![\"Ryan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ryangosling261500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And Your Host\u2026<\/p>\n
Hosting for his fifth<\/a> fourth time, Ryan Gosling occupies a unique position. On the one hand, the superstar actor is essentially part of the family at this point, a can\u2019t-miss ratings (and virality<\/a>) grabber so at home in Studio 8H that he and the show feel comfortable goofing around. And on the other, he is an irredeemable giggle-puss whose inability to keep it together you\u2019re either going to find adorable, or infuriating.<\/p>\n I fall mainly into the \u201cIt\u2019s cute\u201d camp, to my shame. Unlike, say, a Jimmy Fallon, Gosling has charisma, and never seems to be milking his propensity to break for a cheap pop. The guy literally just can\u2019t make it through a sketch without losing it at least a bit, the mitigating factor being that Gosling rarely seems as self-impressed as a Fallon at his own rascally charms.<\/p>\n In his breakout role in Crazy, Stupid, Love, Gosling played with expectations that someone who looks like him\u2014co-star Emma Stone\u2019s character asked if he was Photoshopped\u2014could be funny. By now, everybody knows he\u2019s both action figure- (or Mattel<\/a>-) attractive and a big goof, so he and the show run with it, despite\u2014or, who are we kidding, because of\u2014how his breaking plays for an audience.<\/p>\n It should be infuriating how bulletproof the Project Hail Mary star (yes, he gets in a plug) appears to be, even as he violates Lorne Michaels storied \u201cThis isn\u2019t The Carol Burnett Show<\/a>\u201d aversion to such undisciplined shenanigans.<\/p>\n Right up top, Gosling\u2019s monologue prods at the actor\u2019s ego by having him get flustered because next week\u2019s host and competing heartthrob Harry Styles<\/a> is in the audience. Again, in a lesser host\u2019s hands this would be the sort of false modesty schtick that\u2019d smack of fake humility. But Gosling sells the extended gag, as the synergistic use of \u201cSign of the Times\u201d in his upcoming sci-fi movie sees him balking at the planned musical number where he sings the song in front of Styles, and is flanked by a number of sexy alien dancers. Like much of what Gosling gave us tonight, it was adorable in spite of itself.<\/p>\n The Best and the Rest<\/p>\n The Best: In an episode where the host\u2019s charm was the main attraction, I\u2019m giving the top spot to something more conceptually based. (Gosling was pre-taped here, so any giggles could be edited out.) The fake ad for one of a pair of competing psoriasis medications loses a couple of points for swiping its rhythms from \u201cHappy Fun Ball,\u201d but I still love me a straight-faced commercial parody that escalates into ominous, unspoken terrors. (Remember, kids, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball<\/a>.)<\/p>\n As always, the production is part of the joke. The ad\u2019s initial verisimilitude to ubiquitous Big Pharma ads with their alarming side effects read out in reassuring tones here gradually hinting that the (actual) drug in question may, in fact be sentient\u2014and plotting something. (The stated guess that psoriasis may be the entity\u2019s food was genuinely unsettling in context.) The ramp-up led to one of those \u201cnine out of ten dermatologists recommend\u201d testimonials, with the reveal that that lone dissenter scribbled something on a wall before shooting himself in the head the parting suggestion that we are in the grip of forces beyond our ken.<\/p>\n The Worst: \u201cWedding Tradition\u201d is Exhibit A in the ongoing trial of SNL host Gosling. As the first post-monologue sketch, it was already a bit shaky\u2014putting Mikey Day and Sarah Sherman front-and-center as a newly married couple stubbornly restating the premise of the sketch in confused outrage is basically designed to infuriate me and suck the air out of the room.<\/p>\n But, man, this could have been something with a host presiding over it not incapable of a little discipline. Gosling, to be fair, made it a full 1:48 before the tickle-bug got him. Still, the sketch was riding on the antagonist being an imperiously chaotic weirdo whose discovery of the \u201cclink glasses means mandatory kiss\u201d tradition sees him grown increasingly drunk on his newfound power.