An Underused Mikey Madison Lacks Comedic Instinct in Her SNL Hosting Debut
The Anora star’s presence was barely felt on screen during last night’s half-baked, phoned-in episode. When she was in focus, her dependency on cue cards made her look like a total fish out of water.
We’re 80% done with Saturday Night Live’s celebratory 50th season. By my count, heading into last night, we’ve had eight good-to-great episodes out of 14. For a show without a bonafide lead, and in an era where almost every host is either an unpredictable first-timer or a jacket-clad veteran, I’d say that’s a pretty good ratio for a show that “hasn’t been great since the ‘90s.”
Last night’s host, Mikey Madison, made waves earlier this month when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her turn in Sean Baker’s Best Picture-winning Anora. Before playing the titular sex worker, Madison was top-billed in Better Things before taking roles in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2019 and the sequel/reboot of Scream in 2022. She’s easily one of the best young actors working in Hollywood right now, and she holds the title as the first Zoomer to win an Oscar. She’s got the juice and will undoubtedly be a major dramatic player for decades to come.
But her comedy could use a lot of work. Madison’s hosting debut was a lot like Paul Mescal’s earlier this season: there’s a lot of charm present, but even our finest living actors can’t quite cut it on a live sketch show. I’m glad that SNL is taking a chance on beloved young celebrities and not just turning its 50th season into an exhausted greatest hits tour where a bunch of alums come back and do the same sketches again. Lorne Michaels is not giving the fans what they want and, for the first time in years, I respect his audacity.
Last night’s episode was a tough watch, as it was a completely uninspired episode from start to finish. I’m not sure how much of that blame is Madison’s to carry, as her presence in a lot of the material felt like an afterthought, but her effort certainly didn’t do the show any favors. Too often it was painfully obvious that she needed those cue cards to help her get from A to B. I don’t know if the writers could sense that she lacked comedic instinct or what, but her falling into the background on a lot of ensemble-led bits felt purposeful. Chris Rock took a similar approach during his episode earlier this season, but at least the material around him was stronger that night.
Maybe the writers were just off this week. It’s a shame, given just how great Lady Gaga’s episode was a few weeks ago. But the sequencing around Madison felt off-balance, as the show leaned heavily on a lot of pre-recorded material, made a bizarre opening sketch choice and took no risks whatsoever (aside from Madison sporting a gnarly broken arm but from a distance). It’s never enjoyable watching a first-time host turn into an only-time host before your very eyes—and one who’s just so damn likable in everything else she does, too.
Well, as a wise cue card says…
“Live from New York…”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war plans group chat leaking, thanks to an Atlantic journalist accidentally getting added into the message chain, was an easy target for this week’s cold open, which is why I wish the sketch was more interesting. Three young girls (Ego Nwodim, Mikey Madison, Sarah Sherman) are gossipping with each other in a Signal group chat, until Hegseth (Andrew Dismukes) joins them, texting “FYI—Green light on Yemen raid!” He chit-chats, speaks in emojis and sporadically unveils details about America’s national security, including a PDF with the locations of all of the U.S.’s nuclear submarines. Hegseth adds Vice President JD Vance (Bowen Yang) into the chat, who’s reporting from Greenland. I loved Severance reference from Bowen: “Our work here is mysterious and important.”
While talking about bringing the Pyramids of Giza to America, Madison questions how the country will get them here. Either by aliens or slaves, the vice president replies. Her boyfriend Matt comes by to pick her up for a movie date, and it’s revealed to be Matt Gaetz. Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernandez) shows up and promises to forward everyone the “real” JFK files. And, of course, Hegseth adds the editor of The Atlantic (Mikey Day) into the chat again.
Dismukes’ impression of Hegseth wasn’t very inspired—in fact, it came across as just a grizzled version of Dismukes himself more than anything else. Yang’s turn as Vance didn’t have much room to spread out, and neither did Hernandez’s appearance as Rubio. The women carried the sketch, even though it never quite reached its full potential. As is custom with the cold opens this year, this one felt safe. This was the first time all season that a host showed up in the cold open. There wasn’t much of a pop for Madison when she came on-screen with Nwodim and Sherman for the first time, which felt odd, considering that Hernandez’s “Rubio in the house!” got a round of laughs. Maybe the crowd was saving their hooting and hollering for Madison’s monologue entrance.
