Funny / Saturday Night Live Season 48

The 48th season of Saturday Night Live started on October 1, 2022. Several notable cast members left after Season 47 including Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant. This season soon became Cecily Strong's last, as she left after the first half. Andrew Dismukes and Punkie Johnson were promoted to the repertory cast. New to the cast are Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow, and Devon Walker. The season ended prematurely due to the 2023 WGA strike.

For the main index, see here.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• Miles Teller/Kendrick Lamar:
  • The Cold Open centers around a fictional ManningCast with host Miles Teller as Peyton and Andrew Dismukes as Eli. However, since it's Saturday, they do it for SNL's first sketch of the season and proceed to mock the show:
    Peyton: There are a lot of changes at the show, which could be exciting. Let's see what they spent the entire summer coming up with.
    Eli: Okay, we've got an establishing shot of Mar-a-Lago.
    Peyton: Oh good, a Trump sketch. Way to mix it up.
    • Said Trump sketch centers around Trump and his legal staff riding out Hurricane Ian inside the club, as several of Trump's guests arrive (causing Eli to question why guests are visiting during a hurricane). Heidi Gardner appears as South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and portrays her as a vampire who wants to take away abortion rights:
      Eli: Okay, timeout. (pauses the sketch) What the hell was that?
      Peyton: The governor of South Dakota. A political impression that no one asked for. What about a fun impression like Anthony Fauci or Lindsey Graham or Rudy Giuliani?
      Eli: Yeah, those were all Kate McKinnon.
      Peyton:...Damn.
  • In the "Send Something Normal" sketch, three male celebrities (and Bowen Yang playing himself), are told to reply to woman's DMs in a normal way. The results go as well as you expect, with Halen Hardy (Miles Teller) reacting in pure exasperation. Even Bowen, who usually wins since he's gay, can't help but give an explicit reply once he learns Dua Lipa sent him a message.
• Brendan Gleeson/Willow Smith:
  • The "New Cast Advice" shows the four new cast members talking about what's it like to be on SNL... except for Molly Kearney, who reveals that Lorne told them to kill Vladimir Putin.
  • Weekend Update features Ego Nwodim as the new live-action Ariel aka The Little Mermaid (2023), but instead of the actual controversy from casting a black girl as Ariel, it's Ego taking a rip on the whole concept of Disney Princesses by going all in about the whole mermaid thing.
  "I did not ask for all of this, okay? My mom got drunk and had sex with a tuna and now here I am."
  "I'm dumb too, Colin. My brain is half fish. I will dead-ass bite a worm on a hook, gets me every time."
  "Also, the BP oil spill... I ran up there drunk one night, did a little damage. To this day Flounder still won't talk to me."
  • In the "Blood Oath" sketch, two tribes form a blood oath to fight another enemy. Unfortunately, one of the tribe leaders (Brendan Gleason) cuts himself too deep and squirts blood all over the other tribe leaders (Mikey Day, Kenan Thompson, and Chloe Fineman) and causing them to begun Corpsing.
• Megan Thee Stallion:
  • One sketch starts off as a typical Save Our Students plot where a substitute teacher (Ego Nwodim) arrives at an inner-city public high school and wants to inspire the students to do well academically and have bright futures. It's then hilariously subverted when the students reveal that their school is a magnet high school specializing in STEM education and that all of them are honors level students. Ego's character spends the rest of the sketch trying to save face and deal with the fact the students are actually smarter than she is.
  • The sketch "Girl Talk" has the host (Ego Nwodim) and her guests talking about their issues by simply saying the word "girl". The highlight is when the subtitles are turned on (for white people and men to understand) when one guest (Punkie Johnson) is worrying about what was happening with the war in Ukraine, and another guest (Megan Thee Satllion) says "girl-la" causing a comically long paragraph describing the war to appear on screen.
• Jack Harlow:
  • The Cellblock 666 sketch is the return of David S. Pumpkins (Tom Hanks), complete with Bobby Monihan and Mikey Day reprising their roles as the Skeletons. Jack Harlow's approval of Pumpkins is a nice edition.
    Jack: Yo, he said he's from [Ibiza], not that he grew up there, let him write his own story!
