This review of an SNL episode hosted by Josh O'Connor with musical guest Lily Allen criticizes the show for its lack of laughs, weak sketches, and a generally underwhelming performance, despite strong musical numbers. Highlights include a slight Trump cold open, a peculiar Ratatouille monologue, and several forgettable skits, leaving critics hoping for a 'Christmas miracle' in the next episode.
Saturday Night Live opens with Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. From behind “curtain”, the Ambien and Adderall-riddled commander-in-chief “openly simp[s]” over his press secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla), brags about targeting suspected drug boats and drug planes over the Caribbean (footage from a strike reveals that the military blew up Santa’s sled), bashes the proposed sale of Warner Brothers to Netflix (“I don’t know why anyone would want Warner Brothers, they have one of the worst studio tours in LA”), and admits that “we should all be very worried about my health, I’m very ill”, before having Leavitt sign off with “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” (Padilla, who is quickly becoming one of SNL’s most featured cast members, gets the honors.) To call this cold open slight is giving it too much credit – Johnson’s Trump remains a winner, but there is just no meat on this bone. Saturday Night Live: Melissa McCarthy hosts for sixth time but laughs are sparse Read more Josh O’Connor makes his hosting debut. The British actor and self-proclaimed soft boy, who audiences may recognize from The Crown, Challengers, and “other competitive homoerotic dramas”, spends almost the entirety of his monologue discussing a potential live-action remake of Pixar’s Ratatouille staring him as Chef Alfredo Linguini. Somehow even slighter than the preceding sketch. Let’s Find Love is a game show where O’Connor’s charming bachelor chooses between three single women. He’s excited to play until he learns that the show has addressed age discrimination concerns by raising the age cap of contestants “from 38 to as old as we can find”. Two of said contestants are attractive, normal women in their mid-30s, while the third (Padilla) is an octogenarian oddball in a Rascal scooter who is obsessed with wedding cake, the Toy Story movies, and finding someone to “get my bones right, keep my bones right”. Padilla goes too big here. Everyone loves their year-end Spotify Wrapped, so Uber Eats has released their own version, much to the horror, shame and embarrassment of costumers. Uber Eats Wrapped reveals people’s awful eating habits (“It says I’m in the top 1% of nuggets; what does that even mean?”), their food-based age (“52 and fat”), and how many thousands of dollars they spent on the app. A clever idea, with the funniest bit being how furious Padilla’s character gets over Johnson playfully poking her in the belly (“What woman in the world would like what you just did?”). Next is a new sketch featuring Bowen Yang’s interminable Doctor character (revealed to be named Dr Please). The strange, suspicious, and obviously inept physician delivers baffling test results to a patient with the help of his attendee and lover. O’Connor and Yang share two kisses that get big applause from the crowd, while the supposed jokes are met with icy silence. A cozy bachelorette party at a remote cabin gets heated when one of the bridesmaids brings in “the two most sensitive strippers in the Catskills” (O’Connor and Ben Marshall), whom she found on a Sally Rooney message board. These sensitive sex workers check all of the performative male boxes: tiny beanies and cardigans, a copy of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, platitudes about being enough, and lots of tears. A solid idea, but one that could have cut a little deeper in sending up its subjects. The kiss shared by O’Connor and Marshall also feels forced. Musical guest Lily Allen, wearing a lingerie and sauntering through a moodily lit bedroom set, performs the song Sleepwalking. Then, on Weekend Update, Marcello Hernández joins the desk to talk about his Christmas traditions, including meeting new boyfriends (“You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin”), his Cuban mother guilt tripping him to give her grandkids (“You won’t give it to me because you hate me”), and his love for the holiday classic Home Alone (“This kid misses the plane, destroys the house, and ruins the vacation, and somehow, this movie doesn’t end with a historic ass-beating”). Most of the humor revolves around Hernández’s rapid-fire Spanish and heavily accented pronunciation of words like spider (“ethpider”). Hernández is followed by fellow cast member Jane Wickline, who debuts a new song about the greatest threat facing humanity – not AI, but the kid actors from Stranger Things. Told their harmless by Colin Jost, she responds: “Things that start funny can get important: Joe Rogan used to make people eat bugs, now he’s the president of the United States.” In celebration of the box office success of Wicked for Good, Universal Pictures is releasing exclusive footage from the original Wizard of Oz. Dorothy (Sarah Sherman) and her friends meet the Wizard (Yang), who reveals that the Cowardly Lion (Kenan Thompson) has come to ask not for courage, but “a big ’ol thing”. Upon realizing they can ask for that, the Scarecrow and Tin Man also ask for “a big ’ol broomstick that can fit three witches.” This goes on far too long for a one-joke sketch. Next up is a new installment of the Brad and His Dad animated shorts. The mouth-breathing pre-teen and his divorced father go to a Christmas tree farm, where he struggles to cut one down and tries to impress his school crush with a “six seven” joke. In a Christmas miracle, Brad’s dad gets to spend the actual holiday with his son, but not before kicking out the previous night’s drunken hookup from bed. Over the past few seasons, SNL has tested out a few different animated series, with none of them catching on. This one doesn’t seem poised to do any better. A college study group featuring a child genius and his overbearing mother devolves into high-pitched screaming (courtesy of Yang and Padilla). Then, Allen performs the provocative Madeline, featuring a surprise cameo from Dakota Johnson as the titular other woman. This is followed by a new Variety series in the vein of Actors on Actors and Directors on Directors: Characters on Characters, featuring Yuletide icons such as The Grinch and Scrooge, Tiny Tim (now “just Tim”) and Little Drummer Boy (now, “Drum Daddy”), and “literally the only two women in Christmas”, Mrs Clause and Grandma from Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Corny and laugh-free. The show wraps up with – what else? – a restaurant sketch. Over brunch, four friends express their hidden feelings through song, by way of Allen’s hit single West End Girl. Allen joins as herself (although she’s for a member of the wait staff). O’Connor finally lands a laugh line with a cringey joke about his chair being a “daddy-mobile” that “runs on daddy juice”. Allen’s performances were the obvious highlights of this sliver of an episode. There were no standout sketches, the laughs were few and far between, and O’Connor was given nothing to work with. Next week’s show is SNL’s last of 2025. Hopefully, they pull off a proper Christmas miracle.