<\/p>\n Gosling has it at the start. His wedding guest (in a sparkly suit and braided rat tail) reacts to the explanation of the ritual with an underplayed, \u201cThey have to? Interesting\u2026\u201d (His eyebrow-raised, repeated, \u201cThey have to,\u201d while putting his hand portentously on an unseen fellow guest\u2019s arm only serves to promise a necessary restraint that\u2019s not coming.)<\/p>\n After his initial smirk transitions to a full-on snorting laugh in anticipation of making Day\u2019s groom kiss his bride\u2019s \u201cpoozy,\u201d the jig is truly up, leaving your enjoyment of the abortive sketch up to your tolerance for Gosling\u2019s cutie-pie giggle-fits and euphemisms like \u201cpoonis.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rest: You can\u2019t manufacture a Stefon<\/a>. <\/p>\n The passing notes sketch hinged on an onscreen announcement that neither Ashley Padilla nor Gosling knew that the contents of the embarrassing classroom notes had been switched between dress and air. It\u2019s not the sort of winking audience conspiratorial gag the show\u2019s done so calculatedly (as far as I remember), and while the conceit plays into Gosling\u2019s habit of getting all silly, I toss a flag on the play.<\/p>\n When John Mulaney first did the same trick<\/a> to Bill Hader with Stefon, it was a private joke between two pals, one of whom knew how an unplanned rewrite would produce a desired outcome (and make poor Hader, a noted anxious over-preparer, have to think on the fly). The breaking there\u2014as known as the sneak attack strategy became\u2014was as genuine as this without being so cutesy about it.<\/p>\n Padilla, as nimble an improviser as there is, rolled with the bit nicely, her own inevitable chagrin transformed into mostly stifled, in-character giggles. Gosling actually seemed a little thrown, his cozy expectations that everyone would laugh along with him not perhaps being as okay with being the butt of the joke. Maybe this was the writers\u2019 way of getting back at the guy for ruining their sketches (or at least getting bigger laughs) with his corpsing. If so, well played, nerds.<\/p>\n The whole breaking thing came to a head (a one-eyed one at that) in the \u201cCyclops\u201d sketch, for better and worse. First up, I\u2019m going to state my uncomfortableness with the suspiciously specific voices chosen by Gosling, Day, and Kenan Thompson for their \u201csimple\u201d fantasy heroes and move on.<\/p>\n As the three conquering heroes\u2014in genuinely Emmy-worthy prosthetics that Gosling kept on to introduce the second Gorillaz song\u2014must face the riddles of two beautiful and immortal treasure guardians (Padilla and Veronika Slowikoska), it\u2019s all \u201cdumb guys are dumb\u201d jokes as the three mighty ding-dongs can\u2019t figure out the simplest of Gollum-style puzzles. (They rhyme and everything.)<\/p>\n The main joke pales next to the valiant attempts of Padilla to rein in what sure looked like some extensive ad-libbing on the part of the three monster-men. That joke (dumb guys dumb!) is okay\u2014there\u2019s a stubbornness to their rock-headed answers that\u2019s amusing. But it\u2019s clear that somebody, either at dress or live, spotted that Padilla\u2019s guardian\u2019s attemps to halt the cyclopses from approaching the ornate cave door with a series of exasperated \u201cStop!\u201ds was the real show and leaned into it, hard.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a school of thought that SNL doesn\u2019t take advantage of its live status to loosen things up like this. I get it\u2014part of the joy of seeing comedy live is in watching talented comic minds figure out a scene in real time. But Saturday Night Live under Lorne Michaels has always been about control, perhaps a holdover from the long, long ago industry skepticism that a bunch of hippie types could pull of a live, 90-minute show. Nowadays, SNL is a comedy cruise ship, its massive production bulk and cumbersome legacy making nimble risk-taking, well, too much of a risk.<\/p>\n Were all those added \u201cStop!