{"id":208663,"date":"2025-10-12T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/208663\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T21:00:09","slug":"saturday-night-live-amy-poehler-is-pam-bondi-and-tina-fey-is-kristi-noem-in-standout-episode-saturday-night-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/208663\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Night Live: Amy Poehler is Pam Bondi and Tina Fey is Kristi Noem in standout episode | Saturday Night Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Poehler returns to Saturday Night Live<\/a> for her first hosting gig in 15 years. She\u2019s front and center for the cold open, playing Attorney General Pam Bondi, testifying before the Senate judiciary committee. Bondi is combative from the start: \u201cMy name is Pam Bondi, I spell it with an I because I ain\u2019t gonna answer any of your questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

She busts out her burn book to hurl personal insults at the senators (\u201cAmy Klobuchar, your ass out here sounding like a Pok\u00e9mon\u201d) while doing everything she can to avoid answering questions about Trump\u2019s various scandals.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

She brings out fellow mean girl cabinet member Kristi Noem<\/a> (Tina Fey, sporting fake cosmetic surgery that is indistinguishable from the work Noem has had done), who dismisses the fact that the current government shutdown is Republican\u2019s fault: \u201cThat makes me laugh more than the end of Old Yeller!\u201d<\/p>\n

You knew that with Poehler hosting, Fey was bound to show up. Pairing them off as Bondi and Noem was the obvious and right choice, with Fey\u2019s caricature being particularly on point.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

During her monologue, Poehler celebrates her new podcast (\u201cI\u2019m a podcaster now and if that\u2019s not a recession indicator I don\u2019t know what is\u201d) and notes that tonight\u2019s episode marks 50 years to the day that the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Rudemans is a sitcom about a super stand-offish, sarcastic family who all \u201ctalk like they\u2019re a cashier at Buffalo Exchange\u201d. There\u2019s not much here beyond that initial setup and a couple cheap pratfalls.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This is followed by a commercial for Non-Non-Alcoholic Beer, \u201cthe first non-alcoholic beverage that\u2019s over 96% alcohol\u201d, allowing drinkers to get wasted while still reaping the social benefits of sobriety (at least until a cop tries to administer a breathalyzer test).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Next, Poehler is Miss Lycus, the Fast Psychic. With a \u201chard out at 7\u201d, the clairvoyant talk show host rushes through desperate people\u2019s questions as quickly and brutally as possible (most of her answers being some variation of \u201cHe\u2019s dead\u201d and \u201cDrowned\u201d). This is Poehler\u2019s absurdist bread and butter, and the rare case where the rushed nature of a sketch is a plus.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Television audiences\u2019 latest soapy obsession, The Hunting Wives \u2013 the \u201cstraight but lesbian, horny Republican murder drama\u201d \u2013 is back for its second (rushed) season, featuring lots of thigh-squeezing, gun drawing, and \u201cmore, you know, \u2018great\u2019 writing\u2019\u201d. This season also introduces a new character, played by Poehler\u2019s Parks and Rec costar Aubrey Plaza. Even with the guest stars, this sketch manages to give most of the female cast a chance to bounce off one another.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Then, Poehler plays a pregnant corporate manager continuing to work up to and through her due date. Her water breaks during a meeting, but rather than going to the hospital, she jumps into a birthing pool in the middle of the office and, with the help of her crunchy hippie doula and supportive husband, births a fully grown businessman. A funny idea, but it feels rushed (in a bad way this time).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Musical guest Role Model takes the stage for their first song. A surprise walk-on and quick shimmy from Charli xcx pops the audience. Then its time for Weekend Update, where Colin Jost celebrates the ceasefire agreement in the Middle East while also lamenting the federal invasion of Chicago: \u201cOnly Trump could Freaky Friday Chicago and Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Michael Che introduces the segment\u2019s first guest, Rhonda LaCenzo (Sarah Sherman), a panicky New Yorker outraged over the likelihood of Zohran Mamdani becoming the city\u2019s next mayor. Apoplectically claiming he\u2019s a \u201chipster jihadist\u201d and \u201can Isis-trained millennial nepo baby from Uganda\u201d, while also admitting to having detailed sexual fantasies about the \u201cBolshevik Tik Toker\u201d, it turns out she\u2019s from Long Island and can\u2019t even vote in the election. It\u2019s a funny (and only slightly exaggerated) sendup of Big Apple Islamophobia, yet one can\u2019t help but find it odd that, in light of the next (presumed) administration, SNL choose to lay off cast member Emil Wakim over the summer, given he was the only guy they had who could have played Mamdani.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Later, Jost welcomes popular returning guests Grant (Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez) and Melissa (Jane Wickline), the couple you can\u2019t believe are together. The loud, dumb bro and shy, nerdy wallflower talk about their shared love of fall (\u201cthe time when the trees lose their hair\u201d), their respective Halloween costumes of Mike Wazowski and Sylvia Plath (\u201cbecause it\u2019s the one day you can dress like a slut\u201d), and annual sexcapades (\u201cI take him into the bedroom, light my candle, and jackle on his lantern\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Then, Poehler crashes her old stomping grounds to challenge Jost and Che to an old-fashioned joke-off, evening the odds by bringing on both of her former Update co-hosts (\u201cmy first wife and second wife\u201d) Fey and Seth Meyers. A great treat for fans of Update, and an appropriately-star studded moment for the golden anniversary.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

During paid advertisement for their law firm, attorneys Billson & Lieberman promote their \u201ccombined 50 years of legal experience\u201d. They are suddenly interrupted by Lachlan Mulchburger, a \u201cjacked and old as hell\u201d rival lawyer who literally bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to announce that he has even more years of legal experience under his belt. Almost as soon as he appears, he\u2019s interrupted by elderly triplet attorneys who are even older and more experienced. The game of senior one-upmanship continues via Billson & Lieberman clones (whose synced up line delivery makes for the best gag of the night), a law practicing Dracula, and an ancient talking tree named Yggdrasil who once represented Zeus.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Next, Poehler plays a wife and mother going through menopausal mid-life crisis by dressing and acting like an angry goth teenager. Her emotional outburst over her \u201ctwisted reality\u201d \u2013 \u201cRaising two kids, taking care of my gaining parents \u2026 vision blurry, nerve pinched, pelvic floor on the ground\u2026F my life!\u201d \u2013 is vintage Poehler, although everything else about this one is forgettable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The night\u2019s final sketch takes place during a masterclass at Juilliard, where a successful composer duo (Poehler and Bowen Yang) discusses the process behind their haunting instrumental themes for several acclaimed television dramas (including Severance and The Gilded Age). To the confusion of the students, their first drafts are all hokey rap songs a la Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which feature wildly inaccurate lyrics about the plot of the shows. This is a much less funny version of the classic Roundball Rock<\/a> sketch from 2013.<\/p>\n

Despite going out on a flat note, this was still a good episode, with expectedly strong hosting from Poehler and a number of fun cameos. On the one hand, this would have made for a much better season premiere, but on the other, it was the right choice to hand this historic episode over to a sure hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amy Poehler returns to Saturday Night Live for her first hosting gig in 15 years. She\u2019s front and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-208663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}