{"id":45412,"date":"2025-11-09T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/45412\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:58:14","slug":"snl-recap-nikki-glaser-makes-hosting-debut-trump-leads-cold-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/45412\/","title":{"rendered":"‘SNL’ recap: Nikki Glaser makes hosting debut; Trump leads cold open"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since her breakout into the mainstream last year for her scorched-Earth set on \u201cThe Roast of Tom Brady\u201d and a top-notch comedy special \u201cSomeday You\u2019ll Die,\u201d<\/a> Nikki Glaser has become an A-lister in the stand-up comedy world. But did that success translate for her first time as \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d host?<\/p>\n

Not too surprisingly, Glaser did well given that her best qualifications for the gig are that she\u2019s very good at delivering jokes for a living and that she\u2019s not shy about pushing the boundaries of taste in her comedy. That\u2019s a good fit for the current incarnation of \u201cSNL,\u201d which tends to have at least one gross-out scatological sketch per episode and lots of \u201cWeekend Update\u201d segments and jokes that either land in the \u201cjust dirty enough\u201d or \u201cway over the line\u201d camp.<\/p>\n

Apart from her go-for-broke monologue, Glaser\u2019s sensibility locked in on sketches including one about family members performing karaoke who seem way too intimate<\/a> with each other, a commercial about grown men obsessed with life-sized American Girl dolls<\/a>, and a bizarre musical number about a mechanical bull<\/a> that rides away with Glaser and Sarah Sherman. These, along with a funny ad for a Jennifer Hudson spirit tunnel drug<\/a> and one about characters in a children\u2019s book<\/a>, were pieces that aligned well with what Glaser does and that she performed exceptionally well.<\/p>\n

A sketch about a stalled plane and a chatty pilot<\/a> (James Austin Johnson) was good, but only because of Johnson\u2019s perfect impression of flight intercom chatter.<\/p>\n

Less successful were a half-baked mashup, \u201cBeauty and Mr. Beast<\/a>,\u201d about the popular YouTuber, and a sorority sketch with Mikey Day as an interloping man wearing a bad facial disguise.<\/p>\n

Glaser\u2019s lengthy monologue may not have been as perfect a fit as it should have been, but her sketch performances were spot-on.<\/p>\n

Musical guest Sombr<\/a> performed \u201c12 to 12<\/a>\u201d and \u201cBack to Friends<\/a>.\u201d There was also a sweet and funny animated short, \u201cBrad and His Dad<\/a>,\u201d about a divorced father trying to connect with his video game-obsessed 11-year-old.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s cold open, President Trump (James Austin Johnson) commented on the bizarre White House incident where a pharmaceutical representative (Jeremy Culhane) collapsed in the Oval Office<\/a> while Trump was captured on camera looking away. As Trump put it in the sketch, \u201cSomeone dying in my office, I stand there and stare like a sociopath.\u201d \u201cEach week I try to create a visual,\u201d he said, that represents what\u2019s going on in the country like last week\u2019s White House demolition. Trump walked over the fallen man to deliver a monologue on the week\u2019s events, starting with the New York City mayoral election and concluding with SNAP benefit cuts and rising food prices. He offered that the cancellation of flights caused by the government shutdown will help by keeping families apart for Thanksgiving. \u201cKilling two birds with one bird. Can\u2019t afford food? Have some cheap Ozempic,\u201d he said. Next up: stealing Christmas. \u201cWe\u2019re doing Grinch!\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Like a lot of \u201cSNL\u201d monologues from stand-up comics, Glaser\u2019s was a microdose of her comedy act. As such, it was full of jokes about race, politics, sex acts and, for one uncomfortable stretch, the idea that someone (not Glaser, but maybe!) might suddenly realize they\u2019re a pedophile. Glaser began by calling New York City \u201cEpstein\u2019s original island\u201d before discussing white women being cultural appropriators by spray tanning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (\u201cI\u2019m no health expert, but neither is he\u201d), dating a short man with anger issues and PSAs in public bathrooms about human trafficking. In her 20s, Glaser joked, the only fear she had was \u201cgood old-fashioned rape.\u201d The barrage of jokes was exactly what you expect from Glaser, but some of the jokes didn\u2019t seem to land as well on the \u201cSNL\u201d stage as they typically would on roasts or in her own comedy specials.<\/p>\n

Best sketch of the night: When declining a Jennifer Hudson spirit tunnel invite is the only option \"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Jennifer Hudson Show\u2019s\u201d signature bit, in which guests dance through a hallway while staffers clap and cheer them on, has become such a big deal that celebrities like Glaser, playing herself in this commercial, have major anxiety about their dancing. Glaser, a self-described \u201cuncoordinated white woman\u201d claims her dance moves are so bad they\u2019re potentially career-ending. \u201cI even tried to put my ass into it. But I don\u2019t have one,\u201d she laments. But luckily there\u2019s a drug, Hudsacillin, that makes you so violently ill that the celebrity in question has to cancel their appearance. \u201cWhat\u2019s the alternative?\u201d the ad asks, \u201clightening up and being fun?\u201d<\/p>\n

Also good: Maybe this pilot shouldn\u2019t be texting, even on the tarmac \"\" <\/p>\n

With all the flight delays and cancellations happening, this topical sketch was about a couple (Sherman and Andrew Dismukes) sitting on an airport runway waiting for their flight to take off while their pilot (Johnson) announces delays and also shares updates about a woman he\u2019s texting that he met on a dating app. What really sells the piece is Johnson\u2019s delivery as the pilot, but also the funny interactions he has with the co-pilot (Kam Patterson), Glaser as the disaffected flight attendant and a set of passengers who argue nonverbally about whether or not to get involved (Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang).<\/p>\n

\u2018Weekend Update\u2019 winner: A way to visit Staten Island without going to Staten Island \"\" <\/p>\n

As the only guest segment on \u201cWeekend Update\u201d this week, Pete Davidson\u2019s check-in on the Staten Island Ferry he purchased a few years ago with Colin Jost<\/a> wins by default. Davidson referenced a New York Times article about trouble with their business venture<\/a>, but said, \u201cI cant spend $5 on a paywall when I have a kid on the way.\u201d He promised to give parenting, \u201call the enthusiasm I never had for this show.\u201d Davidson revealed that the new plan for the ferry is to convert it to a city on the water, New Staten Island, with all the things that make Staten Island great: pizza (it turns out it\u2019s just one thing). Davidson couldn\u2019t resist getting in a dig at his old boss after saying he\u2019s not giving up on the ferry. \u201cIf Lorne Michaels has taught us anything, it\u2019s never give up even if everyone says the time has come and Tina Fey is ready to take over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since her breakout into the mainstream last year for her scorched-Earth set on \u201cThe Roast of Tom Brady\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10286,29937,2241,29932,29935,18654,29933,48,52,51,47,50,49,29939,29934,11391,11393,29938,1519,430,29936],"class_list":["post-45412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-celebrity","tag-chatty-pilot","tag-comedy","tag-glaser","tag-go-for-broke-monologue","tag-johnson","tag-joke","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-nikki-glaser","tag-pete-davidson","tag-sketch","tag-snl","tag-staten-island-ferry","tag-trump","tag-week","tag-weekend-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}