Funny / Saturday Night Live Season 43

After the response to season 42, Season 43 was always going to be faced with a Tough Act to Follow, especially with the departure of mainstay players Vanessa Bayer and Bobby Moynihan along with relative newcomer Sasheer Zamata. Due to greater involvement with the guest hosts balanced with the elevated roles given to the newcomers like Mikey Day, Alex Moffat and new conscript Heidi Gardner, combined with Kate McKinnon just being herself really, not to mention plenty of material for Weekend Update, the show has proven that the patch job of Weekend Update Summer Edition might have been necessary at the time... but the actual show would do just fine.

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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• Season 43 kicks off with the return of Ryan Gosling:
  • One of the first things they do is bring back the Mrs Rafferty and Sharon (Kate and Cecily) sketch, more or less a rehash of the original one apart from Mikey Day sitting in for the now-departed Bobby Moynihan. Maybe it was Kate, or the producers or writers, or some combination thereof that noticed Ryan's uncontrollable corpsing from the last time, but this time they resolved to just force it out of him, with Mrs Rafferty turning Ryan around to demonstrate what The Greys were doing to her already abused hindquarters, by squeezing, punching and even shoving her face into Ryan's ass, with poor Ryan quivering and about to melt down the whole time. Good thing the agency gave him a hat to help hide his laughter.
    • Some of Kate's comments and delivery are funny in and of themselves, such as when Miss Rafferty describes the aliens reacting to the fact that she has an ass:
      Agent Morris: "And how would you describe [the aliens'] behaviour?"
      Rafferty: (deadpan) "Shoppers storming a Walmart on Black Friday."
  • From Weekend Update:
    Michael: Saudi Arabia announced this Tuesday that they would begin to allow women to drive. Wow, that's only a few short years after cars were allowed to drive themselves.
    Colin: Hostess is unveiling new flavors of snack cakes including White Fudge Ding-Dongs. Coincidentally, "White Fudge Ding-Dongs" is what they call Weekend Update in China.
    Michael: I dunno who that was more racist to...
  • A digital film short where Ryan Gosling plays a man still outraged years after its release that Avatar, the 2009 science fiction blockbuster directed by James Cameron, a film that cost millions of dollars to make, just used the Papyrus font for its logo.^note The real-life inventor of Papyrus font apologized the next day.
    "He just highlighted (the word) 'Avatar', clicked the drop-down menu and he just randomly selected Papyrus like a, like a thoughtless child, wandering through a garden yanking leaves along the way."
  • Like his character in Drive (2011) he is obsessed, driving at night, imagining the graphic designer taunting him.
  ''I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!!!"
  • Leslie Jones appears as a Woman Scorned in a sketch where Kenan Thompson is a jazz singer, who's at work when she shows up carrying his favorite jeans. You fully expect her to rip up his jeans in front of him... but you don't really expect Leslie Jones, the biggest woman on the show, need more than one go at it to do it. It's also one of the rare times Leslie corpses on the show.
• Gal Gadot's episode inevitably features a Wonder Woman sketch, where a lesbian couple row onto Themiscyra and are quite disappointed to find that all the Ho Yay isn't actual lesbianism. "It's like we're in a porn, but the plumber is actually just there to fix the pipes."
  • One of the most Adorkable moments from this sketch is Kate McKinnon verbally psyching herself up ("all right...all right...all right"). Since, you know, she's about to be kissed by Wonder Woman.
  • Gadot playing a woman from Bosnia, who has no idea what was happening during The '90s, on a first date with just paroled OJ Simpson.
• From the Kumail Nanjani episode, another Recycled Premise one, this time taking the Kellyanne Conway Fatal Attraction spoof and kicking it up a notch by mimicking a different horror movie... It (2017).
  Anderson Cooper: What did you do to your makeup?
  "Kellywise": I toned it down.
  (she says this while sporting clown makeup)
  • They also bring back Kate Mckinnon as geriatric screen idol Debette Goldry for the "Actress Round Circle" sketch to tackle the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The thing about Debette is she rehashes Mrs Rafferty's shtick, but less due to really bad luck and more a case of Values Dissonance, but Debette actually brings up a relatively recent case involving Weinstein himself:
  "I was called up to Harvey Weinstein's hotel room, and when I arrived he was naked and hanging upside down from a monkey bar, and he tried to trick me into thinking his genitals were his face. (audience laughs) It almost worked; the resemblance is uncanny. (audience laughs harder)
  • From Weekend Update:
  Colin: Military officials have announced that they will increase missions to train, advise and assist operations in the African nation of Niger. The choice of Niger is seen as a challenge to President Trump's autocorrect.
  (massive audience reaction)
  Michael: (nodding in approval) I liked it.
  • Kate McKinnon plays a nursing home resident who silently mugs to the camera as Kumail tells her horrified family that she Really Gets Around and has to regularly get STD treatments.
• The Larry David episode opens with Trump, Pence, and Sessions meeting with Paul Manafort in the shower for a private talk during his house arrest. Pence refuses to take his clothes off because "I'm not married to the water," Sessions wears an old-time bathing suit because "We should all get used to stripes" and picks up a loofah with his possum tail, and Trump says the plan is to pardon Manafort by disguising him as the turkey being pardoned...unless they screw it up and end up eating him.
  • If that's not enough proof that they're out for blood, a pre-recorded sketch has SNL tearing into Sarah Huckabee-Sanders even harder than before, with Sarah passive-aggressively berating the press interspersed with a long Imagine Spot of Sarah's music video for "Confident" by Demi Lovato. Turns out it's not that imaginary...
  • David plays a legendary ad writer whose award dinner goes off the rails when some of his first work from the early '80s is shown, and turns out to have massive Values Dissonance.
  "If someone asks you to smoke, just say, "That's gay."
  • Weekend Update brings back the Donald Jr. and Eric Trump duo (Mikey Day & Alex Moffat respectively), and right off the bat we have Eric trying to look more intelligent by aping Junior's every move - but still ends up blurting out the wrong (read: incriminating) thing at the wrong (read: right) time, forcing Junior to distract him with his Halloween candy. Eric ends up licking his Fun Dip stick for a while, before Junior shows him how it should work, by dipping it into the candy powder first. One taste and Eric looks like he attained Nirvana.
    • New cast member Heidi Gardner really earns her keep as a new character, Girlfriend of the Boxer in Every Boxing Movie Ever. It's the kind of hamtastic display you don't know whether to laugh or cry at.
    "You know where the kids are now? At my sister's! [...] I'M THE FIGHTER!"
    • In other news:
    Michael: The head of the NAACP met with the CEO of American Airlines to discuss alleged racial bias - and I'm willing to bet they both showed up late. (gauges audience reaction) It's ok for me to make that joke because I'm... racist.
• The episode with Tiffany Haddish of Girls Trip fame:
  • A new string-of-impressions screen-test sketch, for the upcoming live-action The Lion King (1994). Newcomer Heidi Gardner's impersonation of actress Kristen Schall was so accurate many viewers thought it was really her!
  • They follow up on the Leslie Jones and Kyle Mooney romance storyline with two important events of note - Little Lorne gets Put on a Bus as he's old enough for college (no, really) and Lorne Michaels himself puts in an extended appearance (this is important, keep reading). The focus is now on Beck Bennet, originally bros for life with Kyle (and they really joined the cast together in season 39), growing increasingly jelous as Kyle spends more time with Leslie now. Enter Colin Jost, obviously sour from being attacked by Kyle before, but revealed to be genuinely trying to seduce Leslie from him and not as a misunderstanding, as he ropes Beck into his ploy to take her back. Long story short, Colin's entire ploy is outed and Kyle is the first to batter him... before Beck convinces him to let it rest, right before battering Colin himself (played as the moment that reaffirms them as bros for life). Then Tiffany steps in and shows the right way to repeatedly punch Colin ("Hold my hair.") and finally Lorne Michaels breaks up the growing scuffle... only to start battering Colin himself.
  • The Message from the DNC sketch, which looked at first to be a celebration of the Democratic wins in several regional elections, but ends up filled with Self-Deprecation out the wazoo as they inadvertently highlight all the ways they'd gone wrong before, featuring surprise guests Jason Sudeikis as Joe Biden and Larry David for the second week in a row as Bernie Sanders.
  Bernie: And we're really gonna listen to people if they don't say what's politically correct. Like these comics out there who think it's ok to make jokes about concentration camps! That guy should rot in hell!
  • From Weekend Update:
    Michael: Democrats swept elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York, which are all already blue states so it's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Kinda like when you call an Uber and the driver is white and you're like "oh, that's nice". (gauging audience reaction) You know it's racist but you don't know on which side, right?
    Colin: Hidden Valley is now selling 5-liter kegs of ranch dressing. (noticeable guffaw from the audience) Though it will only be sold in states that allow assisted suicide.
    Michael: Recent studies have shown that sheep can recognise faces, so remember farmers, always hit it from the back. OJ Simpson's parole... (pauses due to massive audience reaction)
    • One headline is interrupted by Tiffany making good on her promise in the opening monologue, by appearing in that white dress, complete with newcomer Chris Redd in full costume and announcing her like that singing announcer in Coming to America. The whole thing's over in like half a minute.
    • Cecily as new character Claire from HR, who's persistently overworked and two steps away from a nervous breakdown, due primarily to having to re-assess the work conditions of her female colleagues in light of a torrent of sexual harrassment accusations (not in SNL, just... everywhere). Then it's revealed she's been deliberately swallowing Purell to benefit from the alcohol.
    • Kenan as Lavar Ball, that guy who's been profiteering of his sons' basketball career, as exemplified by the US$1.4m basketball shoes he's selling. Kenan himself comes close to corpsing a few times, most likely because of the real punchline - the shoes are loaded with stuff like lights, a sound system and apparently a microwave, as he pulls a chicken drumstick from one shoe!
  • A new talk show called Get Woke with Tamika, which is selling itself way too hard as being progressive, with a black woman (Leslie Jones as Tamika) hosting and everything... until the first sponsor is revealed to be Breitbart. And the second sponsor is RUSSIA. They even have Tiffany Haddish as the black female guest they were going for, partly because she's an Instagram model who's nowhere near any actual political subjects of note... until it's revealed that she also does movie reviews, after which they bring up Moonlight (2016). Only it seems Tamika watched a different movie.