  • SNL proceded to mock Kanye West in the "Skechers Ad" skit, after a real life incident where Kanye went to Skechers' offices uninvited after Adidas dropped him due to antisemitic comments, for which Skechers rejected him and escorted him out of the building; the Skechers employees in the ad begin feeling a small rush of euphoria after being able to tell Kanye off, with the sketch ending with a MyPillow ad where Mike Lindell (James Austin Johnson) says that his company will be starting ties with Kanye.
• Amy Schumer/Steve Lacy:
  • One sketch is a commercial that promotes COVID for people who need a break from their jobs or families. It Crosses the Line Twice so many times, complete with a purposefully positive COVID test.
  • The "Pinx" ad is about underwear that hides a woman's period. One woman's dog notices it, followed by another, and then a whole pack of dogs. This is then notice by the zoo animals, and eventually the woman and her husband have to run away from some birds.
• Dave Chappelle/Black Star:
  • Chappelle's monologue was just as funny as his previous two monologues this time making fun of Kanye West, Kyrie Irving, Trump, and the midterm elections.
  • "Potato Hole" features Dave as a blues musician making a guest appearance on a daytime talk show to promote his new album titled "My Potato Hole". The white hosts all proceed to take turns playfully saying the phrase potato hole before being horrified when Dave's character informs them that the term refers to holes that Black slaves would use to hide their food and possessions from plantation owners.
  • The "Black Heaven" sketch has Chappelle purposely sit out of the sketch, and he decides to let Mikey Day take his part. Throughout the sketch, Mikey is forced the say the more racist lines while Chappelle and his friends sit back and gleefully watch, much to Day's dismay.
    • At one point, Mikey screws up the sketch when he mistakes "Henny" as the name of Ego's character and grabs her instead of the bottle of Hennessy on the set:
    Kenan: Man, you was on Wild 'N Out season one! You ain't absorbed nothing?!
    Mikey: I DON'T KNOW!! I SHOULDN'T BE DOING THIS!!
• Keke Palmer/SZA:
  • In her opening monologue, Keke talks about Akeelah and the Bee, which she starred in at age nine with Laurence Fishburne. She reveals that Fishburne yelled at her for corpsing too much... and her mom yelled right back.
    Keke: (quoting her mom) "I don't care if you was in The Matrix, I’ll whoop Morpheus’ ass!"
  • In the "Hawaii Flight" sketch, Palmer and Ego Nwodim are flight attendants who proudly state all of the problems the plane has, much to the passengers' discomfort.
  • In the Drake PSA, many of Drake's exes and "shawtys" aka the "United Tingz of Aubrey" from his songs speak out about how he wronged them. Keke appearing As Herself is especially funny, with her complaining that Drake's song "Kiki Do You Love Me" ruined her life.
    Keke: People keep asking if I'm "the" Kiki. I am the Keke. Just not that Kiki!
  • The "Ultrasound" sketch has a pregnant woman's (Keke Palmer) fetuses play jump rope with the umbilical cord, smoke cigarettes, and order McDonald's, complete with doll's hand coming out to tip.
• Steve Martin and Martin Short/Brandi Carlile:
  • The monologue has Martin and Short read each other's eulogies, making backhanded compliments and insults at the same time.
  • Martin and Short take over as the hosts of the Science Room where they must deal with Loni and Josh, with the predictable results, but some highlights include:
    • Martin tries breaking the ice by asking Josh what he wants for Christmas, to which Josh responds "To find out what happened to my brother." Martin is too taken aback to even formulate a response.
    • When Steve announces that they're making a mini snowstorm:
      Steve: Now, our snowstorm will obviously not be as big as a real one but even if something's small, it can still...
      Loni: Feel good for the girl?
      (Beat, Martin and Short look very confused)
      Steve: Why... I don't follow this...
      Loni: Um, cause my sister always told me that, um, even if a guy has a small, um, thing it can still feel good if the guy knows what he's doing.
      Steve: Well, that's a... no. It's "teach a big lesson", you were very, very wrong.
      Martin: Your sister, however, is very, very right. (Steve does a Double Take)
    • Short trying, and failing, to do a "Knock Knock" Joke with Josh. He ends up strangling a lab skeleton by the time he's done.
