Kate McKinnon Brings All the Funny Ladies to a Cozy Christmas SNL

Kate McKinnon took most of Saturday Night Live’s can’t miss star power with her when she left last year. Don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty of intriguing talent filling out the show’s roster these days, but this iteration of SNL is one of the first in recent memory without at least one go-to star. Kenan’s the closest they’ve got, but the all-time longest tenured cast member has always been an ensemble guy. (Again, not a knock—Kenan’s great at what he does.) So having Kate back in the building, especially so soon after her exit, was a taste of something we haven’t had for a while—someone to build an entire show around.

That happens with a lot of former cast members, who generally haul their favorite characters out of storage, bring along a few ringers, and make their episode a chummy personal showcase. And while Kate did bring Maya Rudolph and Kristin Wiig into the mix for sizable roles, everyone’s favorite weird Barbie didn’t truly lean into her emeritus status as much as I thought the show might. Maybe her monologue joke about her skin suffering under 11 season’s worth of prosthetics was a signal, but even with a certain former NYC mayor and current fascist lackey-laughingstock recently getting pummeled with a $150 million defamation suit (for ruining the lives of two Black election workers with baseless, racist conspiracy theories), Kate’s Rudy Guiliani was nowhere in sight. The fact the the cold open dumped politics entirely in favor of a blandly amusing Christmas awards show premise indicated that we were in for a largely apolitical night of host-centric comedy, which was fine. It’s the holiday show, after all, and the world will still be on fire after the new year, so I was content to just enjoy having Kate back on my TV screen.

Kate was cozy, her monologue the confidently laid-back exercise in self-effacement and silliness the actor generally projects when not hurling herself into insanely dedicated character work. Introducing yourself with, “Hi, I’m Kate. I used to work here,” might seem disingenuous coming from anybody else of McKinnon’s SNL stature, but on her, it fits. McKinnon explains that she’s spent her time away from the spotlight trying to construct an actual personality (she bought a hat and everything), and proclaiming her past monologue role as, “Freak next to hot person,” which calls back to her exit line from the last Colleen Rafferty sketch, where her unfortunate alien abductee signed off with an unassuming, “I always felt kind of like an alien on this planet anyway.” 

Same goes for her claim that she doesn’t sing (“It’s Christmas,” she impersonated Lorne Michaels’ manipulative entreaty to do so), considering that Kate sang on the show—a lot. (That cringey “Hallelujah” moment wasn’t her fault, and she sang it beautifully.) Kate can sing, Kate can dance, Kate can play every male member of the Trump administration. Kate can do most anything, she just gives off the air of someone who doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Which is part of why we love her. Plus, bringing on Maya and Wiig to join her in singing a bit of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas?” C’mon, I’m not made of stone. 

The Best and the Rest

The Best: All that Kate-worship aside, this was a pleasantly so-so episode of Saturday Night Live. No stinkers, a few bright spots, with “Tampon Farm” allowing Kate, Wiig, Maya, a returning Paula Pell, musical guest Billie Eilish, and most of the female cast to don farm wear and bring us along on a lilting, Indigo Girls-esque musical journey to the titular all-female agrarian utopia. I love an SNL musical short that allows us to guess just where the hell its going, and McKinnon’s peerlessly folksy, dreamy-eyed verses about the hard-working farm ladies rocking denim and feeding horses took its time before the chorus unloaded the gag that, yep, they’re pulling tampons out of the fertile earth, blissfully rolling the fibrous little helpers through their fingers, and canoodling happily in the dappled sunset. It’s a great comedy song that apes its inspirations without directly latching onto one specific song for the joke, and everybody involved puts on just the right glassy-eyed glaze of female empowerment and woozy lust to make the whole thing sing. 

The Worst: Again, while there were no real dead spots tonight, there weren’t many memorable ones, either. That’s sort of been a theme with Saturday Night Live all season, one I thought might be disrupted with Kate in the house, but not really. I’ll toss the ABBA sketch in this slot, mainly because there are precious few jokes to be found. Sure, seeing Bowen Yan, Kate, Maya, and Wiig all donning wigs and working extra hard to crack each other up as the famous Swedish close harmony foursome is worth a chuckle, but just watching those four hang out would be amusing, too. That doesn’t make for a good sketch. Plus, ABBA? I don’t know if there are still ABBA jokes to be made, but these aren’t the ones.

The Rest: I could have gone with the Christmas visit sketch for the top spot, but damn you, “Tampon Farm,” I just can’t quit you. Kate is as contained and hilarious as can be as the doting mom who both prefaces and epilogues her offered presents with a litany of apologies, verging into loopy self-loathing. With the specter of family gatherings looming, certainly some of us are looking askance at that one family member whose pre-gift ritual of self-excoriating, eyes-averted panic is as painful as it is showy, and Kate can take a defining character trait and suggest an entire universe lurking underneath. The lines all emerge from McKinnon’s mumbling mom like comedy cannons: “I take up space and I hurt people.” “They’re pieces of trash from the dumbest person alive.” “I am a villain.” “Everybody get in a circle and hit me.” It could be that the necessary escalation of the gag comes too quick, but each successive bit of self-flagellation is just gold in McKinnon’s underplayed delivery. 