Three things are certain in this life: death, taxes and Bowen Yang leading an oddball sketch around 12:45 AM. “Barry the Midwife” being the best part of last night’s episode was something far worse than any recession indicator could explain. Yang did this sketch for the first time a year ago when Quinta Brunson hosted, but I think he nailed it much better this time. Barry (Yang) and Dr. Richards (Madison) start beefing because the OB-GYN doesn’t remember him from when they first met—at a Hilary Duff concert on the Today show in 2007, where Sarah Sherman says, “She’s a brunette now, so you know she’s not a kid anymore!” We’re then taken through flash-forwards and flashbacks and flash-forwards again, getting a full arc while we’re transported to 2028, 2007 and 2031 and get to watch Barry’s hair grow from a bob to a full on wizard’s mane as his grudge boils over (not to mention, there’s a great detail of Barry wearing prescription 2007 glasses at the Today barrier). When he delivers a lesbian’s babies, he holds up triplets, gleefully declaring, “Lesbos always have extros.” Yang sells this character perfectly, and it’s one of many sassy, outlandishly realistic figures he’s turned into excellent post-Update successes. This sketch was funny enough that I’ll forgive SNL for spelling Hilary’s name wrong in the transition graphic.
“Yipee! Jerry Rubin died last week.”
At this point, Weekend Update is on a generational run of tedium. Week after week, Jost and Che get less interesting to me. There’s just no shock factor in these jokes, not even when Jost’s “Hear Me Out” segment involves him calling Paddington a “toxic bitch” and an “illegal immigrant freeloading off a nice, gullible white family.” The Signal group chat getting leaked to The Atlantic gets compared to “CC’ing Jared from Subway” on surprise quinceañera plans; Hegseth’s tarmac interview sounds a lot like something Forrest Gump would say; anti-Elon Musk vandalism at Tesla dealerships is being called “domestic terrorism,” which is a crime “punishable by full pardon,” Che quips. He drops the best joke of Update (“There’s one billionaire oil man who still supports Donald Trump: Diddy!”) and Jost gets to pull one of his classic “seen here” intros on JD Vance (this time, seen here watching the plane leave Greenland without him) before calling the VP’s latest work a “sad reboot of Veep.”
Jost throws his support behind Melania Trump’s crusade against deepfake revenge porn, citing having fallen victim to it himself. There’s a new Will Smith album that, per Che, doesn’t slap. 23andMe “says it’s bankrupt… and also 2% Cherokee,” and three Texan girls try killing their mom because of wi-fi—the latter being breaking news “brought to you by PlanB, get them before they get you! Everything Jost and Che have been doing on Update this season, save for their joke swap in December, has been without risk. As each week passes, I get closer to wanting to mute my TV during Update.
Devon Walker stopped by the Update desk to talk about his morning routine, riffing on fitness coach and TikTok creator Ashton Hall’s ridiculous, viral “rise and grind” method, which includes removing the mouth tape he wore while sleeping, soaking his face in a bowl of iced Saratoga water and lemon, doing push ups on his balcony, reading, journaling and goes running on a treadmill while wearing shoes without socks. Walker’s routine is slightly different and more SNL-influenced. He practices saying “Live from New York…,” mingles with fans who mistake him for Jay Pharoah and gets taken away from Studio 8H in an ambulance because he tried picking up the broken glass of a shattered Saratoga bottle. The best part of the bit was Walker’s continuous ribbing of Che, who’s concerned that Walker is “doing too much” despite Walker’s belief that the Update anchor isn’t a cast member anymore: “Oh, so now you care about the only Black person who works here?” Walker continues to fly under the radar in this cast, but he’s been doing solid material all season long.
JoAnn Fabrics recently filed for bankruptcy, so JoAnn herself (Ashley Padilla) showed up, flask in hand, to hype up the brand one final time before it closes its doors for good. I am always a fan of letting the newbies have their moments on Update, but Padilla really struggled to make this character interesting. There’s a funny joke at the beginning about all of the JoAnn Fabrics employees being retired nurses with the biggest breasts you’ve ever seen, but Padilla too often rests on shock-value punchlines, like telling Jost that the Michael from Michael’s sexually assaulted her or sniffing glue. I wanted more from this bit, but, sadly, I don’t think it had much potential to begin with.