  Tamika: Moonlight was about a bunch of black men in tuxedos taking awards from a bunch of white men in tuxedos!
  • A documentary about groundbreaking research into communicating with dolphins during the Sixties. And all of it comes off as completely plausible, until it's revealed that it became impossible for the dolphin to concentrate when it reached a certain age without the scientists (Kate Mckinnon and Aidy Bryant)... well... yanking it off regularly.
    • Tiffany Haddish puts in an appearance as another scientist on an unrelated project about echolocation, meaning she has all the equipment needed to hear everything they were doing, whether or not she wanted to.
    "Diary entry, October 7 1965: No! No! No! Aw HELL No! You people are NASTY!"
    • And if you thought this one was the least likely to be based on fact, well...
  • Finally, they bring back "Whiskas R We" with Tiffany as the new friend, and possibly the most Corpsing they've had to date.
  (right away, two kittens make a jump for the side of the cot but Tiffany catches them)
  Claw-dia (Tiffany): I got the pussy! (holds two kittens as if to emphasize her meaning)
  Barbara DeDrew (Kate) Many of- (starts melting down)
  [...]
  Barbara: (carrying one of those hairless cats) You won't have to worry about shedding with Toby here!
  Claw-dia: He shaved it all off for the gay porn circuit.
  ("Toby" makes a jump and startles both women as if in response to the gay porn accusation)
• The episode with Chance the Rapper (not as the musical guest, which is Eminem):
  • They do something a little different this time, with Donald Jr and Eric Trump in the Cold Open instead (about the secret meeting with Julian Assange, played by Kate Mckinnon), while Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Kate again) appears in Weekend Update. Not only does the possum tail reappear, but Sessions responds to Colin Jost's badgering questions by playing dead.
    • Also on Weekend Update the news hits a little closer to home than normal when Pete Davison reveals that he and Colin come from the same hometown of Staten Island, which has been treating them both a little differently - Colin's basically the pride of the town while Pete is the village shame, due to an off-color joke he made about Hurricane Sandy hitting the place.
    Pete: I'd be just as happy if there were no hurricanes and Staten Island just fell into the sea[...] If Staten Island is so desirable, then why is it free to get there?
  • Chance plays MSG Network's Knicks basketball reporter who's hastily shoved into reporting on a Rangers hockey game when the regular guy has a baby. He has no clue about the game's lingo or how to pronounce anyone's name, and takes every chance to complain about how cold he is.
  • At the annual Thanksgiving food drive held by Bruce Wayne(Beck Bennett) at his mansion, Chance plays a teenager who asks him why his "associate" Batman always comes into his neighborhood and beat people up like his friend and then hanging them by the underwear from a tall building for just stealing a TV. Other Gotham City residents complain about the Batman use of excessive force on them for things like littering and parking an airplane on their street.
  "Who you talking about, Batman?" "Yes!" "Man, somebody's got to do something about him!"
• The episode with Saoirse Ronan:
  • The Cold Open starts out with Alec Baldwin's Trump again, accompanied by Kellyanne Conway (Kate Mckinnon again), before suddenly turning into Yet Another Christmas Carol. The Jacob Marley Warning in this case comes from Mike Flynn (Mikey Day), who's the latest to go under investigation, and their interpretation of the Ghost of Christmas Past is Billy Bush (conveniently back in the spotlight after Trump denied that he was ever in the Access Hollywood tape), while Christmas Present is Vladimir Putin (since it's Russiagate being investigated) The kicker is when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come follows the traditional interpretation of looking like the Grim Reaper, only for Trump to assume it's Steve Bannon... but it's actually Hilary Clinton. Bonus points for Kate pulling a quick-change from one character to another just to help the gag.
  • The opening monologue addresses the elephant in the living room right away - how to pronounce Saoirse. Right off the bat they have Leslie Jones mispronouncing it as Cersei.
  • Late For Class. A student played by Luke Null enters a class taught by Kenan Thompson, and proceeds to act like a complete ass to every single student in there, as well as the janitor. The hysterical part is the halfway twist... where it's revealed that this is Luke Null's first day of school and the entire routine was his attempt to "make a splash." Not helping is the reveal of his Unfortunate Name at the end of the sketch:
    Kenan: Maybe you'll be able to move past this, socially. Now, what is your name?"
    Luke: Brody Chode.
    Students: *Laughter*
    Kenan: Nope! You're doomed!
  • Weekend Update shows off Kate's new impression, British PM Theresa May (who's really her repurposed Maggie Smith), and a couple claiming to have tried out the entire Kama Sutra (Leslie and Mikey). Which is also the reason the guy is in a neck brace, and has those things that clamp on your fingers. Apparently Leslie apparently started inventing new positions like You're A Chair Now and You A Basketball. The guy responds by inventing Where You Hiding, I'm Not Done.
  • The musical guest was U2, who are famously just as Irish as Saoirse, but rather than capitalise on that, they have a sketch on an airliner leaving Dublin airport, which means that a bunch of the regulars like Cecily, Kate, Kyle, Beck and Aidy are all acting Irish (although Aidy is of the correct ancestry for that). The jokes end up being mainly about dogs running loose on the runway and inside the plane.
• The episode with James Franco:
  • The Cold Open is a rare case of actual kids starring as kids, in the line to make their yearly requests to Santa (Kenan). Which makes their strangely socially- and politically-aware requests all the more funnier.
  "I want a Barbie, (Sarcasm Mode) unless the feminazis are gonna take THAT away from me too!"
  • Another Christmas-themed sketch involves something they haven't done in a while - an Overdrawn at the Blood Bank sketch, where James as the gift wrapping store employee suffers a paper cut that starts bleeding literally all over the place. It's even funnier if you remember that that's hardly the worst thing to happen to his right arm.
    • At one point the bleeding manages to go straight into Leslie Jones' mouth, and she looks like she's about to throw up for real. According to Late Night with Seth Meyers, yest it was real. And Franco might have planned that.
  • James stars as the questioner in a spelling bee who's clearly working through some issues with a Hilariously Abusive Childhood in front of the kids. It's easily the worst possible time for the actors involved to have a corpsing fit - and that's exactly what happens.
• The episode with Kevin Hart:
  • After a break for one week, they start with Alec Baldwin's Trump again, but Christmas is practically here so they shake up the formula a little with Trump introducing the "Tree of Shame", which is basically meant to demonise all his worst enemies. For example, Kellyanne Conway (Kate Mckinnon as always) brings a Christmas ornament decorated with the face of James Comey, the FBI director who really got the whole mess started just by getting fired by Trump; and Sarah Huckabee-Sanders (Aidy Bryant) brings two ornaments representing Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci, "whose mangled bodies I walked over to get this job." Other highlights include the return of not just Mikey and Alex as Donald Jr and Eric Trump respectively, but surprise guest Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka, and the Elf on the Shelf played by Kate as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who "cannot recall who has been naughty or nice". The real cherry on top is Leslie Jones as the new fire (as opposed to new hire) Omarosa Manigault, who's still outside the window begging to be let back in.
  • Appropriate for the season is a Take That! on the lame gifting idea of just adding a new charm to her charm bracelet, aptly summed up by making the opening-box reveal in the style of a Trunk Shot. The idea being that the charms literally illustrate what little the guys do know about their women, like a nurse's cap if she's a nurse, or a martini glass if she drinks.
  Kate: I got him a motorcycle.
  Cecily: I got him a threesome.
  Aidy: Yeah... (all three women start drinking)
  • The opening monologue was about childcare nightmares, which is strangely appropriate as one sketch is about Kevin as a working man who has to fake getting called off on personal business to cover the fact that he's still suffering from the terrible two's. And he's too proud to admit it or even act on it, leading up to the use of one of SNL's hidden pipe machines to make Kevin sweat like ten dogs all at once. Then he sits back down, and there's a sound as well.
  Cecily: Uhh... did you just... S your P's?
  Kevin: ...probably not.
  • A Batman parody with its own take on Race Lift, with Kevin and newcomer Chris Redd as Captain Shadow and the Cardinal (as in the bird, kinda like a robin). Basically it's about how much harder it would realistically be for black men to be vigilantes... until the cop shaking them down really does find a pack of dubious powder on him. They even get their references a little cross-wired with the Cardinal making martial arts whooshes with SFX straight out of Power Rangers.
  • They shake up one of their past acts with Kenan as Charles Barkley again, but with Jay Pharoah no longer on the cast it's Kevin who gets the tall order of mimicking Jay's Shaquille O'Neal. (That's not a bad pun, keep reading.) Towards the end, Shaq starts getting annoyed with Barkley and both men get out from behind the desk... revealing that the normally diminutive Kevin can only reach Shaq's height with stilts!
  Barkley: Look at you! Tall man with little hands, you're like the letter F come to life!
  • From Weekend Update, the first thing they tackle is the election of Not Roy Moore (with a photo of the actual winner Doug Jones using a nameplate that says Sen. Not Roy Moore). Michael's following comment cuts the rest of the way to the bone.
    "Democrats know that black people aren't really Democrats, we just vote for the guy that looks less likely to put us on a boat. Here's how I vote: I look at both candidates, I listen to them speak, and then I ask myself: if I got pulled over, which one of these candidates would I rather see approaching my car? And it's almost always NOT the one on a horse."
    • It's not often they pull from the actual footage, but the case of the firing of Omarosa led to what Michael called "an outpouring of support from other black women", before cutting to the now memetic footage of merciless mockery from every black woman on daytime tv. Then they pull a rope-a-dope by having Leslie's Omarosa appear again on the set, insisting that the security guy is dragging her out again of her own volition.
    • From the Worst News Judgement Ever folder:
    Colin: Police arrested a drunk driver in Illinois after he crashed his car into a ditch and told the officers his name was Burger King. The officers then took out their tasers and had it their way.
    [...]
