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\n The veteran cast member is the perfect host to get the season back on track with an episode full of throwback sketches and fun cameos.
\n Photo: Will Heath\/NBC\n <\/p>\n
After a rocky premiere<\/a>, Saturday Night Live needed to give us some reassurance that season 51 (and the newest permutation of the cast) wouldn\u2019t be all duds. Enter Amy Poehler, a reliable (but not overused) choice to anchor a confident episode. No disrespect to Bad Bunny, who has his charms in this format, but he isn\u2019t a sketch performer like Poehler. It\u2019s only fitting that she host the show on the 50th anniversary of its first-ever episode.<\/p>\n Poehler isn\u2019t here to promote a new movie or show. If anything, she\u2019s here because of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, her podcast that took off earlier this year. \u201cThat\u2019s right, I am a podcaster now, and if that\u2019s not a recession indicator, I don\u2019t know what is,\u201d she joked self-deprecatingly during a short, pleasant monologue, reminiscing about her early days of watching SNL and picking a fight with AI \u201cactress\u201d Tilly Norwood<\/a>. Poehler brought that warm energy to the whole episode, no matter the quality of the actual jokes.<\/p>\n I very much approve of the choice to give Poehler new characters to play, rather than reviving old sketches for nostalgia. (We got enough of that last year.) These are basically all new roles or twists on old types, taking advantage of Poehler\u2019s skill at embodying strong, often spunky personalities. The intentionally old-fashioned Rudemans<\/a> sketch is nothing to write home about \u2014 the general premise has been done to death \u2014 but she and Sarah Sherman in particular stand out as Ashley Padilla\u2019s passive-aggressive mother and grandmother. \u201cI\u2019ll get the landline we randomly still have?\u201d she says while answering the phone.<\/p>\n This was a fairly star-studded episode, starting with Tina Fey\u2019s appearances in both the cold open<\/a> and Weekend Update (joined by Seth Meyers). Poehler\u2019s bratty Pam Bondi starts the episode off on a decent note, likening Amy Klobuchar\u2019s name to a Pok\u00e9mon during a Senate Judiciary Committee session, but it\u2019s Fey\u2019s impressively scary-looking Kristi Noem<\/a> who draws the biggest laughs, mostly through references to killing her pet dog (\u201cDogs don\u2019t just get shot. Heroes shoot them\u201d). Low-hanging fruit? Probably. But it works.<\/p>\n Then Aubrey Plaza reunited with her Parks & Recreation co-star for the <\/a>Hunting Wives<\/a> season two trailer<\/a>, which amusingly plays on the show\u2019s conservative lesbian contradictions. And Charli XCX showed up to silently dance around as the latest \u201cSally\u201d<\/a> in the first of Role Model\u2019s summery, inoffensive performances. SNL can\u2019t get by on cameos alone, but these enlivened a solid episode that bodes well for the show\u2019s ability to turn out the same decent if unspectacular material this season.<\/p>\n Here are the highlights:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes realizing you\u2019re in for a one-joke sketch actually makes it better, and that\u2019s the case with this one. (It\u2019s technically a parody of the medium Sylvia Browne, for those who remember \u2014 I stumbled upon a clip<\/a> of hers on Instagram just the other day, and the similarities are striking.) Everything gets funnier when you realize Miss Lycus isn\u2019t going to offer any deeper insight than \u201che\u2019s dead\u201d to her legions of desperate and grieving fans. But some of the twists are pretty funny, from the first \u201cHe drowned until he died\u201d to \u201cHe drowned, but he\u2019s still alive. What\u2019s dead is your marriage.\u201d Most of the audience doesn\u2019t even seem to mind.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Poehler\u2019s girlboss corporate manager insists on closing a big deal for the firm while nine months pregnant, switching rapidly between business mode and childbirth mode when her water breaks. Fun to see Ben Marshall as her doula, even if I\u2019m not completely out of the habit of scanning the background for the other Please Don\u2019t Destroy guys.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Colin Jost and Michael Che kept up their usual playfully antagonistic rapport this episode, with Che inserting Jost into the background of some famous Trump-Epstein footage using Sora. Sarah Sherman got some good material as concerned Long Island citizen Rhonda LaCenzo, worried about sharia law under likely incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani \u2014 or, rather, \u201cshari-er lore,\u201d in her accent \u2014 but the character is most amusing for her tics, like the bunched-up shoulders and constant offers for coffee. \u201cCoffee, Che?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Of course, the most notable segment is the Weekend Update Joke Off, where former long-tenured anchors Poehler, Fey, and Meyers joined Jost and Che to riff about the 13-pound baby born in Tennessee. Not all of the jokes are laugh-worthy, but it\u2019s just great to watch this group hang out, especially with the various improvised buzzer noises. I wouldn\u2019t have minded them trading off for the whole Update.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Possibly the best of the night? Poehler does typically good work as the mustachioed, hairy-armed attorney Lachlan Mulchburger, but the real beauty of this sketch is the steady escalation of the one-upmanship in the paid advertisement game, with different injury attorneys arguing they have the most combined experience. It really takes off with the clones reveal \u2014 five Billsons and five Liebermans \u2014 and reaches its apex at the conclusion with Yang\u2019s appearance as Yggdrasil, the sacred tree, who had Zeus as a client.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Poehler gets mileage out of another one-joke premise, dressed up like your archetypal emo teenager but whining about very adult concerns like raising kids, taking care of aging parents, and a forgotten Etsy password. The brief transition to professional and back for a phone call (she\u2019s the superintendent) is a highlight.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u201cTwo years ago, I was on the show, and you told me my brother was drowned but alive and thriving in Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Good spokesman work from Andrew Dismukes in the ad for non-alcoholic beer<\/a> that morphs into an ad for 96% ABV non-non-alcoholic beer.<\/p>\n \u2022 Jeremy Culhane also makes a good showing this week. I\u2019m less convinced of Tommy Brennan so far.<\/p>\n \u2022 Gotta love the review from A.I. Scott, \u201cthe robot now doing reviews for The New York Times.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Apparently Jost\u2019s family has been celebrating National German-American Day \u201cever since they hastily moved here in 1945.\u201d The use of \u201chastily\u201d singlehandedly made me laugh here.<\/p>\n \u2022 Grant and Alyssa, aka the couple you can\u2019t believe are together, appear on Update to talk about cuffing season and Halloween. \u201cI\u2019ll be going as Sylvia Plath, because it\u2019s the one day of the year that you can dress like a slut\u201d is in contention for line of the night.<\/p>\n \u2022 YggDrasil: Injury Attorney, Time Is An Illusion, We Are Shadows.<\/p>\n \u2022 There are some funny moments in the theme songs masterclass<\/a> ending sketch, particularly the first Severance<\/a> rap and the later reversal with a somber instrumental version of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. Bowen Yang\u2019s corporal punishment-obsessed composer is more memorable than Poehler, and the sketch sputters to a close, but it gets the job done.<\/p>\n \u2022 Nice to see the photo of Diane Keaton<\/a> pop up before goodnights. If you weren\u2019t already aware, Ashley Padilla<\/a> used to be Keaton\u2019s assistant, so it must\u2019ve been a tough day for her \u2014 and she did great work in this episode! Hopefully the show will continue slotting her into the roles that would\u2019ve gone to Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim. She\u2019s still only a featured player, but it feels like she\u2019s on a different tier from the others.<\/p>\n VULTURE NEWSLETTER<\/p>\n Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n