Guy commentaries (from Gillis and Goggins), No More Slay (from Gaga), Big Dumb Line (from Madison), Midwife (from Madison), Planning New York (from Madison), The First Play (from Black), Times Square (from Black), The Cleansing of the Temple (from Hamm), New Parents (from Hamm), Leadership Summit (from Brunson), Ferry Altercation (from Brunson), Barflies commentary (from Brunson), Mother’s Day (from Goggins), Tiny Baby Shoe (from Goggins), Service Dogs (from Goggins), Deathly Diner (from Goggins), Monologue (from Johansson), Couple at the Bar (from Johansson), Elevator (from Johansson), Weekend Update (from Johansson), Intimacy Coordinator (from Johansson), Victorian Ladies At Lunch (from Johansson)

Stay tuned for one last megapost where I look back at my history covering SNL!!!!!