“Who’s the barber here?”
“Acting Teacher 2” is, as the title hints, a sequel to a sketch from the Charli XCX episode in November. The premise is the same—an acting teacher named Strop (Hernandez) leads a class of wannabe actors through unconventional methods. It was funnier when Charli did it the first time, but even then it wasn’t that great. This kind of sketch is just the writers’ way of making Hernandez a sketch lead. He does a lot of choreography and breaks more than once. I did love this line from Strop: “Who’s the expert here? You, with zero acting? Or me, with three?” He reveals that the third role was actually a failed audition for the incestuous brothers in The White Lotus. He shows his headshots, which are actually just mugshots. “They cost me nothing. It’s called a win-win. I got free headshots, and I got to drive while drunk. He makes the Nike slogan “Just do it already,” but with a sassy shrug. Mikey Madison’s “star pupil” character struggles through a Forrest Gump line reading, and she and Strop do an impromptu Allstate commercial with a wide receiver named “Good Hands.” I wasn’t floored here, but there was a far worse “sequel” bit that made it to air last night. The real question is: Was this really the best first sketch the writers could come up with this week?
“You are weak like H.R. Pickens!”
We have a three-way tie for the worst sketch of the night, shared between “Big Dumb Line,” “Pop’s Big Regret” and the Please Don’t Destroy film. “Big Dumb Line” felt like a waste of resources, as Yang, Sherman and Madison sang like Charli XCX about waiting in NYC lines for the longest three minutes of the season. The commentary it offered on viral items sparking long wait times everywhere in the city was evergreen, sure, but the payoff that, spoiler alert, what you’ve been waiting for isn’t actually that good was tepid. The pop-up in question was a Milk Bar x Dababy x Hypebeast x Oral-B collab, and Joe Jonas made a surprise cameo and sang the song’s refrain that was so low-effort and without rhyme or reason that I can only assume it was because they didn’t want to be anywhere near last night’s musical guest, Morgan Wallen. Can’t say I blame them one bit.
“Pop’s Big Regret” was the sketch that made me say: Does SNL know that Mikey Madison is hosting the show? It’s a five-minute sketch and she’s barely in half of it. The premise—a mob boss (Dismukes), shot up by a rival gang, reveals that his biggest regret in life was not pursuing stand-up comedy—had potential, but it came out exhausted and, to be honest, pretty damn boring. All of Pop’s jokes are horrendously dad-core and pointless (that’s intentional), and the sketch just beats you over the head with them. The first joke is the only good bit: “You know how they got those signs on the bus that says it’s illegal to beat up the bus driver? It’s like, ‘Okay, now I won’t.’” When Pop’s wife (Madison) arrives, it’s revealed that she’s been writing jokes about bowling shoes. This was a rough watch.
The Please Don’t Destroy film was no-doubt the most disappointing part of last night’s episode. I’m usually a big supporter of the trio’s work, as it can often be a bright spot in a dull episode (like the skydiving bit from Michael Keaton’s episode), but a rehash of their Shrek bit with Bad Bunny wasn’t what the doctor ordered this time around. The sketch starts out promising though, as Madison meets an eager Martin Herlihy, John Higgins and Ben Marshall in their office, only to show up in full Squidward makeup. She tells PDD that she wants to make a HBO-style live-action remake of SpongeBob SquarePants, so we get to see a NYC-based montage of familiar quotes and jokes, like Patrick’s legendary “Is mayonnaise an instrument?” bit. There was even a moment where a picture of Bad Bunny (as Shrek) flickered on-screen. But in a season where PDD has come up with some pretty good original material, seeing them return to the well on this one was a dud.
“If you have a $50 bill, we can give you 50 singles.”