\u201ds pre-planned? I\u2019d like to think not. The show could use a little looseness, even if it messes up the show timing. <\/p>\n The other pre-tape mined the Willy Wonka franchise for some filigree on an old joke, that being that this lovable chocolatier (here a baker) is employing slave labor. (Something the original Roald Dahl book was far more problematically explicit<\/a> about.) It\u2019s exquisitely mounted stuff, complete with a sickly sweet musical number, but there\u2019s hardly a surprise that there\u2019s a dark secret a-lurking behind all the prancing and cupcakes.<\/p>\n When the twist comes, it\u2019s suitably over-the-top, as the Oompa-Loompa stand-ins (the Poppin\u2019 Fresh-look Dodeedees) have begun to commit mass suicide, with one revealed to have hanged himself in the doorway the excited children were preparing to enter. The explanation (from Kenan\u2019s seen-it-all handyman) that this is just part of the creatures\u2019 mating cycle shifts the joke onto Gosling\u2019s Wonka substitute, as Kenan asks, \u201cDon\u2019t you know anything about their culture, society, or religion?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s okay, even if making the same joke about a very old pop culture subject doesn\u2019t especially justify the sketch\u2019s existence. <\/p>\n \u2018Weekend Update\u2019 Update<\/p>\n We\u2019re in another illegal war (Trump\u2019s second, for now<\/a>), so \u201cUpdate\u201d did a whole minute\u2019s worth of Iran jokes before moving on to Timothe\u00e9 Chalamet. But I kid the fake news segment of a nationally broadcast comedy show Donald Trump absolutely hate-watches every single week.<\/p>\n Actually, I don\u2019t. Colin Jost and Michael Che are Colin Jost and Michael Che, lending the same smirky expertise to jokes about funny airplane seats as they do about the looming shadow of authoritarianism. I\u2019d like to think that Trump and his goons literally picking off late-night comics one by one all around them would lead to some go-for-broke actual giving a crap, but what Jost and Che do is popular as hell, so what do I know.<\/p>\n The actual topical jokes aren\u2019t terrible so much as they bounce along on the same peppy above-it-all wave the anchors have been surfing for so long. Jost\u2019s lead-in mentions that fired (sorry, transferred to a made-up new job) ICE queen Kristi Noem was recently called out in Congress for calling the innocent Americans her goon squad straight-up murdered in the streets \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d to please her cult leader and his slavering yahoo base. But he tosses in jabs about her cosplaying habit, a sex joke, and Diddy, just to assure viewers he\u2019s not that invested. <\/p>\n There\u2019s a wash of glibness obscuring the tougher jokes that makes \u201cWeekend Update,\u201d as ever, as much about Jost and Che\u2019s respective personas as any real world story they choose to joke about. Che got more of a response to another \u201cTrump has dementia\u201d zinger than one about America\u2019s success rate when ousting world leaders on shaky justification. (Cue photo of Osama Bin Laden behind Che, as reminder of the CIA\u2019s work in Afghanistan.) I can\u2019t blame the boys for chasing what works, but they could also make smarter stuff work.<\/p>\n I love having Thompson\u2019s guaranteed few minutes of airtime on my TV each week, but his preacher character here wasn\u2019t anything special. Instead of bringing the inspiration and uplift Che was supposedly looking for, Pastor Update (backed by James Austin Johnson\u2019s grinning Teddy on guitar) mused instead about green room snacks and Che\u2019s porn habits at work. Mildly amusing enough to make me suspect the good pastor will be brought back, sadly.<\/p>\n Recurring Sketch Report<\/p>\n While it should, by virtue of its straight-faced strangeness, be in the ten-to-one slot, the hotel sketch finds itself in the recurring category by the thinnest of margins. (Martin Herlihy got one of his short films squeezed in last.)<\/p>\n As far as sketch templates go, the \u201crunning through your incidentals<\/a>\u201d hotel premise has usually worked out. The collision between deadpan bureaucracy and flummoxed customer creates a natural comic tension, with the wild card question of which party is the loony offering up some variety. (Honestly, this barely counts as a repeater, but this season has been blessedly free from overdone premises, so I\u2019m claiming this territory.) <\/p>\n This time, the customer is the weird one, at least at first, as departing guest Gosling disputes the extra charges related to\u2026 the Goo-Goo Man. This raises many questions. Who is the Goo-Goo Man? Why is there a special Goo-Goo Man pricing package and rewards card number. (Gosling\u2019s is an impressive 3.) And, naturally, is the Goo-Goo Man a sexual thing? (Itemized charges for \u201ctummy time\u201d and \u201ccuddle car\u201d could go either way, honestly.)