    Colin: According to a survey, 40% of employees called in sick last year when they were actually healthy, but I maintain that I did have the flu, and the only cure was vacation braids. (inset shows Colin with 'shopped cornrows over his whole head)
    Michael: (shaking his head) Consumer watchdog groups- (corpsing)
    • Alex brings back the Guy Who Just Bought A Boat, who's been seriously stepping up his game during his time off as he goes into a fullblown (and deliberately filthy) Hurricane of Puns - and even flexes his singing pipes once or twice!
    "Tis the season to get fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-laid! I've got some tips that can even help Santa slay (sleigh)!"
    "Take her to where she can get her slope on[...] then take her down to the ski chalet, where she shall lay, if you play things right. Remember, mistletoe, leads to cameltoe, and medically speaking my missile is a toe. Now, light up her fire..."
    (camera cut to Colin in a full Face Palm)
  • A sketch about a church nativity play where the lady mentions that they had to get a llama "with a beanbag hump" in lieu of the real camel they promised - now, they did have a real camel on the set when Tracy Morgan revived his Brian Fellow sketch, but it's safe to say nobody expected the real llama here. Cue some genuine awkwardness from Kevin, Mikey and Kyle as the three wise men cautiously approaching the llama.
    • One thing they had to fake though was the llama somehow going into heat during the performance, meaning the teen actors on stage need to drape a towel over the llama's offending bits, which is the only thing that gets one audience lady (Leslie)'s attention. The kids are forced to wrap up the show... just not the llama, as the towel drops. Cue massive shock from the audience and a standing ovation from Leslie.
  • They end on a heartwarming note with Kevin and the cast outside on the famous Madison Square ice skating rink... then the show closes with everybody breaking and drifting off, leaving Kevin by himself on the ice. Turns out he can't skate.
• Sam Rockwell plays a science edutainment show host, who gets increasingly frustrated by his extremely nervous and impossibly dumb child co-stars. He gets so into character that he lets out an f-bomb that he's clearly surprised by himself.
  • Captain Hook finds himself disturbed by the Values Dissonance of a grown man spending all his time trying to kidnap little boys onto his boat, and even his crew is eventually driven to casually jump overboard. Then Kate McKinnon as Peter Pan finally shows up with a ludicrously tiny sword, to which he immediately gives the kids back, calling it "hush money."
• The episode with Jessica Chastain:
  • The spoof of The Bachelor looks like one they've done a few times, but Jessica pulls off the Dumb Blonde act shockingly well - which is immediately overshadowed by Aidy getting very physical with the bachelor, climbing onto his lap and nearly licking his face until Jessica tears her off.
  • The spoof of the opening of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, best summed up as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome until it's an Overly Long Gag. Long story short, the "guys up to no good" are part of a drug and arms ring, leading to Jessica as an FBI agent coming after Will, but it's too late as the gang goes to Bel Air and shoots Uncle Phil, so the FBI fake Will's death before revealing that she's really serving him up to the Yakuza to offset certain debts, until both the drug gang and Uncle Phil find him and a bloody shootout occurs... and that's why Will now lives off the radar as a hobo.
  • Google Talks, a show run by Google's online analysts to address cyberbullying. According to their data, everyone in the audience is here due to being in the targeted demographics such as racial and religious minorities, but there's an oddly small figure that states that it's been targeted just for looking like Bart Simpson. And then you notice Mikey Day dressed up a little too faithfully as Bart Simpson in the audience. Not surprisingly, the cyberbullying starts targeting the show itself, culminating in someone calling under the name "Maggie" just to make pacifier-sucking sounds live on air.^note Maggie is Bart's infant sister, and the pacifier-sucking is all she gets for lines.
  • There's a new game show named What Even Matters Anymore, with Jessica as the host who comes across initially as a Blonde Republican Sex Kitten as all the questions are about all the glaring hits to the Donald Trump administration and how none of them could possibly stop him or raise genuine concern from his rabid supporters... which is when it's revealed that she's grown severely unhinged as a result of seeing all the myriad ways Trump has cheated karma. There's even a "Double Jeopardy" round where all three players (Cecily, Kate and Kenan) get a countdown time to write down their answers, which they do while looking cautiously at Jessica biting off the cork and chugging on a bottle the size of her head.
    Kate: I wrote "He cancels the Olympics because flags are "gay"."
    Kenan: I wrote "Sex Tape with Don Jr"...
    Jessica: You'd think so, but then Fox News would report it like "he's a FAMILY MAN!" I mean none of it truly matters, none of it matters!!
    • The next line is what turns this sketch into the showstopper of the week:
    Kate: Jessica, you don't have to do this...
    Cecily: Jessica, we know you're upset about the way our country's going, but you can't just build a whole game show set and make us pretend to be contestants...
    • The game show ends with the announcer reading out the sponsors:
    "Contestants will be staying the night at... Trump Tower? That's not good... Tonight's show was brought to you by Little Ball. When you can't take the news anymore, just curl up into a little ball and rock yourself to sleep. Goodnight!"
  • Weekend Update goes for the throat almost immediately:
    Colin: Donald Trump blames minority leader Chuck Shumer for the government shutdown, because Trump never misses the chance to blame a minority. [...] Even production of House of Cards (US) didn't shut down after they had a full-on predator for president. If a fake government can do it, so can we. Also they got rid of the predator president and replaced him with a female president. (applause nearly drowns his next line) Just something to think about...
    Michael: All I wanna know is, if the government's shut down do we still have to pay taxes for the whole year?[...]
    Colin: They also gave Trump a cognitive test, which is less of an IQ test and more of a "are you okay?" test. [...] The only president who could have failed this test is Lincoln after the theater.
    • Cecily makes an appearance as Stormy Daniels, fully loaded in more than the physical sense:
    "Unlike your organisation, we actually have female directors! Imagine that!"
    • They also debut their long awaited Robert Muller impression, which for some reason is Kate Mckinnon in a prosthetic square jaw. The real joke is that the investigation has turned up way more than Muller can keep to himself with a straight face.
    "You gotta understand, he didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs, he left full loaves, fresh 7-grain loaves straight from Cranara bread... I'm havin' a blast."
  • Pete Davison brings back his emotionally-and-mentally-detached millenial character Chad in "Doctor's Orders", where Chad is laid up in hospital and Jessica plays the doctor who's seriously falling for him while doing all the emoting for both of them. Right in the middle of one of her more emotional expressions, we cut to Chad with both legs raised and asking "is that a zit or a herpe?" You can actually make out someone in the audience going "oh my god!" after that.
• The January 27, 2018 episode with Will Ferrell opens with Will as George W. Bush addressing America, telling people that as bad as Trump's presidency may be, his own presidency wasn't much better. It ends with Leslie Jones as Condoleeza Rice joing Bush singing their own version of "Those Were The Days".
  Bush: Don't forget: We're still in two different wars that I started. What has two thumbs and created ISIS? This guy!
  • Ferrell plays a fighter pilot with the call sign "Clown Penis," insisting that it makes perfect sense because anyone he's after will be as scared as if they just saw one (essentially combining fear of clowns with fear of rape), and remaining utterly calm and professional as he repeatedly says the name, plus somehow getting stuck in outer space.
  • Once again Weekend Update delivers:
    Michael: I do love that Trump tried to fire Mueller, and now he has to sit with him and answer all his questions. That's gotta be awkward. You ever tried to press Door Close on somebody in an elevator and they make it anyway, and now you got to talk to Colin about white golfers?
    (camera cut to Colin giving him a "dude, what the hell" look)
    [...]
    Colin: While in Davos, President Trump also met with the president of Rwanda, just a week after Trump used a vulgar term to describe African nations. The meeting began awkwardly when Trump tossed him his car keys and told him not to scratch the finish.
    (general 'ohhh' from audience)
    Michael: (fighting corpsing) Cut right to the black guy. Republicans... (audience finally laughs)
    [...]
    Colin: Some fans are excited that Tonga's oiled-up flagbearer from the Summer Olympics will be participating again in the Winter games, where he will be the only man attempting the luge without a sled.
    • Will is back as Jacob Silj, a senior economics expert who's actually stricken with No Indoor Voice, or in his own words, Voice Immodulation Syndrome.
    Will: IS THIS FUNNY TO YOU? I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THIS. IS A PERSON IN A WHEELCHAIR FUNNY TO YOU? NOT UNLESS IT HAS AN INJURED CLOWN IN IT! WHAT ABOUT SLAVERY, IS THAT FUNNY TO YOU? MAYBE YOU COULD SELL YOUR COHOST THERE TO ONE OF YOUR HARVARD FRIENDS...
    Michael: HEY! You don't need to go there, man! (nearly drowned by audience reaction)
  • Will and Cecily play a couple from a small town that have slowly grown shallow and vacuous after appearing on a reality show, filming a homecoming special in said small town. The real highlight here is the prosthetic makeup or whatever they could have used on Will and Cecily's faces to make them look like they had some work done as well.
  Will: We got the most expensive procedure from the cheapest doctor we could find.
  • Filling the Ripped from the Headlines quota, one sketch not putting Will in the lead is about some friends chatting over dinner until someone goes and raises the Aziz Ansari scandal, a topic that's even more dicey to negotiate as he's a minority and the damning words "nonverbal indications" from her testimony put it in doubt as well. It gets so hard to avoid that Kate can be seen drawing curtains over the face, while Heidi performs a Satanic ritual that makes her disappear from the sketch!
  • Speaking of the headlines, they're still not done ripping on Roy Moore, with a commercial about two people pitching a remastered album from the 50s (basically what the Greatest Hits game should look like)... and there's some massive Values Dissonance as Will is the 50s singer singing about loving consecutively younger girls.
  Kate: That's insane...
  Beck: Yes, it's the first time all of these classic hits have been made available in the same collection!
  Kate: I mean the songs! They're all about loving teenagers!
  Beck: Well they didn't call him the Poet of Teen Love for nothing!
