Walton Goggins Serves Up Impressions of Himself on a Giggly SNL
The White Lotus and Righteous Gemstones actor and first-time host intensely read a lot of cue cards, flubbed a few lines, and charmed his way through a serviceable but fun penultimate episode of Season 50.
We’re nearing the finish line! After tonight, just one episode of Saturday Night Live’s 50th season remains. For a beloved, oft-criticized show like SNL, Lorne Michaels and co. have done a bang-up job making this season as ordinary as possible. There have been great episodes, of course, but the show celebrating its golden jubilee without any big-time returns has left a sour taste in my mouth. We got the SNL 50 special earlier this year, but if the best you’ve got to offer is a combination of Shane Gillis, Michael Keaton, Jean Smart, and Mikey Madison… Well, surely the anniversary season 10 years ago was better than this?
I guess my mind has been playing tricks on me all this time, because Season 40 was also light on spectacular hosts too and I swear it wasn’t. Woody Harrelson, Dwayne Johnson, Bill Hader, and Amy Adams helmed good episodes, but we also got less-than-stellar turns from Blake Shelton, JK Simmons, Taraji P. Henson, Cameron Diaz, Dakota Johnson, and Chris Rock. Maybe that speaks more to how average SNL has been since its inception. Like I said in the intro of my Season 50 premiere review, the greatness of this show remains through the fault of selective memory.
But the penultimate episode of SNL 50 arrived tonight, with HBO regular and Paste fan Walton Goggins in the driver’s seat. Goggins has enjoyed a renaissance in 2025, thanks to his performances in The Righteous Gemstones and The White Lotus back-to-back on a few Sunday nights this spring. Goggins has gone from a serious “that guy” actor to a national treasure. But many forget that he got an Emmy nom for his performance as Boyd Crowder in Justified. And his run in the short-lived Vice Principals? Or his sneaky credit as a star in and co-producer of an Academy Award-winning short film? Goggins’ CV is the real deal. And he remains one of the kindest actors I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing over the years.
Goggins is hilarious—like, his charm is effortlessly contagious. Baby Billy Freeman is one of the most absurd and well-written supporting characters in television history. And Goggins’ social media personality also suggests that, when he’s not stealing every scene he’s in, he’s kicking it back with his family, listening to Radiohead, and l-i-v-i-n-g the good life. He’s the type of guy you can’t help but root for. I mean, anyone who can sport a receding hairline with that much chutzpah deserves the world. (Or, as he puts it, his hairline is “holding its ground.”) That being said, I walked into tonight’s episode with trepidation. Like Paul Mescal, Goggins’ attitude is exciting and good-natured, but not everyone is cut out for a live sketch-comedy show.
Luckily, Goggins’ on-camera failures weren’t make-or-break. He’s been a supporting actor his entire career, so jumping in with a not-ready-for-primetime cast like this one seemed close enough to second-nature. There were plenty of moments where his cue-card reading was a bit too crystal-clear. And not only did he break a few times, but he stumbled over his lines enough for everyone to notice. But, for the first time all season, a host making mistakes didn’t dampen the material. In the aftermath of a really great episode last week, Goggins’ turn was by no means a slam dunk. But, as far as first-time hosts go, I walked away from SNL feeling like I just drank one of Baby Billy Freeman’s ancient biblical formula health elixirs, even if we didn’t get any sketches with the “There’ll Come a Payday” singer involved. Still, it felt like Goggins was variously channeling all of his most beloved characters throughout the night—some in subtler ways than others. How did this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live fare with TV’s favorite eccentric everyman behind the wheel? Well, as a wise cue-card says…
“Live from New York…”
At first, it seems that we were getting one of those classic “Mother’s Day Message” sketches, until a bait-and-switch hits and it’s, surprise surprise, a Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) monologue. This is the, by my untrustworthy count, third time we’ve gotten a sike! cold open this season, and I’m not entirely mad about it. These monologue bits have accounted for some of the show’s best Trump-centric material, and tonight’s edition was no different. He went on a rant about the new Pope—“Da Pope,” or “Da Prayers.” Of course, we get a nod to JD Vance killing the last Pope. “He’s got the Midas touch, but for bad things!” I enjoyed the Popemobile joke, too. “It’s one of my favorite mobiles,” JAJ quips. “After ‘wiener’ and ‘bat.’” And, naturally, he asks the age-old question: Can a country go out of business? “We’re gonna find out!”
By the season’s halfway point, I was plum exhausted by the cameo appearances—thanks to the absolutely rigid and uninspired work by Dana Carvey and Mike Myers as Joe Biden and Elon Musk, respectively. But we got a guest spot from Cecily Strong as Jeanine Pirro, one of her most beloved characters. In the real world, Pirro was just appointed interim US attorney in Washington D.C.; in SNL world, she’s back to make Colin Jost’s life miserable—and she does when Jost appears as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The bottle of wine in Pirro’s hand becomes a mouthful of wine spat all over Jost, which is custom in scenarios like this. And, like all of their interactions on Update over the years, it was incredibly funny. All of it culminates in a bit of SNL tradition: one character spitting into the mouth of another. This time, Strong spits alcohol right into Jost’s wide-open mouth. Was this sketch a lay-up? Of course. But, considering how many misses this cast has had this season, I’ll take all the gimmes.
