Lady Gaga returned to the Saturday Night Live stage last Saturday as both host and musical guest. Gaga has appeared as a musical guest three times on SNL, but she only did double duty once back in 2013 when she was promoting “Artpop”. Here are some highlights from the episode:
Gaga opened the show by reminding the audience that she’s an amazing actor now, then going on to compare herself to other “aging” pop stars (“Tate McRae is my biological grandmother”). She also acknowledged the unfortunate guest performer (R. Kelly) from the last time she hosted. From there, she joked about the performance of “Joker: Folie à Deux” and its Razzie wins, even promising “to act, to sing, and to not do Joker 3.”
The first sketch of the night was a Dan Bulla short, presenting the story of a mouse named Pip who decides to participate in the weightlifting competition at the human high school he attends. The lighthearted story turns dark when the roof collapses on all the kids who bullied Pip. It’s up to Pip to save them, but at the last moment he lets Marcello Hernandez’s jock bully die, leading to a shocking spray of blood as the bully gets crushed. Gaga plays the empathetic classmate who starts to doubt Pip at the end.
Bowen Yang got to duet with Gaga twice in this episode, the first time being to a version of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” on a date at a fancy restaurant. The second duet happens in a later sketch that tackles the overuse of the term “slay”, as Yang and Gaga sing a musical plea to stop just repeating the same slang words over and over.
In a Funeral Home sketch, Gaga and Heidi Gardner are consoling a grieving Ego Nwodim at a funeral home. Her dad has passed away (it’s an unsolved murder actually). They ask about themes for the show, and decide on the Roaring 20s, treating it like party planners. Gaga and Gardner double down on the deranged and inappropriate 1920s idea, reappearing as flappers in bobs. And Nwodim’s boyfriend, played by Andrew Dismukes gets into it as well, asking if he can dress like Gatsby.
Yang energetically introduces Gaga’s pulsing performance of “Abracadabra.” The music video for this electro dance anthem premiered during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony last month. Nwodim, Kenan Thompson and Sarah Sherman later introduce the ’70s-inspired funk jam “Killah”, which starts in the backstage Studio 8H hallway.
On Weekend Update, Mikey Day plays British aristocrat Lord Gaga, husband of Lady. He condescends his wife’s “hobby” and is shocked to learn of her apparent success. The peak is the Jost-roasting (Joasting?) conclusion, when the lord takes aim at Colin Jost himself by suggesting it would be a “living nightmare” for a man’s wife to make more money than him.
Sherman, Gaga and Nwodim introduce Little Red Glasses – they help you read! They are not fashionable, but intended for specific kinds of women, like uptight Buddhists and the mom from Bob’s Burgers. “All my dress-up clothes are a little bit Asian,” confirms Sherman, who wants tapas. “I was ahead of the curve on gay marriage and that’s where it stopped!” Is your profession ‘very bad therapist’? This is the look for you! This is a sister sketch to “Big Dumb Hat.”