• Natalie Portman again pulls out a hardcore rap, this time spraying her gynecologist in the face when her water breaks, and putting on a full Amidala outfit to dare people to badmouth the prequels. At gunpoint. Kenan aptly sums it up:
  (walks in on the birth scene) Daamn! (walks out slightly faster)
  • On Weekend Update, Kate McKinnon plays Brigitte Bardot, who'd been in the news recently for her outrageously sexist and racist statements and spends most of her appearance staring blankly into the distance. And along with her is Catherine Deneuve (Cecily Strong), who thought standing against "Me too" was just about being comfortable with sexuality but quickly starts to regret hitching herself to this horse as Bardot keeps saying offensive stuff.
    • Also from Weekend Update:
    Michael: As President Trump entered the chamber for the State of the Union address, members of the congressional black caucus remained seated in protest. They were mostly silent with the occasional (Disapproving Look) "Hmph." (slight Beat) Look at all these angry black faces. They look like my grandmother's church after the choir director came out of the closet. (Disapproving Look again)
    Colin: Trump also tweeted that he had the highest ratings for a State of the Union address, which, get this, wasn't true. And this time even Fox News fact checked on him. You know you're running your mouth when even your hype man is like (Jive Turkey on) "Yo, that ain't exactly accurate tho." (Beat, Michael laughs from offscreen) So sorry...
    Michael: That was good!
    [...]
    Colin: It was reported that there will be a sequel to the Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ. So, get ready to see I Still Know What Jews Did Last Summer. (Beat, audience laughs) Yknow, I refuse to see another Passion of the Christ unless Jesus has the line "You crossed the wrong guy."
    (cut to Michael fighting corpsing... and losing)
    Colin: Nailed it!
    Michael: Naw, it... it's... (gives up, audience finally applauds)
    [...]
    Michael: Molly Skyler was the winner of this year's Wing Bowl by eating 501 wings, beating the previous record of 28. (Beat as audience laughs) Molly will be using the prize money to soundproof her bathroom.
    Colin: United Airlines prevented a passenger from bringing his emotional support peacock on a cross country flight, because the only emotional support bird they should allow on a plane is Grey Goose.
  • Since the episode aired the eve of Super Bowl LII, there was a sketch set during the Revolutionary War had the Patriots of New England engaging with trash talk with the delegation from Philadelphia (referring to themselves as Eagles). Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey even cameoed as members of their respective hometown factions.
  Colonial Leader: Is there anyway they can both lose?
  • One sketch that was cut was "My Little Step Children", a parody commercial for a doll designed for kids who wanted to play at being abusive evil stepmothers. It came complete with a cardboard birth certificate that kids could lock away in an ornate chest of drawers.
    [The dolls are standing at the foot of a staircase in a little girl's house. The little girl is coming down the stairs.]
    Narrator: Some kids' gut instinct is to go dark. Why not embrace it? My Little Step Children are perfect for kids with a flair for the dramatic. They'll love staging a scene where the stepchildren get sent away to boarding school.
    Little Girl: [staring coldly at her dolls] This is for the best.
    Natalie Portman: The first time I bought Lisa a doll, she said she felt no real connection to it. Like there was a sheet of glass between her and the doll. With My Little Step Children, she no longer feels forced to change that.
    • And later, the daughter pretends to be throwing "their birth mother's letters into the fire".
• The episode with Charles Barkley:
  • A lot happened in that long hiatus, and we start out with Anderson Cooper describing CNN as "your number one source for impeachment porn", followed by Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump yet again, tackling the Florida school shooting:
    "To the survivors of that school shooting I would like to tell you that (reads from his notes) I Hear You. And I Care. And rent The LEGO Ninjago Movie - no, that's one of Eric's..."
    • On Hope Hicks:
    "I hate to see her go but I love watching her leave, boom bah boom bah... I mean without her the last hot chick left is Jared Kushner..."
    • And confirming what everyone's long suspected:
    "I said I'm gonna run this country like I run a business. That business is a waffle house at 2am... Crazies everywhere, employees leaving before their shift, managers picking from the cash register to pay off the Russian mob..."
  • Charles Barkley's monologue touches on how more and more athletes are getting more politically outspoken in recent years, which slowly mutates into a massive roast-fest on all sides.
    "I'm hosting SNL for the fourth time, for no reason. Lorne Michaels wanted somebody to talk to about Black Panther."
    "This country has had a great history of athletes speaking their minds. Muhammad Ali changed the way people thought about Vietnam, Jim Brown had people talking about race, Michael Jordan even thought it was ok for him to play with Looney Tunes."
    "That woman on Fox News told Lebron to "shut up and dribble". And dribbling's only one of four things Lebron's good at, along with shooting, passing and magically making his hairline grow back."
    • Wait... wasn't Charles Barkley also in that movie?
  • Charles stars as typical Snake Oil Salesman with a pest control, or rather pest elimination system - training and arming his own pests with guns. The system is called Ned's Roach-Away.
  • Charles is a volunteer teacher presenting a Homework Hotline, assisted by a sock puppet character (not controlled by himself, it turns out to be Mikey Day in a sadly underrated performance). Unfortunately the helpline is hijacked by trolls with nonstop jokes about the teacher and the puppet's alleged relations. Not helping things at all is Aidy Bryant as the well-meaning but fundamentally clueless phone operator who's sweetly deadpanning lines like this:
  "We have a caller online called Harry Pare Testes..."
  "Today's Viewer of the Day is Ron Weasley who lives in Hermione's Bush, California!"
  • Charles appears As Himself in a talk show about athletes, sitting in a panel alongside surprise guest, baseball star Alex Rodriguez, and football player DC Timmons (Kenan Thompson). While Timmons is the one all about the Testosterone Poisoning and talking down to the other two, it becomes clear that whatever rough stuff he went through compared to them was mostly head trauma.
  Charles: (concerned) You all right, man?
  DC: (cheery) Hey, you all right too! (fist bumps him)
  • From Weekend Update:
    Michael: A new report shows that 86% of the people arrested in New York for marijuana possession are either black or latino, while the remainder are black AND latino.
    Colin: A rare letter written by Mahatma Gandhi mentioning Jesus Christ is being sold at an auction. The letter simply reads 'Jesus Christ, I'm hungry.' "
    Michael: March is Women's History Month, because March is the only month that tells you what to do.
    • Cecily Strong as Hope Hicks, explaining the whole situation about leaving the White House from her point of view - which is an oddly juvenile point of view.
    "Working at the White House is like going to summer camp, yknow, you barely get any sleep, and everybody there leaves after 8 weeks."
    • Then we get to her official statement, which reads more like a letter from some teen movie (complete with appropriate backing track):
    "To Kellyanne (Conway), you taught me that a woman can run a strong campaign and win, and you showed me what I could turn into if I stick around too long. You're like those pictures of black lungs on cigarette boxes."
    (tearful) "This is the hardest one. To Ivanka, my BFF... you were the one who told me about this internship, or job or what is it... Ever since then it's been like a neverending sleepover, the kind where you wake up sleepy eyed and you're like 'is that my friend's dad in the doorway? Why is he just staring?...' "
  • The hot contender for the showstopper of the week is a sketch about a bunch of blue collar road workers wolf-whistling at passing ladies like you fully expect them to - while secretly discussing what sort of sexy little numbers they themselves would squeeze into if given the opportunity.
  • They deliberately end on a non-political note with a new "Last Call" sketch, the one where Kate Mckinnon hits on the one remaining guy in the bar, in this case Charles. At one point Kate uses Ladies' Speedstick in place of chapstick, and starts rubbing it on Charles' mouth, which is when the corpsing really starts. The scene ends with Charles bringing out a pair of those medical things that hold your mouths open, then he and Kate wear them and start tongue-kissing, or at least tongue-whipping. Despite the whole mouth-open thing it's clear that all of them (including Kenan) are corpsing the whole time.
  Kenan: Dear Lord, make me a bird, so I can fly, far away...
• The episode with Sterling K Brown of This Is Us fame:
  • The Cold Open spoofs the recent controversy over the The Bachelor and Arie's decision, with Cecily Strong as Becca - but instead of Arie or an impersonator of Arie, it's Kate Mckinnon as Robert Mueller. And the bombshell is that he can still nail Trump for obstruction of justice, but he can't "commit to collusion".
  • Right off the bat, the monologue takes a huge dig at the sap-tastic reputation of This is Us with Sterling claiming to be a very emotional individual... before going into a possible emotional fit every other line. One interesting bit is where Sterling briefly goes into a Kenan impression - yes, Kenan as himself and not one of the impressions he's been saddled with.
  • Speaking of Kenan impressions, they bring back Celebrity Family Feud, this time catching up on belated Oscar fever with a Winners vs Losers matchup. On the Winners team is Kate McKinnon as Frances McDormand^note Best Lead Actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Beck Bennett as Guillermo del Toro^note For The Shape of Water of course and Chris Redd as Jordan Peele^note Best Screenplay for Get Out (2017) - on the Losers side is Sterling as Common^note Co-wrote the theme to Marshall but lost Best Song to Coco, who doesn't seem that sour since he did win once for Selma, but ends up breaking into a freeform cypher (with accompanying beat) every now and then at random; and Melissa Villasenor as Sally Hawkins, who's inexplicably still in character as Elisa. Stealing the show for them is Alex Moffat as Willem Dafoe^note Lost the Best Supporting Actor award to Sam Rockwell who's already got a Thousand-Yard Stare going on. At one point Steve Harvey comments on Jordan's success with Key & Peele, to which Jordan says "sketch comedy is fine, but at some point you just have to move on, yknow?" Steve briefly goes catatonic like he just realized something. Then Jordan mentions is his next project, the story of Dr. Ben Carson.
    "It's called Get Out II: Wake Up, Brutha."
  • Interestingly, the mention of Dr. Ben Carson ties into the next sketch, which has Sterling in that very role. And Kate and Aidy as Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which we've seen before, and the surprise addition of Pete Davidson as Jared Kushner. All for a Real Trailer, Fake Movie of the American drama that literally has the whole world watching - This Is U.S. (with Aidy basically doubling up as Kate Pearson, only there's more than one urn for Sean Spicer, the Mooch, Hope Hicks...)
  Critics are calling it "Like This Is Us but without the feel-good parts."
