Timothée Chalamet returned for his third time hosting this past Saturday, as well as being the musical guest of the night. Earlier this week, Chalamet received his second Best Actor nomination at the Oscars, this time for playing Bob Dylan. Adam Sandler pops in to introduce Chalamet for his first performance. Chalamet performed “Outlaw Blues”, originally released on Dylan’s fifth studio album, “Bringing It All Back Home”. He also performed the gospel-tinged “Three Angels” off “New Morning”.
Lin-Manuel Miranda crashes the cold open as Alexander Hamilton in a sketch surrounding the founding fathers deciding what to include in the Declaration of Independence. James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump freezes time like Zack Morris, monologuing and mocking Miranda for wanting so badly to win an EGOT.
In Chalamet’s monologue, he laments about the number of times he’s lost awards and been unable to give a speech at one of these award shows. So, he asks for a chance to read something he’s prepared for years to give… sitting in the audience, he waits for his name to be announced, but Kenan Thompson beats him.
In the first sketch, a bungee class of women and Michael Longfellow are instructed by a long-haired Chalamet. They fly and do silly moves like the “Jimmy Carter.” Collectively, they burn less than five calories. Everyone is bouncing around and eating Cinnabun.
The next sketch features a clinic where all the appointments for men aged 20 to 45 are structured like a chill podcast where the patient is a guest who reveals his medical history in the course of a podcast chat. Patients reveal how their stools are doing and how many sexual partners they’ve had and get their blood pressure taken, but it feels like they’re just hanging out with their podcast-hosting bros.
At the Bungalow Cafe, trainees are wrapping up when it is revealed that chalkboard quips are required. Coffee puns, that kind of thing. Benny (Chalamet) loves comedy, and busts out a Chris Rock-style joke about Homer Simpson. Chalamet’s delivery here is hilarious.
An advertisement for Oedipal Arrangements promises a new, sexy Valentine’s/Mother’s Day gift for incestual moms and their offspring. The twisted conceit is made even darker by a quick peek inside one son’s disturbed mind, wherein he imagines drowning his father in a toilet bowl.
The next sketch sees a beleaguered public-school teacher share a new AI program that turns lessons into podcasts. This attempt to reach her students backfires when the artificially created hosts (Chalamet and Bowen Yang) fumble facts, language and basic humanity (they have six fingers, for example). The teacher shuts the program off right as it begins to gain sentience.
On Weekend Update, Michael Che invites concerned businesswoman Giselle (Ego Nwodim) to discuss the dangers faced by both Black women and small business owners now that Trump is in office. Later, Colin Jost brings on Andrew Dismukes to do a standup routine with his new puppet dad.
The 90th birthday party for a beloved grandmother takes a shocking turn when the old woman suffers a heart attack and keels over. Luckily, one of the grandchildren’s new boyfriend is a doctor who arrives just in time to fart in the old woman’s face and revive her, much to the shock and confusion of the rest of the family.
The show ends with an animated short about angels designing existence, only to be interrupted by their demanding, overly sensitive boss God, who constantly berates their bad ideas (kangaroos) while pitching his own (volcanos, giant sun-swallowing frogs). The animation has a noticeable John K (Ren & Stimpy) quality to it.