<\/p>\n I love this sort of joke, where normality splits open to gradually suggest a whole bananas world lurking just underneath. (A funny lean-in gag sees fellow Goo-Goo Man enthusiast Jeremy Culhane wearing the same Goo-Goo Man accessories and thanking Gosling for his service.) <\/p>\n What kept this one from scaling the heights of absurdity mountain was two-fold. For one, Gosling\u2014stop me if you\u2019ve heard this\u2014can\u2019t maintain. It\u2019s not as egregious as other times tonight, but a real, locked-down deadpan irritation was what this sketch needed. Also, it would have been better served if someone other than noted over-actor Sherman were playing the straight role\u2014Day may have been around playing the concierge, but Sherman was doing a Mikey Day, hammering home the absurd premise by essentially exclaiming, \u201cThis premise is absurd!\u201d at every turn.<\/p>\n I hate a missed opportunity. The Goo-Goo Man deserved better. <\/p>\n Political Comedy Report<\/p>\n First, congrats to Jost for sketch 300<\/a>. (Mostly for \u201cUpdate,\u201d but still.)<\/p>\n Now to the requisite Cold Open, where the surprisingly effective casting of Jost as former Fox News blowhard and accused blackout rapist<\/a> turned Secretary of Defense-turned-War Pete Hegseth continues. As ever these days, there\u2019s a disconnect between reaction to a passably funny political impression and to the genuine horrors the actual person represents.<\/p>\n Hegseth, with his chest full of white supremacy<\/a> and frat douche disdain for the press, stewardship of the world\u2019s largest military bureaucracy, and international law, is a clownish monster. Saturday Night Live winks at the monstrousness to favor the undeniable buffoonery of Jost\u2019s Hegseth doing keg stands and asking baffled journalists, \u201cGaylord says what?\u201d like the stunted middle-school bully he is.<\/p>\n While Jost\u2019s Hegseth preens like a fading jock pissed off he\u2019d get arrested for swirlies in boorish adulthood, the actual article presides over a simpleton macho policy of crappy action movie tough talk that treats the wanton murder of children (brown children at least<\/a>) as cause for beer-crushing celebration and copyright-infringing edgelord memes<\/a>. <\/p>\n We\u2019re under the heel of dim-bulb madmen\u2014and women\u2014as SNL similarly trots out begrudgingly sh*t-canned \u201chomeland security\u201d concentration camp-filler Kristi Noem for a good-bye poke. Padilla is above the material, mainly about plastic surgery, dog-shooting, and the fact that Noem\u2019s been banging a married subordinate in a taxpayer-funded sex plane<\/a>. (Okay, that last one\u2019s tough to ignore.)<\/p>\n I get that the degree of difficulty here is high. Shoehorning literal fascist atrocities into SNL\u2018s traditional \u201clook at this clown and his easily repeatable eccentricities\u201d satirical formula just isn\u2019t cut out for actual evil. The complacent crowd seems to eat up Jost\u2019s Hegseth boasting about giving Iran \u201ca purple nurple\u201d and Padilla\u2019s fired Noem consoling herself by claiming to \u201cmiss 100 percent of the dogs you don\u2019t shoot.\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump tramples the Constitution while Congress does nothing, Noem\u2019s masked stormtroopers kidnap anyone non-white they can get their unfit-for-mall-cop hands on, and the U.S. spirals further into the demented apocalyptic fever dream of a legally-determined rapist<\/a> and voluminously alleged<\/a> child-rapist.<\/p>\n What\u2019s my solution? I had some ideas<\/a>, but those were fever dreams of my own. Saturday Night Live simply isn\u2019t up to this moment.<\/p>\n Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings<\/p>\n Chloe Fineman\u2019s complete absence last week and her low profile this week don\u2019t bode well for her continued longevity on the show.<\/p>\n Slowikoska\u2019s dedicated versatility is creeping up on me. Even in the cyclops chuckle-fest, she plugged away like a pro.