  "You'll be laughing through tears, but without the laughing. So basically crying."
  • A sketch in which Sterling plays the fiancé of Melissa Villasenor, having dinner with her parents Aidy Bryant and Beck Bennett, and it's all going absolutely great until...Aidy gives her opinion that Coco is the greatest animated film ever. Sterling insists that it's Shrek, and fairly quickly goes batshit insane about how wrong the others are, the conversation essentially developing as though Sterling is having a YouTube comment war, not dinner with his girlfriend's parents. He ends up throwing two glasses of water at Beck and threatening to hit him.
  • Weekend Update kicks off by covering the impending meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump in May, "or whoever's the president in May".
    Michael: At some point they're gonna realise Donald is just Twitter-crazy and Kim Jong-un is CRAZY crazy. One trolled Oprah Winfrey online while the other one had his uncle killed with a cannon! What do you think Donald's gonna do at dinner when they tell him he's eating Disrespectful Limo Driver?
    • They bring back Mikey Day and Alex Moffat as Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, and Jr. comes across as even more of a Badly Battered Babysitter now.
    Junior: I know this is played out, but Fake News! There's a term our father has for your elitist liberal media...
    Eric: Goddamn Jews!
    Junior: No. NO. That is BAD. These stories you have heard are complete fabrications. (Eric goes back to aping Junior's every gesture.) Our father has everything completely under control. We spoke to our father right before the show, and he said...
    Erid: Stop bringing Eric on tv with you!
    • From the Worst News Judgement Ever folder:
    Colin: To commemorate International Women's Day, Mattel has released a Barbie doll of Amelia Earhart, which has got to be around here somewhere.
    Michael: West Virginia lawmakers reached a deal with schoolteachers to give them a 5% pay raise. Good. Public school teachers are seriously underpaid. You ever see a faculty parking lot? Most teachers drive cars made by companies that don't even make cars. My father was a public school teacher; he drives a '67 Frigidaire.
    • They cover the freak storms on the Eastern seaboard by bringing in a weather expert... surprise guest Dawn Lazarus! (You read that right, the supposedly departed Vanessa Bayer came back!)
    Dawn: We're looking at not one, not two but TWO big biggies. Some of the biggest bits we've seen in quite a times. Absolutely dump after dump, wow!
    Michael: (confuzzled) I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying...
    Dawn: It's simple. Winty winds are coming out of your north end your geast, pushing way way down into that major cold cahoot'n, nyeap?
    Michael: N... nyeah, what?[...]
    Dawn: Global warming. We be treating the earth like a big big bitch, kay?
  • Another Sterling role that's deliberately getting an indirect reference - the one in Black Panther (2018). Sterling plays T'Challa's great-great-grandfather T'Kana (which makes for some Strong Family Resemblance since Sterling plays the father of Killmonger in the movie), speaking with T'Challa (Chris Redd) in the spirit realm alongside several other ancestors, including Leslie Jones, every black extra they could rope in, and Kenan as an uncle who's not only second-generation since he lacks their African accent, but the proud owner of a burger-grilling business. At one point he presents his finest burger like it was infant Simba complete with pseudo-African chanting - cut to Sterling and Leslie nearly corpsing.
  "My wife's one of the bald warrior women guarding the King, the Dora Milaje... One time I suggested that she put on a wig. 'I'm tired of making love to Michael Jordan!' That's the last thing I remember."
  • A pre-recorded sketch with Kyle Mooney as Chris, who made a low budget video where he talks to actual people on the street about the popularity of rock vs rap. Apparently he just thought of the concept of rock n' rap fusion music, which he brings up to one of the passersby, who mentions that Run–D.M.C. came up with that a long time ago, only Chris never heard of them. Maybe because he spelled it 'rumdnz' on Google.
  • The last sketch is a rare one with Melissa as an elderly woman (it's usually Kate isn't it?) apparently on her deathbed, with Sterling as her old friend who just rushed over to see her for the last time. The last thing she whispers to him is... the words to "How You Remind Me" by Nickelback. Unfortunately she goes into arrest and the paramedics are on the scene... and all it takes is Sterling repeating all the words and the backing track suddenly playing to bring her back for a moment to rock out with them. The Power of Rock literally brings miracles!
  In Memory of Lola Gomez
  Wife - Mother - Saw Nickelback 56 Times
  • One of the promos for this episode is a super-low-budget remake of the current title sequence, with all the regulars replaced by toys that may surprise some fans of anime, video games and even British robots (ask your nerd friends).
• The one where Bill Hader returns to host again:
  • The cold open brings back Anderson Cooper again, and there's quite a bit to get through this week, what with the recent firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. What follows is a couple of surprise guests that are really only surprises if you haven't followed the show closely enough - John Goodman appears as Rex Tillerson, a role he played once in the previous season; Fred Armisen shows up as Michael Wolf, which was from a previous episode in this season; and Bill Hader appears early as Anthony Scaramucci, which he'd only done one time for Weekend Update Summer Edition. There wasn't enough time then for Bill to present Anthony as anything more than overly Italian-American, so we learn this week that he also Cannot Keep a Secret.
  Mooch: Jared Kushner's toast, baby. Look, you didn't hear this from me, but the guy's in debt up to his cojones - the Russians, the Saudis, Tommy Toupee down at the aqueduct... hold on, you're not recording this, right?
  Anderson: Uh, yes, we're on live tv.
  Mooch: OYYY, Anthony, you stepped in it again, aaamammagaggoyy!!
  • The monologue suddenly turns into something else entirely, as stage hands whip off Bill's outfit and start putting him into costume while he's still talking. By the time the blonde wig and denims are in place, the audience is already cheering, as they lead right into a new "Californians" sketch, which starts out with Kate McKinnon playing a new housekeeper replacing the departed Rosa since Vanessa Bayer, who plays that role, isn't on the show anymore. But just to be safe, they've deliberately got a framed photo of her in the same Wham Line expression they always go into before each Eye Catch - and that's how the photo gets used later on.
  • It's technically the St Patrick's Day episode so they commemorate with a sketch about an Irish-themed dating game show with the beautifully appropriate name "Kiss Me I'm Irish". And by Irish-themed we mean that everyone on the set is Irish, with Aidy Bryant as the one Irish-American contestant, but the real joke is that both of the other ladies are revealed to be the guy (Bill Hader)'s cousins - and they just keep on playing.
  Aidy: Is this like, common here? Aren't you worried about deformities from inbreeding...
  Bill: What, like bird bones? Soft skull? Strawberry nose? Tic-tac teeth? B- (corpsing) brown blood? One big toe? Great advice, but you're about 500 years too late!
  Kate: That's why I've got a crush on him, cos he's always got it goin' on up here. (tapping the side of her head with a deformed hand prop)
  • The showstopper of the week would have to be the one with Melissa Villasenor, Aidy Bryant and Heidi Gardner as friends in a gathering with Cecily Strong as a woman married to a much older man played by Bill, who's not only nearly bald but stuck in a motorised wheelchair for the whole thing. If it's not the fact that Bill hasn't had enough practice with that wheelchair and keeps running it into everything, it's the fact that the old man character has been trying for a baby and whatever medication he uses to, well, help the process is completely unpredictable, meaning that the wife has to be ready to do it with him at a moment's notice. By which we mean actually getting on his lap when he's in that chair, putting his blanket around the both of them. (According to this interview, Bill was meant to jerk the controls of the wheelchair back and forth in a suggestive manner, except that he's corpsing too much to go through with it.) It's a rare case of Cecily corpsing on set as she gets involved in what may be the first ever sex scene in SNL history.
    Cecily: It's like breastfeeding in public. It's a natural process, it's not a sexual thing...
    Heidi: Yeah, but sex IS a sexual thing.
    • After enduring enough of their disgust, Cecily and Bill leave - but Bill (figuratively) stands up for his wife by backing his chair back into the room to tell them off... only it's not quite under control and he ends up backing into Melissa, shoving her in her seat and the table halfway across the room. By this point everyone is either corpsing or seriously holding it in.
  • We get a new slew-of-impressions sketch, this time about the screen tests for the original Jurassic Park, meaning that the whole thing is set in the 90's, so we get things like Wesley Snipes (Chris Redd) discussing tax tips with the people on set, and OJ Simpson (Kenan Thompson) talking about how he would have released the dinosaurs, if he did it. Other high points include Pete Davidson's surprisingly accurate Adam Sandler voice, Leslie Jones nearly indiscernible as Whoopi Goldberg (the joke being that she's referencing The View, rather than Sister Act which she should be famous for at the time), and Bill Hader bringing back a couple of his past ones, Al Pacino and Clint Eastwood.
  Jaleel White (Chris Redd): (Urkel voice) Did I do thaaaaaat?... (normal voice) Ok, I got bitches in my trailer, I gotta go.
  • In the ongoing saga of Kate McKinnon playing everyone involved with the Trump administration, she appears on Weekend Update as Betsy DeVos after her disastrous 60 Minutes interview, frankly saying that she has no idea how to do her job, and everything she says sounds bad because "it comes from my brain." Plus a huge audience groan when she says she gets to meet "cute blacks" in her visits to struggling schools.
    • Other headlines include:
    Colin: Andrew McCabe was fired a day before his retirement, so he couldn't collect his full pension. Even The Joker was like "you can't treat people like that."
    Colin: It was reported that Robert Mueller has subpoena documents from the Trump Organization - by the way, "Trump Organization" is now the biggest oxymoron in history. Have you seen his desk? He's a full hoarder. Have fun finding the incriminating evidence under old Mcdonalds' wrappers, unsigned non-disclosure agreements and macaroni birthday cards from Eric.
    Michael: Stormy Daniels has offered to return the $160,000 she was paid so she can release any text and videos she has of Trump. For what? So this lady is trying to sell us revenge porn of a grandpa and we're just okay with that? What are you expecting to see? What if it's GOOD? Are you prepared for that? Are you ready to see Donald Trump tear up some ass?! (audience goes into meltdown) I mean he's 6'3" and dumb as rocks, you don't know what he's working with down there.