“Spring Break” exists in the same genre of “having a serious conversation while chaos unravels nearby” sketches as Jenna Ortega’s Waffle House bit from a few seasons ago. This time, a couple (Chloe Fineman and Marcello Hernandez) have a long talk about their future together, all while the rest of the cast parodies the colorful urchins roaming Florida’s motel poolsides. Material like this rarely moves the needle anymore. At best, it’s a good opportunity for the writers to funnel as many incongruous jokes into one sequence as possible—this time that included a drunk Sarah Sherman projectile vomiting on people, an elderly Heidi Gardner getting her electric wheelchair hijacked, Andrew Dismukes wrangling an alligator, Mikey Day as that guy who never left your hometown, and Mikey Madison is drunk and jumps off the motel’s roof, breaking her arm. It’s fun trying to pay attention to both the foreground and the background simultaneously, I guess!
“It’s always something.”
The “Jury Duty” sketch was jam-packed with moving parts, yet it was woefully forgettable. I had to rewatch it immediately after the show went off the air because I couldn’t even remember what it was about. A judge (Nwodim) is making her selections for a jury, and all of the prospective jurors are doing their best to get out of it. It’s like those “auditions” sketches but lighter on the celebrity impressions. Instead, the cast gets to play a bunch of off-kilter characters. The problem with material like this, however, is that no character ever gets enough screen time to really leave a mark on the audience. You’ll probably remember Emil Wakim’s Luigi Mangione, or Heidi Gardner asking whether or not Luigi got the nudes she’s been sending him, or Quinth (Kenan Thompson), the charmer who very badly wants to be the judge. But Madison’s character who got hit by Caitlyn Jenner’s car, Dismukes’ pretentious wellness dick, James Austin Johnson’s prank caller and Bowen Yang’s time traveler are likely already out of mind. The best part of the sketch was its ending, when Hernandez appears as Benson Boone in his Grammys jumpsuit and laughs while yelling the chorus of “Beautiful Things.” Otherwise, “Jury Duty” was a snoozefest. At least Sarah Sherman’s “Bisexuals For Mass Incarceration” shirt was a gas.
“Your very precious lunch hour…”
Last night’s 10-to-1 sketch was, technically, an animated short called “Planning New York.” All things considered, I had a really good time with this one—even if it was just an inoffensive, snarky and nonsensical origin story for how Manhattan’s wacky, illogical grid system was first imagined way back in 1620. Mikey Day wrote this one, and Bowen Yang voices the lead explorer. It was a fun way to buy the cast a little time before the goodnights, and it was a decent attempt at redeeming the mostly bad 85 minutes that preceded it.
But if we’re going by “sketch,” then the 10-to-1 last night was “So Like, What Are We?,” a decently engaging game show where Mikey Madison grills her current situationship boyfriend Jeremy (Michael Longfellow) about their relationship. It was good to see Longfellow get some air time, and he always nails the sarcastic, dry-witted white guy role. He tells Madison he doesn’t want to put a label on what they’ve got going on, even though they’ve slept together seven times and he’s all but ghosted her. The “I don’t want to define us” schtick was pulled off well enough, and Madison was good here—it’s too bad she didn’t look fully comfortable on the show until the very end of it.
Not Ready For Primetime Power Rankings
1. Marcello Hernandez I’ll give the top spot to Marcello this week, even though his recent outings haven’t been entirely great. SNL is trying to make him its leading man, but his charm is growing thinner by the week. He was good in “Spring Break” last night, and he had decent turns in “Pop’s Big Regret” and “Acting Teacher 2.” Really, the top spot is his because of that Benson Boone impression.
2. Bowen Yang Yang was great last night, taking command of “Big Dumb Line” and “Barry the Midwife.” He also showed up in “Planning New York” and “Jury Duty,” even if his presence in the latter was forgettable. Yang’s sketch writing is strong when the It Girls are in town to host.
3. Andrew Dismukes Dismukes had a good night! While I didn’t like his Hegseth impression in the cold open, he held his own in “Pop’s Big Regret” and “Acting Teacher 2.” Dismukes can be a good anchor when the show needs him to be. Last night was a solid example of that.
Goodnights
Morgan Wallen (who famously got fired from being the musical guest in 2020 for breaking COVID-19 protocols) performing his song “I’m the Problem” and then walking off the stage during the goodnights without interacting with a single cast member? If only his music was good enough to justify his ego…
SNL is back next week with host Jack Black and musical guests Elton John and Brandi Carlile, so we’ll catch you then. And that’s the way it is! Goodnight.
Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.