“Pongo” was a funny enough little holiday abomination, with a family’s new pet turning out to be some sort of no-maintenance blank pet template which requires no care and returns only increasingly creepy blank stares. “He can’t die,” the commercial promises, “He just is,” a prospect that eventually drives mom Sarah Sherman to murderous madness and her family to cultish adoration of the inexplicably moist, featureless little monster. The filmed piece never quite reaches the unnerving heights its reaching for, but it gets close enough, especially when Pongo’s merest gesture of returned affection feels eerily otherworldly and vaguely menacing.

The Yankee swap sketch centered on two things: one of those cheap singing Santa novelty items and the newly discovered and genuinely revolutionary supposed cure for sickle-cell anemia. The sketch nods to the uncertainty surrounding the absurdly expensive gene-editing therapy’s astronomical cost and availability for people suffering from the disease (some 100,000 Americans, almost all of whom are Black), but the whole thing is an oddly specific peg on which to hang the one joke that Kenan, gifted an expedited trial of the new treatment, quickly trades the life-altering opportunity for that dancing Santa. Same goes for Punkie Johnson’s fellow swapper, whose mother desperately needs the cure, but who can’t help but trade up for that chintzy toy. Apart from Kenan being Kenan, and Kate’s giver unsuccessfully tamping down her bewilderment at her extravagant gesture going to waste, that’s all there is to the bit. It’s a long, strange trip taken to a piddling place. 

The cold open ditched politics, as noted, which I’m fine with. Sure, the world is replete with potently unmissable targets for trenchant satire, but this version of Saturday Night Live never aims that high, so why not turn the spot over to a forgettably homey awards show celebrating well-worn Christmas clichés? Awards go for the worst present (Gran’s khakis instead of a hoped for Switch), worst invited guest (Devon Walker’s performatively “woke” white girlfriend in Chloe Fineman), and best stoner’s explanation for why the garage smells like weed. (“I dunno,” stammers Andrew Dismukes’ teenager, before accepting bows for his performance.) Chloe Troast got to sing a few times tonight, solidifying the idea that that’s going to be her Cecily Strong-shaped niche going forward, here crooning an enthusiastically incorrect carol. The whole thing is… nice? Maybe? It’s honestly receding in my memory as I type this. 

Weekend Update update

Okay, so there have been rumors floating around that this will be Jost and Che’s last Update, if not both performers’ last Saturday Night Live. I’m not Mr. Rumor Guy and have no inside information on the topic, so I’ll leave that there, only noting that the other rumors that Ego Nwodim (possibly alongside Bowen Yang) will be taking over the Update desk got a serious nudge in Ego’s correspondent piece. As the rich aunt with no kids gloating over her responsibility-free holiday plans, the character is just okay—her Veronda touting her “pushoff method” of birth control (“You go do that mess outside!”) Is a your-mileage-may-vary joke. But the repeated refrain about her taking over Che’s job (at the urging of “Loren Mitchell”) certainly isn’t going to pour water on the rumors of a big switch. 

On that topic, yeah, it’s probably time. Jost and Che have hinted about moving on increasingly over the past few years (with Che even coming out and saying it before recanting), they’ve been at the job longer than anyone in Saturday Night Live history, and their too-cool-for-the-desk schtick, while reliably amusing, is due for a course correction, content-wise. (Tonight’s fake news was the usual breeze of glib cleverness and little content.) 

If the guys really are going out, then this year’s joke swap isn’t a bad way to do it. The premise, as ever, is simply an excuse for Jost and Che to make each other read (live, for the first time) some jokes specifically tailored to make the other look as terrible as possible, with Che invariably having Jost deliver self-zingers about his supposed white racism and Jost generally just making Che say dumb stuff. There was a framing device here that had me sweatily scanning my supposedly encyclopedic Saturday Night Live knowledge in search of what Che assured was the Season 3 guest appearance of his special guest, civil rights activist Dr. Hattie Davis. Thankfully for my self-anointed post as all-time Saturday Night Live smarty-pants, the prim, wheelchair-seated Black actress playing the supposed civil rights pioneer was a fiction of Che’s devising, the authoritative older woman’s presence a potent way to ratchet up Jost’s embarrassment as he read Che’s Jost-baiting racial jokes. 

