Saturday Night Live: the 10 best sketches of the 51st season | Saturday Night Live

SSaturday Night Live, which just closed its 51st^St weatherit has been growing for the past few months. Following their disappointing 50^Th reminder, a combination of major changes and minor training improvements has resulted in a better presentation. The departure of Bowen Yang at the beginning of the season, and the decline of Chloe Fineman, both of whom became the faces of his most disappointing season, has been a great benefit, as has the number of young players, at least one of whom is ready to be the next star.

The drawings, as usual, were hit and miss, but unlike some recent seasons, it was not difficult to find representatives. Here are the 10 best sketches of the 51st season of Saturday Night Live:

Sellers

While there is no list of the entire series, this is, by far, the best of the series, and arguably the best sketch SNL has done in years. It’s also (very rare these days) an over-the-top hit, which has recently happened. The plot is delightfully silly (a scene of two salesmen’s broken marriage), but it’s the commitment of the actors that really amazes. As the cowboy couple, Sarah Sherman and host Matt Damon deliver some of the show’s most awkward dialogue with screwball aplomb. And while they undoubtedly used cue cards, they didn’t appear to them like most SNL performers do. You could say he repeated this until he killed it, and he did.

Farewell to the Substitute Teacher

If it weren’t for Sellers, fans would be talking a lot about this picture from Damon himself, in which he plays an abusive substitute teacher who tries, and fails spectacularly, to get his students to join an impromptu dance party. For about two and a half minutes, Damon’s dweeby part cuts one man’s rug while the rest of the class sits in embarrassed silence (although Fineman almost ruins the whole thing by breaking down). SNL deals with difficult situations, but this is too difficult to deal with in comedy. Damon’s actions are even more impressive in retrospect, when you realize that he should have followed this up with the Auctioneers just minutes later.

Tidy Care Crystals

Damon takes yet another spot, this time for his portrayal of a country man who is pushed to the brink of cleanliness in a TV ad for cat litter. Everything looks good when he and his wife (Ashley Padilla) first try the Tidy Care litter box, which comes with colored crystals that alert pet owners to potential health hazards. But when the omniscient narrator (James Austin Johnson) acts recklessly about the meaning of the blue crystals, things change. Finally, the author reveals that the crystals turn blue “at the first sign of human urine”. This causes Damon to have a mental breakdown, where he accuses his teenage son, and then his wife, of suing in the trash can.

Will Ferrell monologue

This weekend’s season finale kicked off with laughs from everyone in the audience and at home. Following his cool debut, former member and five-time performer Will Ferrell was replaced on stage by his celebrity doppelganger, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. Smith is hilarious in his brief appearance, raising the audience’s interest until the real Ferrell comes out from behind (where Smith shoves him down, demanding Lorne Michaels give him mouth-to-mouth) to chase him away. As soon as he takes over, the guest singer for the night, Paul McCartney, comes on stage and, mistaking Ferrell for Smith, orders him to “get back behind the drums where you are”.

Rasta driver

Andrew Dismukes has been one of Saturday Night Live’s most consistent and underrated characters since joining the show in 2020 (he’s been a writer for the show since 2017). In the sketch, he plays an Uber driver who suddenly breaks into a Jamaican dance song while giving a ride to two young club-goers, revealing, to his horror, that he is “one of the greatest Rastas in the world”. Like the commercials, this is an impressive oral performance, with Dismukes nailing a long, tongue-twisting rap without blinking.

The Goo Goo Man

Sometimes all it takes to make a piece work is one great line. That’s how it is with this episode next to Ryan Gosling’s March episode. Gosling and Sherman’s traveling couple try to check into their hotel, but they get a surprise payment of “$1,200 for two trips to the Goo Goo Man”. Both are shocked by this, but for different reasons. He thinks it’s a mistake, until his friend insists on saying: “I just did something.” one go to Goo Goo Man. ” Gosling is known to always break his scenes, but here he can keep a straight face while looking at things like “pregnancy period” and “sleeping car”.

Mother Acceptance

It’s taken for granted that Saturday Night Live is and always will be left-leaning, but the truth is that most of the time it broadcasts political parties, it’s willing to poke fun at gullible, often gullible voters. That’s all well and good, but it’s refreshing to see them not just look to Trump voters for change, but hit hard. In Mother’s Confession, Ashely Padilla plays a suburban mom who gathers her four grown children for a surprise announcement. Exhausted, he admitted, “I can change my mind … about Trump … I feel now … like … A good description of the many mistakes of America, small, too slow of consumers in this time of murder and chaos, and one of the most famous actions of Padilla (more below).

Commercial Toys

A change to the classic Philadelphia toy commercial parody since way back in 1994, today’s kid generation is obsessed with their new favorite movie: the Oscar-winning best picture One Battle After Another. Teyana Taylor reprises her role as the revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills, pushing the door of the white family to present scenes of “all your favorite heroes and villains from director Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful direction of resistance in the face of racial violence”. The best bots include young Caucasian children reciting favorite lines (“My name is Junglepussy. See this face? This is what black power looks like”) to their absent parents.

Haircut

Even though she was just a cast member in her second year on the show, Ashley Padilla has become the new face of Saturday Night Live. Combining a natural talent for slapstick and a witty yet always entertaining voice (reminiscent of Will Ferrell in his SNL days), he is. and because of observation. It’s possible that she’ll end up falling into crime (see: Kate McKinnon), but as of now, she’s managed to avoid that trap. If this had been another time, Lorne would have been building a car around him, but alas. This ridiculously simple cartoon about a woman who gets a really bad haircut and pretends to love him, has her as a stand-in. Her hesitant little dance as she enters the frame is as cute as she is sad, and like the prosthetic wig she wears, her facial expression is the best effect on display.

Pete Hegseth Cold Open

The first cold opening of the season introduced Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth, a character that would become more prevalent in the next 20 episodes as president. Last season, Trump’s James Austin Johnson joked on SNL that he didn’t have anyone with a strong jaw to play his new Secretary of War (nee, Defense). Enter Extra Weekend anchor and writer Jost, who is always at his best when he leans into his dispassion and skepticism about boys. In his first go-round as the character, in which he mocked Hegseth’s shameless military brass at Quantico, he nailed the angsty middle-school aura that defined Hegseth, including his alcoholism and dysfunction. Over the course of the season, both Jost and SNL lost the plot, turning him into just another stupid character (a mistake, because Hegseth is complicit in one war crime after another), but here he manages to make amends.