  • "A Christmas Carol" opens with Ebenezer Scrooge (Martin Short) gleefully opening his window and alerting a boy on the street below to get the prize goose in the butcher shop, tossing a coin as payment to the butcher, only for the coin to land straight into the boy's eye. What ensues is so Bloody Hilarious even the Ghost of Christmas Present (Steve Martin) is aghast.
    • And the punchline? The whole thing was an ad for Apple Pay, intending to sell the fact that you'll "never use coins again."
  • Weekend Update features Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman as Kurt and Deb, a Wyoming couple who roleplay as celebrities to spice up their sex life. They proceed to do a few examples for Colin Jost which culminates in Deb doing Jost's wife Scarlett Johansson.
    Deb: Hey, I'm married to Colin but I need a real man.
    Kurt: Yeah you do! Why don't you get over here Black Widow! (Deb starts humping him) This spider bites, Colin!
• Austin Butler/Lizzo:
  • In "The Phrase That Pays", all three contestants (Heidi Gardner, Austin Butler, and Punkie Johnson) try to guess a word puzzle. Punkie keeps wildly guessing wrong, Austin guesses right without trying, and Heidi keeps guessing X and questions the game.
  • In the pre-recorded "A Christmas Epiphany", a lonely man (Austin Butler) sees a family in the window and he assumes they're happy, cause him to have an epiphany about what his life has become. In the house, the mother (Gardner) assumes the man is a pervert and chastises the father (Dismukes) for not doing anything against him to the point they reveal that the mother committed adultery.
  • "Jewish Elvis" has Chloe Fineman visiting her grandma at a retirement community in Florida where she and the retirees are set to see a performance by Jewish Elvis. What adds to the humor is that Austin Butler is playing an overly excited bubbe while Sarah Sherman is Jewish Elvis.
  • The "White Elephant" sketch has one guest (Austin Butler) becoming pouty and jealous after another guest (Cecily Strong) steal his ash tray during a white elephant exchange. He begins to insult the other gifts and only perks up when he gets another ash tray (which he most likely gifted to himself).
  • Weekend Update features Cecily in one last appearance as Cathy Anne, except she says she won't be coming on the show anymore because she's going to jail. But she's not so worried, because "I got a couple of friends in there and they seem to be doing all right." The screen shows Aidy Bryant and Kate Mckinnon photoshopped into prison wear with tattoos and everything.
  • Chloe Fineman as Jennifer Coolidge making a holiday message, who finds herself easily amazed at all the holiday traditions.
    Jennifer: (sees a menorah) Happy birthday! (blows out the menorah's candles) Aww, I forgot to make a wish...
• Aubrey Plaza/Sam Smith:
  • During her monologue, Plaza references her history working as an NBC page and SNL intern and decides to take the audience on a tour of 8H for old time's sake. As she gives the tour wearing a page jacket, it quickly becomes obvious that she was far from a model employee:
    Kenan: Hey, I'm still waiting on my Starbucks order. It was a flat white.
    Aubrey: Kenan, it's Aubrey and I'm hosting now. I'm not a page anymore.
    Kenan: I know. I ordered it in 2004.
  • Referencing M3GAN having an LGBT Fanbase, Megan 2.0 has the killer robot doll becoming a Fag Hag in a gay bar. The skit offers lots of laughs, from the blunt voiceovers, fake critic quotes, the 2 M3gans (Chloe Fineman & Aubrey Plaza) dancing and an Allison Williams cameo ("Oh my God, weren't you in the show Girls?!").
  • The Miss Universe sketch has all the contestants shout into their microphones while introducing and talking about themselves, particularly Miss France (Aubrey Plaza) who mostly screams "FRANCE!" (a reference to the real life Miss France's memetic screaming of her country's name). This line with Miss France after she wins in particular is hilarious.
    Miss France: Don't take the vaccine!
    • And an unexpected and similarly verbally restricted Tony Hawk.
  • The "HIV Commercial" sketch has three men (Mikey Day, Marcello Hernandez, and Devon Walker) acting in a commercial to promote an HIV medication. However, Walker's character keeps ad-libbing about being straight and getting HIV from a girl... at a gay nightclub, much to the director's (Aubrey Plaza) dismay.