<\/p>\n Kam Petterson is clearly being phased out, another sop to the manosphere blowing up in Lorne Michaels\u2019 face. Wonder if Patterson will be brought back to host<\/a> after he\u2019s let go? <\/p>\n It\u2019s Padilla\u2019s show now, whether anyone admits it or not. I\u2019m fine with it. (Without Gosling around, she\u2019s usually a lot more together.) In the wedding sketch, her brief appearances were so lived-in, I perked up automatically.<\/p>\n Congrats also to Sherman, who hit her 300th appearance<\/a> awfully fast.<\/p>\n 10-To-Oneland Report<\/p>\n In retrospect, the bust-up of the Please Don\u2019t Destroy team is likely to go down as a misstep. Ben Marshall isn\u2019t making much headway as a cast member, while Martin Herlihy\u2019s fitfully funny shorts keep reminding me why the trio\u2019s teamwork played as well as it did. <\/p>\n The central theme of Herlihy\u2019s pre-tapes is his self-important cluelessness. Here, once again seated smugly in an armchair, he introduces a premise (he pops up to shout \u201cLies!\u201d at innocent diners\u2019 self-serving fibs) before swerving into absurdity (Herlihy passing himself off at work as Colin Jost, thanks to some horrific prosthetics). Honestly, the effect looks as if Jay Leno concluded his Tonight Show back-stab by absorbing Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s essence.) The transition is largely nonexistent, mainly serving to glory in that grotesque face (the makeup, not Jost\u2019s actual kisser) as Herlihy prances about, besmirching his castmate\u2019s good name.<\/p>\n Even the best turn (a panicked Sherman whips out a gun, unsure of which Jost to inexplicably shoot) is swiped from a much better executed <\/a>Digital Short. Which is another way of saying that host Dakota Johnson calling the now-disbanded trio \u201cthe Loneliest Island<\/a>\u201d might not have been totally off the mark.<\/p>\n Stray Observations<\/p>\n Tonight\u2019s In Memoriam card goes to a guy who was there from the beginning<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post-monologue commercial break for Project Hail Mary featuring \u201cSign of the Times\u201d\u201d That\u2019s some finely timed product integration, Amazon MGM and NBC.<\/p>\n I\u2019m actually shocked at the restraint<\/a> in not airing a can\u2019t-miss Beavis and Butt-head sequel.<\/p>\n We need to talk about Gorillaz. To wit: is their music good enough to transcend the \u201cvirtual band\u201d gimmick? I say yes, although relegating Jamie Hewlitt\u2019s 2-D creations, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel, to background screens while plain old Daman Albarn and guests play live like dumb humans robs some essential pleasure from the whole experience.<\/p>\n It was cool to see Del the Funky Homosapien<\/a> and Black Thought<\/a> do their things in person, though. Not to mention second-gen sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar and legend Asha Puthli, for crying out loud. <\/p>\n Also, \u201cClint Eastwood<\/a>\u201d for the first number? It\u2019s still a great (25-year-old) song (and was used in this week\u2019s Gosling promo), but Gorillaz has a new album<\/a>, and it\u2019s not like anyone needs to be reminded who the band are. <\/p>\n Jost claiming that anti-vaxxer in charge of America\u2019s healthcare RFK Jr. looks like \u201cWalton Goggins after being put an air fryer\u201d is unfair to both Goggins and a handy and convenient kitchen appliance.<\/p>\n Episode Grade: I give this one [stifles laughter]\u2026 an, um\u2026 [snorts uncontrollably]\u2026 B-Minus. [BWAH-HA-HAAAAA!!!]<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999050_269_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999050_174_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999051_820_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999051_229_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999051_406_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999052_70_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999052_240_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999053_37_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999053_158_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999053_805_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772999054_819_maxresdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n