“Mother’s Day Brunch” was the best non-Update sketch tonight, even though it was, honestly, disastrous. Genuinely, this bit could have gone so much further off the rails. Thankfully, the material didn’t demand too much of Goggins, Andrew Dismukes, Mikey Day, Sarah Sherman, and Heidi Gardner. Goggins—who is, objectively, a hot, middle-aged man—plays Albie, a waiter who is very flirty with a pair of moms (Sherman, Gardner). We get one of the best lines of the night when Albie backtalks one of the sons (Day): “Are you the Lord Baby Jesus? Then don’t be cross.” Goggins’ shirt gets progressively more unbuttoned as the sketch goes on, and his one-liners are so damn funny that his god-awful cue card dependency doesn’t wreck the momentum. He even flubs a couple of lines and breaks near the sketch’s end. But that doesn’t matter, because the innuendos come aplenty. Goggins was absolutely evoking Baby Billy Freeman here, and he aced the assignment. Then, Goggins throws down the gauntlet at a mortified Dismukes: “Calm down, boy—you got to spend nine months inside your momma, I’m just trying to get 20 minutes.” You could tell the cast had a blast putting this one together. I wish it had been the post-monologue sketch.
“Yipee! Jerry Rubin died last week.”
If I didn’t have a special category just for Update, it probably would’ve been my pick for the best segment of the night. Colin Jost and Michael Che were cooking with gas, hitting dingers left and right—especially Che, who didn’t miss on a single joke. There’s a new Pope! Jost, an American Catholic, is proud, which makes him ashamed. There’s a great South Side of Chicago/Kanye joke that follows. Trump is trying to stir up tension between Marco Rubio and JD Vance. “Mostly by pointing at them and saying, ‘Kiss!’” Jost quips. Trump also called Alcatraz “horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable and weak,” which is exactly what he calls his five children, Che says. Jost’s one-two punch about airplane pilots being able to land in Newark by “following the smell” and the struggle to find a jury for Diddy’s trial (“Where are you going to find 12 people who haven’t had sex with Diddy?”) was sharp.
WeightWatchers is going through bankruptcy for their $1 billion debt, but they’ll probably gain it all back. The flagship suites being introduced on American Airlines flights are helping with the company’s new pro-pregnancy initiative. BLACKPINK’s Lisa wore an outfit with an image of Rosa Parks seemingly on the crotch. “At least they put her in the front!” Che winks. “Am I right, guys?” Jost brings back his Osama Bin Laden joke from last week while mentioning the second F-18 that fell off an aircraft carrier and into the ocean. Che argues that Smokey Robinson plans to beat the recent accusations of sexual assault against him “by dying.” When he brings up a news story of a Scottish doctor who was convicted for putting cameras in his bathroom to “compare the size of his penis” to other men’s, Che drops a nuke: “He’s been sentenced to 18 months in prison, where his studies continue.”
I’ve got a lot of stock in Marcello Hernandez. He’s got the star-power to be one of SNL’s leading men for the next half-decade or so, but it’s becoming painfully clear that some of his recurring characters get stale quickly in Studio 8H. Domingo is old news and now the Movie Guy is starting to wear thin. Don’t get me wrong! The Movie Guy has his moments, like the Gary Field/Garfield joke—that was good stuff. But I think Hernandez is taking a few too many cues from Fred Armisen’s Fericito in bits like these. And we get it, he hasn’t seen any of the movies he’s on the show to talk about. I’m not saying Hernandez has got to switch up the formula—Hader’s Stefan did the same exact bit all dozen times he was on Update—but could we get something a little more inspired than this?
Mikey Day comes by the desk as the “Man Who Just Stepped Into a Spider Web” to talk about Trump’s tariff plan. There’s no commentary to be had though, as Day freaks out and strips off his clothes in an attempt to get the imaginary spider off of his body. Watching Day writhe behind the desk and yell “On my skin!” at the top of his lungs was a much-needed dose of physical comedy that SNL, more often than not, leaves on the cutting-room floor these days.
Dianne (Gardner) is a mom who gets all of her news about New York City on Facebook. You know at least four or five people who are this exact archetype. And Gardner really excels in roles like this! She was wonderfully chaotic, selling the bit with well-timed body movements and purse-clutching. Honestly, give her any type of white woman and she’ll play the hell out of her. It makes me wonder: Are we nearing the end of Gardner’s time on the show? I’d argue that Day could be on his way out, too.