    Colin: (corpsing for a bit) Also, can the media stop getting us riled up with headlines like "Will Porn Star Bring Down President", "Is Mueller Moving In for the Kill" - Just stop teasing us if there's no payoff. I'll tell the media what I told my high school girlfriend: I'm totally fine with waiting but you have to stop rubbing me outside of my pants. (audience reaction now huge)
    [...]
    Michael: Today was National Walkout Day. (picture shows the high school students' walkout protest against gun violence) I'm sorry, that's the wrong picture. (picture shows the impending Donald Trump Jr divorce) That's the one. Vanessa Trump... (notes audience reaction) You know what we do here, right?
    Michael: President Donald Trump welcomed the World Series champions, the Houston Astros to the White House, which is weird because baseball is the one industry where immigrants actually are taking our jobs. (Beat as he gauges audience reaction) The Houston Astros were even nice enough to give Trump a jersey with his approval rating on the back. (picture shows Trump's custom jersey saying "TRUMP 17")
    Colin: Taco Bell is selling a new Strawberry Skittles Freeze made from strawberry Skittles. Y'know, Mexican food. Just like mi abuela used to make. (growing audience laughter and Michael actually sputtering from offscreen)
    • A recent article about basketball player Kevin Love addressing mental health leads to an appearance by Pete Davidson, who's actually been diagnosed with depression in Real Life, not helped at all by the fact that he did lose his father to 9/11 at the age of 8. You can feel the sarcasm and Black Comedy ooze through the screen about halfway in.
    Pete:: I believe I speak for all crazy people everywhere when I say (heart-stopping unhinged scream). (Beat before he starts corpsing at it himself)[...]
    Pete: If you're gonna write an article about mental health, Kev... leave it to the big boys, alright? I'm sorry about your three-pointer, Kev, but I've been in therapy since I was 6 years old, and when I was 8 I wanted to kill myself - Tough news about your rebounds though!
    Colin: (corpsing) I'm sorry, but are you bragging?[...] It sounds like you're jealous...
    Pete: I am, he's handsome and lovable, and his uncle's a Beach Boy[...] when I was 6 my uncle took me camping, and it started raining, and I heard thunder and I crapped my pants, and then I told my uncle what I did and he punched me in the face... and when I told my mom she said never to tell my dad because then he'd kill him, and then my dad died a month later, but SORRY ABOUT YOUR FREE THROW PERCENTAGE!!
    • Speaking of Mood Whiplash, the last bit of Update draws genuine cheers from the audience as Bill Hader puts in a much-awaited appearance as Stefon. Despite having appeared with Colin and Michael before, Stefon is somehow unable to get their names right, eventually settling on calling them "Moonlight" and "La La Land". (If you can't tell which is which, we have some bad news for you...)
    Stefon: If you're Irish, or just white and violent, I have some good news for you. New York's hottest Irish club is (sounding like Conan o'Brien) "Off To Church, Mother!" (mild corpsing) Located in the clogged heart of the Bronx, on the corner of 3000th St. and Gary Marshall Memorial Drive, this gang-ridden skateboard park was the ceremonial site... for Verne Troyer's 2004 wedding... This place has everything. Peeps, TED talks... Roman J. Israel, Esq.. (more corpsing) Be sure to hit the dance floor and do a jig with Ireland's hottest Farrachauns.
    Michael: Wait, Louis Farrakhan is gonna be there?
    Stefon: No, Farrachauns, leprechauns that look like Farrah Fawcett. But yes, Louis Farrakhan will be there.
    • At one point Stefon has to clarify the use of a potentially offensive term with his lawyer and "conceptual piss artist" Shy (surprise guest John Mulaney). Not that it helps.
    Human Squatty Potties - is when you use the toilet, and for good posture, two "little people" squat down and you place both feet on their heads (melts down).
    • The joke is made better when you remember Mulaney's own troubles with the term.
    • It gets better: when Stefon whispers the word that he's not supposed to say to Shy — Mulaney actually whispers something completely nonsensical back to make Hader break character and laugh. What did he say? "My girlfriend works at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl."
  • The Undercover Office Potty commerical, mostly through the more realistic reactions both co-workers (played by Kyle Mooney and Chris Redd) and the supervisor (played by Hader) display upon learning that Beck Bennett's office drone has been using the bathroom in his office using mini-toilets disguised as typical office supplies (that are also obviously (and comically) gigantic compared to real office supplies) along with clearly recognizing the ''stinky'" oder. It gets especially hilarious near the end, when they both confront Bennett's character as he repeats this behavior even after being caught earlier...
    Mr. Anderson (Hader): What is wrong with you?!
    Johnson (Bennett): I just needed...
    Mr. Anderson: WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!
    Johnson: The voiceover said it would save time for business!
    Mr. Anderson: WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON?!
    Johnson: I DON'T KNOW! I'VE BEEN TOO BUSY GOING TO THE BATHROOM!
    Mr. Anderson: IT SMELLS LIKE SHIT IN HERE!
    Johnson: (about to cry)... Am I fired?
    Mr. Anderson: YES!!
• The episode with Chadwick Boseman:
  • The Cold Open has its work cut out trying to compress everything Donald Trump has been up to, like throwing out the script and congratulating Putin during the meeting with the Baltic state leaders. Also his description of the Latin-American refugee caravans sounds like some staffer just showed him Mad Max: Fury Road.
  "By the way... everyone can see this rabbit, right? It's not some Donnie Darko thing..."
  • The monologue has Chadwick bringing up how this episode comes conveniently between the releases of Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War and questions whether the show even has any good Black Panther sketch ideas left at this point.
  Chadwick: I mean, Sterling K. Brown got to do a Black Panther sketch before me, and he dies in the first scene of the movie! I'd say spoiler alert, but again the movie's been out for two months, people.
  • The monologue continues with Kenan stealing the show by dressing up as a different panther-like (as well as African-American-like) classic hero - Panthro.
  Chadwick: Is this one of those bad ideas left...
  Kenan: No, I've been told that this is Kenan's idea and he stands by it! (Aside Glance) 15 seasons, baby! (audience cheers)
  • A fake commercial for Nike's new women's leggings has Heidi and Melissa playing up the modern-day active women image convincingly enough for a legit commercial, before adding Kate and Aidy representing what most women actually do in comfy leggings - laze around.
  "Women can do anything they want - and I want to do NOTHING!"
  • The obligatory Black Panther sketch is actually a new "Black Jeopardy", with Chadwick reprising the T'Challa role as the third contestant, the joke being that he's a massive Fish out of Water.
    Leslie: Let's stick with "Fid'na" for $400.
    Kenan: The answer is "This is why your cable bill is in your grandmama's name." (T'Challa buzzes in)
    T'Challa: What is "To honor her as the foundation of your family".
    Kenan: (Stunned Silence) Hmm. That's really nice. It's wrong, but it's really nice.
    • It gets funnier/sadder when there's an answer about helping law enforcement, where T'Challa isn't aware of the current tense situation regarding that in the states:
    T'Challa: What is "Not only do I tell this man what I know, but I also assist him in tracking down the offender. After all, our ministers of law and justice are only here to protect us." Is this correct?.
    Kenan:... I mean, it should be.
    • He eventually gets the hang of "Black Jeopardy," and realizes during an answer about "White People" that it's better to say "Ah hell nah Karen, keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself."
  • Chadwick plays the head scientist at Fertility Frontier Project, announcing a massive medical breakthrough - the first pregnant man. And then they get to the subject of how the baby is going to be delivered, and...
  Chadwick: Due to the fragility of the artificial womb, the baby must be delivered through the patient's urethra.
  Aidy: Picture a bowling ball going through a Twizzler.[...] Any more questions? You, the lady in the wrinkled skirt.
  Cecily: That detail was... unnecessary... Mrs Matheson, will you be present in the delivery room?
  Kate: (in shock) Not anymore, no...
  • A fake behind-the-scenes bit where Aidy is thoroughly inspired and empowered by (and enamoured with) the musical guest, Cardi B. Specifically the bit where she imagines herself lounging on a piano surrounded by her bevy of boytoys, while in reality she's on the receptionist desk knocking all the stationery off.
  • From Weekend Update:
    Colin: So Donald Trump just deployed troops to the Mexican border; we're escalating our tariff wars with China; and Stormy Daniels can describe the president's genitalia in explicit detail. And yes, I just listed those in the order of least to most disturbing.
    Colin: The Chinese also posted a list of exports that could be targeted for tariffs, including salt, rubber and animal blood; which are the exact ingredients of Monster Energy drink.
    Michael: Among the US products facing higher tariffs is dried nuts, which the Trump administration is very familiar with. (picture shows Trump administration figures like Jeff Sessions and John Bolton. Cue corpsing and brief pause)
    Michael: Stormy Daniels claims that CBS News edited out part of the interview where she described the president's genitalia in explicit detail... GOOD! Don't! I don't want that image burned in my brain! Stormy is like that friend who goes "Ugh, this is so gross, taste it!" If I wanted to know what a 70-year-old's penis looks like I'd go to the NBC gym.
    Colin: A man in Australia was stabbed in a bar fight and then went on to order another drink with the knife still in his back; and by law he became president of Australia.
    • Alex Moffat airs out a new character, Mark Zuckerberg, which is rather blatantly the Jesse Eisenberg version:
      "Unlike my facial expression, Facebook is going to change.[...] My point is, Facebook sold out our democracy to Russian troll farms; but on the other hand... Farmville?
    • Heidi is back as the Girlfriend of the Boxer in Every Boxing Movie Ever - just two appearances and she's pretty much cemented as the anti-Willie:
      Heidi: Sure I buy all my groceries at the gas station; but I'm a good mom to my kids Mikey, Nicky, Peppers and my precious baby Kino!
      Michael: You named your son Kino?
      Heidi: Daughter!
  • A sketch set in Disney World is about a special attraction where the usual Disney Princess players are hidden behind a magic mirror, intended to reflect every little girl's inner Princess, except this time it's three grown up gal pals having a bit of fun. We're treated to Heidi as Elsa, followed by Kate as Rapunzel, but when it's Leslie in front of the mirror, it's not Tiana like some folks might be expecting... but Chadwick as R. Kelly, doing a highly inappropriate hip bob to a sudden backing track, while holding a bag of popcorn and then a sandwich in a suggestive manner. Chadwick is just a little too good at the dancing part...