Honestly, these things are usually a slam dunk win for Che—Jost’s “punchable face” really is an inviting target. And he got in some great ones tonight, the Obama joke (in front of a purported marcher with Dr. King) was fine, but making Jost ask for a fist-bump from the proper old lady after a dark sexual abuse joke (with trademark Michael Che misogyny aftertaste) was some next-level trolling. And making Jost mock his wife’s movies is always fun, but Che having Jost compare Black Widow to Coretta Scott King with the estimable Dr. Davis recoiling by his side took it up a few notches. Jost, though, gave as good as he got, having Che plow head-first into a joke about Beyoncé’s controversial photo shoot making her look so white that Che was finally attracted to her, only to careen right into a Michael Jackson gag. (Tough night for people who draw their particular comic line at sexual abuse of minors jokes.) The joke swap is probably the thing Jost and Che will be best remembered by, a self-referential, bro-collegial doubles act of elbow-ribbing that traditionally packs in the edginess their Update jokes lacked. 

Political Comedy Report

Yeah, SNL is done with all that for the year. I will say that the joke swap where Che was made to address the Israel-Gaza conflict by saying both sides need Jesus was the most pointed thing the show’s had to say on the topic, even if it’s mainly a goof on Che. 

Recurring Sketch Report

Yeah, there were a lot, although less of the Kristen Wiig-style “I’m here to play the hits” variety. The 10-to-one spot was given over to Whiskers R We, this time with Kate realizing that new pet shelter sidekick Billie Eilish is the daughter she didn’t know she had. These sketches are critic-proof, so I’ll only say that this one didn’t really reach the loony specificity of the sketch at its best. (These impatient-looking real kitties’ backstories just weren’t inventively disreputable as they might be.) Referring to cats as “a dog that’s a bitch” made me laugh, and taking a swat at a cat named Cat Sajak for also not believing in climate change had more mustard on it than most. It’s impossible to not like Kate in crazy, glazy cat lady mode in these sketches, and she and former Christmas show host Eilish made a solid enough team. 

Santa’s village suffered another catastrophe, this time with a killer whale surfacing through the ice to chow down on Santa’s tiniest and most adorable wage slaves. Kate took over for Eddie Murphy as the one elf not buying into the company line about Santa’s all-seeing benevolence, adopting a Quint-like Scottish burr and vomiting up Skittles when not ranting to Mikey Day’s elf reporter about her plans for Ahab-style vengeance. I’d complain that this wasn’t as funny as Murphy’s outing, but since that was one of the funniest damn things to come out of Saturday Night Live in years, it’s not that big a diss. 

The film nerd in me gave extra points to the Meet Me in St. Louis Cinema Classics sketch. First off, it gave Chloe Troast another chance to sing, here doing a creditable Judy Garland crooning that movie’s in-context incredibly dark holiday standard, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” (A song, if you recall, in which a sibling unsuccessfully tries to cheer up her bereft little sister, heartbroken at having to leave her childhood home.) With Kenan’s ever sprightly Reese De’What introducing the allegedly true anecdote about director Vincente Minnelli telling seven-year-old actress Margaret O’Brien that her dog had just died in order to get the right note of sorrow, the piece gave Kate a chance to do some of her favorite old-timey overacting. Sure, it could have built a bit more cleverly (the payoff with the little girl ripping up those snowmen with a bloody chainsaw isn’t especially well executed), but she and Troast make a good team, and Kate McKinnon was born to inhabit heightened versions of vintage Hollywood. 

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Lots of cameos and a returning cast member meant little chance for the proper cast to shine. Kenan got his, Ego had an Update piece, and James Austin Johnson continues to ground his roles with actorly authenticity. Troast is on the rise. If it’s true there’s a shakeup coming, it can only do this stalled ensemble some good. 

10-To-One Report

Just some cute kitties in a repeater. 

Parting Shots

I’m counting “Cindy Clawford” as an homage to Ted Lasso’s Higgins’ dearly departed kitty of the same name. 

The cool women just kept coming tonight, with Barbie director Greta Gerwig helping McKinnon introduce Eilish’s performance of the movie’s “What Was I Made For?” For more Christmassy goodness, Eilish also did her own, torchy version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” (She does substitute the later-changed cheerier final verse, but, hey, it’s the holidays.)

Kate’s child actress wailing that her dead dog is “going to Purgatory” (she never got the beast baptized) is a fine little piece of comic embroidery. 

In the monologue, Kate shows a picture of herself dramatically posing in her flowy prom dress, apologizing to her date, citing, “that feeling when your date shows up in a ren faire dress and is gay and is me.”

Pretty sure this was the first Saturday Night Live this season without a Please Don’t Destroy video. Honestly, the guys could use some time to recharge.

I got my niece (and Kate McKinnon’s number one fan) one of those tortilla burrito blankets. She said she liked it…

And that’s 2023, people. We’re back with SNL in the new year, with the first new episode not coming until January 20, when it will feature host Jacob Elordi alongside musical guest and star of the Mean Girls musical, Reneé Rapp. Put your money on a Tina Fey appearance, with a Tim Meadows side-bet.