“In a word? Chaos.”
Founding Fathers sketches usually work for me, because it’s pretty easy to dunk on the absurd ways of thinking that fueled the construction of the United States. After the men have just finished drafting the First Amendment, Goggins shows up as a terminally cool, sunglasses-wearing guy named Matt who thinks that the second amendment should be “guns.” Watching Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, and Michael Longfellow react the way that they do, in modern, flamboyant gestures, was entertaining—and Goggins was able to mask his cue card dependency with those slick shades—but this post-monologue sketch struggled to really pack the kind of wallop I want in a pre-midnight segment. This was the writers’ first draft pick? The Mother’s Day brunch sketch would have been a much better fit.
“You are weak like H.R. Pickens!”
“Service Dogs” could have been really good. The crowd wasn’t into this one, and I don’t blame them. The dogs in question are doing all of the heavy lifting, which isn’t a dynamic that works—at least not on SNL. We can’t all be Toonces! But here’s the gist: Walton Goggins and Heidi Gardner are playing siblings in a tragic play about Southerners and alcoholism. 20 dogs are in the audience, learning how to sit for a full-length play. But, dogs simply do not want to watch a brother and sister kiss and whine, as they slowly exit the show. There’s a good bit in here where Michael Longfellow’s dog starts talking via a button board. When Goggins and Gardner grossly start macking, the dog says, “You kiss me?” “That’s different,” Longfellow pushes back. That one got a laugh out of me. But what “Service Dogs” did best was emphasize just how great those Dog Show sketches were when Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon were in the cast.
“If you have a $50 bill, we can give you 50 singles.”
“Tiny Baby Shoe” will be divisive amongst fans. If you have been enjoying Jane Wickline’s various Update songs, then you will likely get a kick out of this one. If you’ve been puzzled by Wickline’s unique sense of off-kilter, musical comedy… Well, you’ll probably want to skip this one. But “Tiny Baby Shoe” is fun! When it’s revealed that the shoe doesn’t belong to a baby, but to an adult Walton Goggins with tiny feet, I audibly yelped. The payoff was worth it, even if Sam Rockwell’s cameo felt extremely overbooked. (I know, I know—his and Goggins’ characters on The White Lotus were scene buddies, but that doesn’t mean throwing him into this nonsense was the right call.) It’s an absurd four minutes of television with a good build-up. Goggins was definitely channeling Lee Russell here, which makes me miss Vice Principals even more.
“It’s always something.”
“The Deathly Diner” was your typical unmemorable post-Update sketch. Legitimately, I won’t ever think about this bit again. It wasn’t bad, it was just… Meh? The recurring “Might be your last!” line, which is all that the employees (Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim) at a horror-themed restaurant know how to say, since it’s their first day on the job, gets tired quickly. The most redeeming part is when two old folks (Kenan Thompson, Heidi Gardner) ask to put in an order, and Yang and Nwodim, realizing they can’t carry on with the same punchline, switch up the story and promise many more meals to the 100-year-old patrons. This is the best the writers could do for Nwodim this week? Considering how good she’s been all season, her absence this week was a real bummer.
“Your very precious lunch hour…”
As it was going on, I was convinced that “Tiny Baby Shoe” was a Dan Bulla original. It wasn’t, but we did get a Midnight Matinee in the 10-to-1 spot! This time, it’s about a squatty potty—the plastic toilet stool that helps you elevate and align your body more naturally while taking a shit. Nick (Dismukes) has just been made partner at Mr. Patterson’s (Goggins) firm and, in his boss’s bathroom, he encounters a squatty potty and is dismayed by its presence. Terrifying jungle hallucinations ensue for Nick, and we find out that the Pattersons also keep their bathroom stocked with wet wipes. It’s strange and dumb, but so incredibly Dan Bulla. He’s been on a tear this season.
Not Ready For Primetime Power Rankings
1. Heidi Gardner In what could be one of Heidi’s final SNL episodes, she delivered a masterclass. Her turns in “Mother’s Day Brunch” and “Service Dogs” were great, but it was her Diane character on Update that won me over completely. She’s been an MVP-caliber cast member not just this season, but for her entire tenure on the show.
2. Andrew Dismukes Aside from Heidi, the cast was pretty evenly dispersed throughout tonight’s episode. But, considering how fun the Midnight Matinee and “Mother’s Day Brunch” sketches were, I’ll give this spot to the always dependable Andrew Dismukes. He was spot-on in his limited air-time.
3. Mikey Day Day and Dismukes had a practically identical episode, but I did love Day’s Update bit tonight. If that’s the last solo character we get from him on SNL, I’d say it was a great way to go out. Gotta give some props to Day for being such a good White Man in the cast this decade. He took up the mantle after Beck Bennett left the show, and he’s delivered routinely ever since.
SNL 50 ends next week with host Scarlett Johansson and musical guest Bad Bunny, 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.