  • The whole sketch of who is and isn't allowed to do the Wakandan salute. According to Chadwick, the Wakandan salute is meant to represent entombed Egyptian pharaohs, and as a reminder that white people are aliens who came to Earth in sleeping pods (which is doubly funny if you take it as a Superman reference), but white people are allowed to do it.....if they give up dabbing. They don't.
• From John Mulaney's episode:
  • The Cold Open bringing in SNL veteran Ben Stiller to play the suddenly-against-the-wall Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen who finds himself facing an impromptu interview from Robert Mueller being played by Robert DeNiro^note The audience goes nuts when they see who the show got to play Mueller. The two then re-enact the infamous Lie Detector scene from their film Meet the Parents.
  Mueller: "You broke the law and now we’re going to catch all you little Fockers, you got that?"

  • Cohen explaining to Jeff Sessions why they're all in big trouble:
  Cohen: We got a real problem here, Jeff. You know how much evidence I have? I'm Donald Trump's lawyer! I've got a whole hard drive that's just labeled, "Yikes".
  • Pete Davidson orders a lobster in a diner - in spite of the fact that nobody orders a lobster from a diner's menu - somehow turns into a full-blown Les Misérables takeoff, complete with the lobster's daughter Clawsette and the staff making a barricade to save him. Plus Davidson getting caught completely Corpsing in close-up.^note This had been an idea of Mulaney's during his tenure as writer on the show, and being the guest host finally had the chance to get it performed.
  • The latest old sitcom to get a reboot is "Switcheroo," about a father and son who switch bodies...and focuses entirely on the sexual ramifications of the situation. Then the bizarre details keep piling up, like its airing on Saturday mornings, the father in his son's body being originally played by future spree killer Andrew Cunanan (with his absence from the reboot being brushed off as just being "unavailable"), and the producer creepily staring at his interviewer whenever the clips play.
• Donald Glover's episode:
  • The Cold Open follows up on the adventures of Michael Cohen (Ben Stiller) as he connects one phone call after another to figure out his situation, leading to a slew of surprise guests like Martin Short as Dr Harold Bornstein ("If you want to do drugs, I can get you all the drugs"), and Scarlett Johansson returning as Ivanka, now with Jimmy Fallon in the role of Jared Kushner. Worth noting is how they don't bother to sound like the real thing - Ivanka still has Scarlett's naturally husky voice, while Jared sounds like Mickey Mouse (and briefly goes "okurrrrrt!" like Cardi B), which just makes it way funnier. And of course, the real Stormy Daniels appears as herself and explicitly calling on Trump to resign.
  • There's a music video that spoofs those 80s R&B tunes that start to sound a little disturbing to today's audiences (like that "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" one). Donald is the singer Razz P Berry, performing "The Night (I Watched You)", who thinks his woman's been cheating on him, and ended up tearing everything of hers out of his life, including stuffing her jewellery up his own butt - and then it turns out that because of his wearing Sunglasses at Night, he's been stalking the wrong woman.
    • Even better, the skit was based on an actual music video, up to and including the Rambo and Trix references!
  • During the Weekend Update, Kanye West's remark about slavery comes up in the corner, with Michael Che's reaction is to shake his head and say "...pass".
    • Colin referring to Rudy Giuliani's repeated contradictions of Donald Trump's statements on live TV interviews as the "Kings of Dementia Comedy Tour".
    • Despite Stormy Daniels actually being there this week, we get the following line:
      Michael: How did they arrive at US$130k? Sounds like an oddly specific number. I asked Stormy Daniels to come on Update to explain this, but her agent tells me that if she's seen with a black guy her price goes down. (huge audience reaction)
    • Leslie Jones' "relationship expert" segment is back, with something a little different as she talks about past dates that she could save "like the dogs that they are"... all while singing "In the Arms of an Angel".
      Leslie: Stacey. I bought that man groceries one time. This man is 30 years old, yall. I brought the groceries to his house and his momma, WHOSE HOUSE HE LIVES IN, put her hand on my shoulder and said "I've had that boy, and I know you can do much better."
    • Finally the last of these guys is Colin Jost, whom she claims she brushed off because he was gay... ironically, his Real Life girlfriend Scarlett Johansson was there that week!
  • There's a first for SNL and possibly TV in general as we get a Role PRE-prise, with Donald playing Lando Calrissian before Solo is even out. He's the host of the Black People in Space convention^note it's in the Star Wars 'verse so they're neither African nor American here., which unfortunately has just three other guests, including Kenan reprising his Saw Gerrera from the Felicity Jones episode:
  "I would now like to read a list of all the black humans who came before us, to honor their memory. (Beat) Mace Windu. (another beat) Thank you."
  • A skit in which Jurassic World gets sued by a park patron who lost his friends and family to the dinosaur attacks. Donald Glover plays the Amoral Attorney who keeps attempting to commit egregious Loophole Abuse and insisting that the park does not bear any responsibility for the deaths despite the evidence being clearly stacked against him (an Instagram video of the dinosaur attacks, an entry pass covered in the blood of one of the plaintiff's friends). Nobody in the courtroom is having any of the attorney's BS including the supposedly impartial judge who flat-out admits he is taking the plaintiff's side, and the jury who all immediately agreed Jurassic World to be guilty by simply looking and each other and nodding.
• From the Mothers' Day episode hosted by Amy Schumer:
  • The Cold Open is different as a random pick of cast members bring their real moms on stage - and then the whole thing takes a political slant anyways when the moms (jokingly) all turn out to be conservative, basically echoing the words of the Hate Dom.
  Luke: I am still new here, Mom, please don't do this to me!
  • Unlike most of the monologues, Amy takes until the very end to start plugging her new movie I Feel Pretty:
  "You will want to bring your tissues for this, because you are going to... masturbate. I look so good in this."
  • As expected by some, they do a Mothers' Day-themed game show with Amy as the host and mother-child pairs for contestants. Not as expected - Kate McKinnon and Mikey Day turning out a landmark performance as a mother and child from a secretive community (read: Cult Colony) in Pennsylvania, who get way too touchy-feely and even mouth-to-mouth-kissy for everyone's comfort. Kate even sings to her "child" at fixed intervals - cue the camera slowly capturing everyone else's doubt and disgust, except maybe for Leslie who's close to corpsing.
  • A new cooking show, Gospel Brunch, which you can tell from the title combines church and cooking, complete with a live gospel choir. Turns out the organ player's brother just suffered heart failure, and for some reason none of the hosts can fathom, they've ended up reporting on several cases of heart failure and diabetes throughout the series. Then we get to the actual show, and it becomes a little clearer:
    Kenan: Today we're gonna be making our favorite honey fried pork casserole; and four-cheese mac and cheese with bacon and tater chips!
    • Then Amy comes on as a guest chef who's suggesting healthier alternatives, like a smoothie that she claims "tastes like pecan pie", made by filling the blender with ice, low fat milk, bananas, cinnamon, and a whole pecan pie. Which may well be the reason why the blender konks out and refuses to work (and Leslie ends up corpsing for real).
  • From Weekend Update:
    Michael: Sure, Trump's had a good week, in the way that a good night with R. Kelly ends with going home dry. [...] I hate it when Trump is this quiet; like when I'm babysitting my nephew and he goes quiet for too long, and I'm like "oh, he's eating out of the litterbox again isn't he?"
    Colin: Rudy Giuliani resigned for his law firm so he could become Trump's attorney full time. Rudy's first task is to undo all the damage he did while working part time.
    Colin: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that undocumented immigrants would be seperated from their children; unless they are able to guess that his real name is Rumpelstiltskin.
    Michael: First Lady Melania Trump, or as I've been calling her, Sexy Ass Michael Jackson (mild corpsing, audience starts cheering) recently announced a new campaign against cyberbullying called Be Best; as in it would be best if you got a divorce.
    Michael: Police interrogated a black student at Yale after a white student reported her for sleeping in the common room. So, if you're a black student at Yale, stay woke.
    Colin: Starbucks announced that customers would no longer be forced to buy something before using their bathrooms; at least that's what the bathroom cleaner wrote in his suicide note.
    • Heidi appears as her own recurring character, Youtube personality Bailey Gismert, who goes from being all awkward and giggly about the recent blockbuster movies (apparently she has a crush on Thanos) to being all awkward and teary about her personal problems, in the most laborious Take That! you may ever witness.
    "I'm not... (gripping her hair and going dead still for a moment) not... worked up... It's just that I have so much on my plate... I'm not trying to say that you guys don't work hard... cos I know on Saturdays you do... But I can't just check out. (looks close to breaking into pieces) I have like, finals... and field day... I'm dogsitting for my pastor... and they wouldn't pick my prom theme... it's Moulin Rouge and it's not too sexual at all, it's FRENCH!!"
  • The show ends on a new "Last Call". That's right, Kate gets to put the moves on Amy as a Butch Lesbian.
  Kate: Mind if I move closer? I'm sitting here on what I choose to believe is gum.
  Amy: Lemme move my stool. (reaches between them and brings out a stool sample. Which she hands to Kenan.)[...]
  Kenan: The crazy thing I used to fantasise about something like this...
  • They do a Call-Back to the "St Joseph's Mass Spectacular" ad from season 40, this time applying the Testosterone Poisoning to a high school graduation.
  Beck: 100 grads! 300 family members! All under direct sunlight for OVER 3 HOURS!
  Color narrator: GRANDPA MIGHT PASS OUT!
• The season finale hosted by Tina Fey:
  • They pull out all the stops where surprise guests are concerned - the Cold Open brings back Ben Stiller and Robert de Niro as Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller respectively, but that's nothing compared to the monologue, where Tina taking audience questions leads to the appearance of Jerry Seinfeld, the first one to lampshade the surprise guests ahead of time; Robert de Niro asking how well his Robert Mueller went over; Benedict Cumberbatch suggesting that they replace Kenan someday; Chris Rock saying he was about to ask the same thing; Anne Hathaway just squeeing "was that really Robert de Niro?"; and Donald Glover saying he'd left a hat in the dressing room when he was over the last time. And just for the cherry on top, Tracy Morgan shows up right next to Tina.