• Michael B. Jordan/Lil Baby:
  • "Roller Coaster Accident" has two news anchors (Sarah Sherman and Michael B. Jordan) try to do their jobs. Unfortunately, they ended getting stuck on a roller coaster and their faces ended up being mutilated as a result. Most notably, when Sarah tries to do the food segment, she and Michael get food on themselves, resulting in two other news anchors (Chloe Fineman and Kenan Thompson) cracking up.
  • Jordan plays "Jake from State Farm" in a commercial where he helps out a married couple (Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner) with their home insurance before things take a darker turn when Jake seduces the wife and begins to takeover the husband's role in the family, all while keeping up his pitchman persona.
  • Weekend Update features another appearance from Angel, Every Boxer's Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing, who demands that they bring out Adonis Creed because he hit her boyfriend Tommy so hard that his eye flew out. Michael attempts to tell her that Adonis Creed isn't there, only for him to roll out and convince Angel to get back together with him.
• Pedro Pascal/Coldplay:
  • The "Big Hollywood Quiz" has the three contestants (Pedro Pascal, Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman) have lots of knowledge of films and television shows of the past. However, whenever the host asks them questions about works from 2020 on, they have little to no clue due to the sheer volume of content making it impossible to keep up with it all.
  • The "HBO Mario Kart Trailer" advertises an HBO "prestige drama" adapting Mario Kart with a similar post-apocalyptic tone and premise to The Last of Us (2023). Even though the blurbs complain that Mario Kart didn't need a Darker and Edgier treatment, Pedro Pascal seems to take the role of Mario as seriously as he would if this show became real:
    Peach: (after seeing Mario bite a Mushroom) You eat that poison?
    Mario: (Suddenly Shouting and Milking the Giant Cow) It makes me feel big, okay? I need to feel big!
  • The "Waking Up" sketch delivers basically a consistent laugh riot from amnesiac Charlie's first confused, "Oh my gah!" up through everyone else's attempts to "meet him where he's at." No wonder Pedro Pascal corpses near the end.
  • The "Wing Pit" sketch has a group of football fans order chicken wings. It soon goes to Serial Escalation when Heidi Gardner and the narrator talk about the increasing number of chicken wings on the menu until the football fans literally drown in it. All of this is toppped off with the fact that this is all to appease Chirax, the chicken god of death.
  • The "Protective Mom" sketch has Pedro Pascal playing a Latina mom opposite Marcello and Chloe as her son and his white girlfriend. Half of the sketch is in Spanish as the mother and son argue over the girlfriend directly in front of her. Even if you don't speak Spanish, you can get the gist of what they're arguing about. She changes her mind immediately once Chloe's character offers to say grace before dinner (since it proves she's a "woman of God") and starts asking when she's going to have grandchildren instead.
  • None of the cast could resist corpsing in the last sketch, starring Ego Nwodim as Lisa From Temecula. Pascal's character politely greets her at her older sister's birthday party, prompting the smart-mouthed lawyer to preemptively cock-block him. As she saws up the "extra, extra well-done" steak she ordered, she shakes the table so hard, that peas and wine spill everywhere. Rather than apologize, Lisa complains that the waiter didn't give her any ketchup.
• Woody Harrelson/Jack White:
  • The "Cologuard" ad talks about a delivery service that tests people for colon cancer by taking a stool sample. One man (Woody Harrelson) feels uncomfortable by pooping into the box (Mikey Day) and "unleashing and going inside" him and only relents when multiple threaten to kill him.
  • Weekend Update has a joke about Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly getting additional prison sentences, prompting the debut of a new "segment" called "What Did They Even do Wrong?", where Che must try to feebly justify their actions.
    Michael: "I mean, if anything they're guilty of lovin' too much. A player's gotta play, am I right ladies? No!"
• Travis Kelce/Kelsea Ballerini:
  • The "American Girl Cafe" sketch has Kelce play a man who sit alone with his dolls at the Cafe, causing the employees to believe that he might be a pervert when he starts saying some creepy things about his dolls, including having one "flirt" with another patron's (Kenan Thompson) doll.