  Tracy: If your man's not making you feel special on your birthday, I will!
  Tina: Tracy, you've been friends with my husband for a long time...
  Tracy: Naah-uh, it's your birthday, all bets are off!
  • The obligatory royal wedding sketch is about Prince Harry (Mikey Day) doing a livestream of the wedding reception, and we see Kate Middleton (Cecily Strong), finally allowed to drink after being pregnant for the last 6 years, and Kate Mckinnon as Queen Elizabeth, while Prince William (Alex Moffat) is unfortunately stuck with minding the smallest baby, while attempting to wild out on a virgin hot totty (partially alcoholic tea). Apparently the celebrity guests are seated separately - we get a rare case of Aidy Bryant in reverse-drag as Elton John, and Leslie Jones as herself, since her viral live commentary videos somehow got her invited here as well. Tina appears as the fictional Duchess of Devonshire-upon-Cump, not only with serious British Teeth but some inbreeding that makes her Harry's aunt and niece.
  Harry: Stop saying Cump...
  • The recurring Morning Joe parody has Alex Moffat (Joe Scarborough) and Kate McKinnon (Mika Brzezinski) stepping up their game a bit:
  Joe: We've got a great show; Mika has added two exasperated groans to her repertoire...
  Mika: Oh c... Stop it...
  Joe: Seriously, watch this. Devin Nunez says that publicly naming members of the FBI is a patriotic act.
  Mika: Gaah!
  Joe: I love that one.[...] President Trump says that anyone who didn't vote for Gina Haskell for head of the CIA isn't a feminist like he is.
  Mika: (high-pitched long-drawn-out yelp)[...]
  Joe: She's got a third one, but... that's only for daddy.
  • The obligatory plug for the Mean Girls musical (produced by Tina) is a behind-the-scenes account of Tina trying to get herself on stage as part of the show, inspired mainly by Lin-Manuel Miranda and his work on Hamilton, then conning Cecily and Aidy into backing her up on it, leading to an appearance by the real Miranda asking what it's got to do with him. After fumbling through the dance routines, the whole thing is laid to rest when Tina takes a massive spill over a row of chairs.
  Tina: (in an arm sling) Ultimately I just realized that Broadway is hard, and the people who do it are super talented. It's okay if I can't be like Lin-Manuel and jam myself into the show whether people like it or not...
  Lin: OK, you know what? She just made the book. (brings out the Burn Book from the movie and starts scribbling into it) Lemme tell you bout this tiny headed bitch named Tina...
  • Weekend Update starts out by addressing the Mueller investigation reaching its first year, with Colin comparing the public opinion over whether there was Russian collusion to the Yanny/Laurel meme (some people hear "it's a witch hunt" while others hear "I'm getting away with it, bitches"), while Michael points out how it's a rare thing for black people to be rooting for the government investigators in this case.
    Michael: I feel like I'm watching Rachel Dolezal getting kicked out of a Starbucks...
    • On Donald Trump supposedly calling Sean Hannity at bedtime:
    Colin: Can you imagine a worse voice to hear right before you go to sleep? Just heavy breathing, mixed with the crumpling of cheeseburger wrappers, and hey is that a flush? (audience laughs) Sean Hannity's a journalist; I mean can you imagine if Obama called Anderson Cooper before bedtime? I mean Anderson can... (audience laughs harder)
    • Other headlines include:
    Colin: Bill Gates recently talked about Trump once asked him if HPV was the same as HIV, "and which is the one that has Property Brothers?" Bill said that this was on two separate occasions so you know homey got HPV.
    Michael: (looking at Colin funny) "Homey"?[...]
    Michael: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were in Israel to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new embassy in Jerusalem; or as the ribbon-cutting ceremony is called in Israel, a bris.
    Michael: Yesterday, Suits actress Meghan Markel married some jobless dude in England who still lives with his grandmother.
    Michael: A new report has found that 86% of people in New York arrested for marijuana possession were black or latino; well DUH! Blacks and latinos are the only ones they search! If the police searched white men in cargo pants as much as black men in hoodies, the prison would look like a Dave Matthews concert!
    Michael: Police in Philadelphia reported that a 6-year-old found a bag of cocaine in another kindergartener's backpack. The student was bringing in the cocaine for show-and-TELL! TELL! TELL!
    • Donald Jr and Eric Trump (Mikey and Alex) are back again, addressing the new light shed on the Russian meeting. Apparently Eric hasn't gotten the hang of the high five - he starts out aping Junior directly and facing the same way, realizing there's nobody sitting opposite him before turning around and seeing Junior's still-raised hand... and kissing it.
    • Kenan appears in the role of Bishop Michael Curry, the African-American preacher flown to the UK just to officiate the Meghan Markle wedding, and apparently stole the show based on that alone:
    I was up there giving my all, and this sea of white faces just staring at me, and I was like "oh Lord help me, this must be what it's like to be Darius Rucker!"
    I'm a black preacher from Chicago; the biggest wedding I ever did was for Scottie Pippen!
    • The end-of-season tradition of airing out the cut material is back:
    Michael: Police in Pennsylvania arrested a one-armed woman for trying to rob a bank. Police say that the hardest part about it was trying to handcuff her. (shakes his head at it himself)
    Colin: Pornhub has released the porn parody version of Hamilton; in the porn version Hamilton absolutely throws away his shot.
    Michael: The New York Daily News reported that marijuana laws primarily hurt people of color; but since it's the daily news the headline read "Pot Cigs Catch Nigs". (massive audience reaction)
    Colin: It went better than when I did it...
    • At the end of the sketch, Aidy walks right in front of the camera dressed as BBQ Becky.
  • The showstopper of the week would have to be Tina reviving her memetic Sarah Palin act, but introducing herself as "the ghost of Sarah Palin"... as the whole sketch is really a Jacob Marley Warning to everyone and anyone still under White House employment, done as a musical number. We get some of the usual ones like Aidy as Sarah Huckabee Sanders (rumored to be next on the chopping block sometime before broadcast), Kate as Kellyanne Conway descending from the rafters on wires, and even Fred Armisen as Michael Wolf and John Goodman as Rex Tillerson again.
  • The show closes on a sketch about a high school talent show, with Tina and Melissa Villasenor as a mother and daughter who keep derailing their act as the daughter is the typical bratty emo who normally wouldn't be caught dead singing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Kenan as the headmaster mentions that he only gave them the slot in the show because he'd just had an affair with the mom... then forgets to shut the hell up about it.
  It's like one minute we were banging; then the next she's like "can you take her to school, that's where you're headed right?"... I mean, the booty is worth it, yknow? The booty is worth it.
  • At the final curtain of season 43, Aidy is in the crowd dressed as BBQ Becky again.
• Kit Harington as host got a hilarious monologue. In addition to poking fun at some of his less sterling career choices, he also gets a lot of laughes poking fun at the anticipation for Season 8 of Game of Thrones and fending off questions from not just the audience about the show's ending but several of his colleagues, including Emilia Clarke (who plays a brainless ditz quite well; apparently she's completely forgotten how the show ended- "Most of my scenes were talking to a dragon which is just a tennis ball on a green pole, so I've got no idea what's going on!"- and didn't realise the cameras were rolling during Jon and Daenerys's sex scene), Jon Bradley, who's wondering if they'll still hang out once it's over, and Rose Leslie, who hints she's got a bit of a Geeky Turnon regarding Jon Snow's beard.
  'Rose: I need to ask you something, Kit.
  Kit: I'm sorry, Rose, I can't even tell you how the show ends.
  Rose: Oh I don't care about that, I'm not a nerd! My question is what are we going to do for money now?! I mean, we didn't save anything and you kept telling me [in a mock Jon Snow voice] "Oh, I'm the King in the North! We can order Ubereats every night!"
• The Idris Elba episode:
  • The R. Kelly interview with Kenan as Kelly and Leslie Jones as Gayle King, filled with all sorts of nuttiness and nonsensical comments:
  I may not be able to do reading, or writing, or math...
  I put my pants on one sleeve at a time like everybody else.
  More than millions, thousands.
  You can't say one nice thing about the Devil? I can: nice horns, gives good advice.
  • The Running Gag of him singing "Trapped in the Closet" and consistently thinking words like "cult", "cousin" and "Big Mac" began with a "Q".
  • "Call me victim." "NO."
  • R. Kelly believing that Gayle King was the "Jail King".

Others

• Due to Colin Jost and Michael Che getting to host the Emmy Awards, they have an unofficial Crossover with Ellen Degeneres on her show, with a one-time-only "Weekday Update". Not surprisingly, Ellen gets her snark on and proves to be a perfect fit:
  Ellen: The 70th Emmys are hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, and they've made some changes - this year it's on a Monday instead of a Sunday, and if your acceptance speech goes on for too long, Cardi B will throw her shoe at you.
  Ellen: France is banning the use of cellphones in schools. According to a French official, it's important for kids to have their hands free to smoke.
  Colin: This week a man in Wisconsin set a record by consuming his 30,000th Big Mac. The record is for Longest Suicide Attempt.
  Michael: A recently divorced woman wore her wedding dress and participated in a 10k mud run, where she once again lost out to a younger woman.
  Colin: Restaurant chain Just Salad recently announced that they will no longer allow customers the option to have the salads chopped up; so don't just sit there telling me that white people haven't had it tough too. (frame out to show Disapproving Look from Michael)
  Ellen: A recent poll has Americans losting Taco Bell as their favorite Mexican restaurant. The polls also said Hilary Clinton would win, so... (massive audience reaction)
  Colin: Too soon!
  Ellen: Several TV hosts like Steve Harvey, Alex Trebek and Stephen Colbert started new seasons of their shows with beards, while Colin has had his beard since last season. (inset shows a pic of Colin with we kid you not, Scarlett Johansson)

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