  • The "Mama's Funeral" sketch has the titular mama (Ego Nwodim) being given a funeral by Kelce. She is then shown sitting up with sunglasses and a cigarette, much to her family's horror. They also added a voice box in her, and hydraulics to make her dance in her chair.
  • There's a sketch that runs Color Blind Casting into the ground, with an older couple (Ego Nwodim and James Austin Johnson) proudly announcing to their kids (Devon Walker, Chloe Fineman and Marcello Hernandez) that they hired a guy (Travis) to do it with the wife while the husband watches (which may remind some of you of an episode of Rick and Morty). And then Travis addresses the additional elephant in the living room by asking how all the three kids are different races:
    Ego: Well I was on top for him (Devon)...
    James: Then I was on top for her (Chloe)...
    Ego: Then we did it on the side and he (Marcello) came out!
    Marcello: That's not how it works!
• Jenna Ortega/The 1975:
  • The Ridiculousness sketch has the hosts (Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, and Kenan Thompson) videos interspersed with Lee Lee Two Times (Jenna Ortega) telling stories about the boat related death of her sister followed by one about her cat's morbid birth of six kittens fused together. The hosts are naturally disturbed.
  • The "Waffle House" sketch has a high school couple (Marcello Hernandez, Jenna Ortega) meeting in front of a Waffle House to discuss the status of their relationship and future like a scene from a teen drama. As they have their serious discussion outside, inside the diner, chaotic arguments and fights fight happen without the couple noticing it. It's also revealed that one of the participants of the brawl (Mikey Day) is the girl's father.
  • The "Exorcism" sketch has said exorcism interrupted by the upstairs neighbour (Ego Nwodim) who proceeds to backsass the demon inside the possessed, (Jenna Ortega) resulting in the demon wanting out and finding a new vessel in the woman's husband (Kenan Thompson).
• Quinta Brunson/Lil Yachty:
  • In the "Couple Goals" sketch, one couple (Kenan Thompson, Quinta Brunson) goes on the game show, where the husband reveals his fear of his wife falling down, and potentially forcing him to take care of her for the rest of his life. When they win a trip to Bali's Temple of a Thousand Steps, the husband lets out a Big "NO!".
  • "Traffic Altercation" has Mikey and Quinta get into a pantomimed argument through closed windows while stuck in traffic, quickly getting Derailed for Details due to the complexity of some of the miming.
    Mikey: Why did you mime a crank?! No cars have those! Power windows now!
  • Weekend Update does something completely different from the joke exchange gag this week, with Michael deliberately and sneakily telling the audience not to laugh at any of Colin's bits. And it goes on for quite a while. And then some guy in the audience yells out "you stink!" April Fools!
  • Also during Weekend Update, Marcello Hernández comes out to talk about "Short King Spring". He repeatedly refers to Colin as a fellow short king despite Colin's protests, and lists notable short people (Napoleon, the Minions) and notable tall people (Osama bin Laden, Slender Man).
• Molly Shannon/Jonas Brothers:
  • The "Valets" sketch has Andrew Dismukes train three beginner valets (James Austin Johnson, Molly Shannon, Kenan Thompson) vague steps on how to handle the job. The valets then precede to heavily bungle them.
  • The "Drug Commercial" sketch has Shannon and two other ladies (Ego Nwodim, Molly Kearney) sing and promote a drug called Vagerted. Shannon critizes the other women for their dancing, while another man (Kenan Thompson) talks about the side effects whilst mispronouncing the drug's name.
  • Sally O'Malley returns in a sketch where the Jonas Brothers have hired her to help them choreograph their new Las Vegas residency show. As the band's usual choreographers express their skepticism, the three arrive to give Sally their support and cap it off by revealing that they're all wearing her trademark red jumpsuit.
• Ana de Armas/Karol G:
  • The "Spanish Class" sketch has two new students (Marcello Hernandez, Ana De Armas) reveal that they are fluent Spanish speakers and actually know more than the actual teacher (Mikey Day), causing him to feel inferior and embarrassed.
  • Ana and Ego Nwodim are two girls brought in to record sexy-sounding audio tags for up-and-coming hiphop producer Young Spicy (Devon). And for some reason the lines start out sexy but quickly turn insulting and demeaning, like Ana was auditioning for Euphoria.

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