Saturday Night Live: is John Mulaney the best modern host we have?

This edition of Saturday Night Live opens at the CIA headquarters. In the wake of the Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stepping down after details of his extramarital affairs, including one with an accused Chinese spy, came to light, the agency has called together a meeting of the nation’s top tech billionaires: creepy Peter Thiel (James Austin Johnson), robotic Sam Altman (Ben Marshall), awkward Dario Amodei (Jane Wickline), and the insufferable duo of Mark Zuckerberg (Andy Dismukes) and Elon Musk (Jeremy Culhane).

An agent (tonight’s host, John Mulaney) attempts to school them on how not to get honeypotted. Per a helpful Venn diagram: “On this side we have beautiful women, and on this side we have people who would be interested in your shared opinions and interests. I cannot stress this enough: there is no overlap.” He fails to get through to the group (especially the middle-school-like Musk, whom he sprays with water to keep on track), so he hands things over to Jensen “Hide Your Wife” Haung himself, played by a returning Bowen Yang. Yang doesn’t attempt much of an impression, but he certainly looks the part thanks to some white hair dye and a black leather jacket.

A very solid and refreshingly narrative-driven cold open that makes excellent use of SNL’s cast, each of whom captures their awful tech overlord wonderfully.

Mulaney takes the stage for his monologue. This is the comic and former show writer’s seventh time hosting, which he loves because he says it feels like “there’s no host”. He performs a tight five about diagnosing his aging father as autistic (“He doesn’t know he’s autistic; he’ll find out when this airs”) and baby boomers being exactly as toxic as Gen Z (“My mother has three – not one, three – friends who have been banned from Facebook Marketplace for, and I’m quoting the email, hate speech”). He ends with a rant aimed at Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr (“You dumbass, your thing can’t be the measles”), doing a shockingly great and refreshingly mean-spirited impersonation of him. The vitriol Mulaney hurls towards Kennedy is palpable and very, very deserved.

Breaking news out of New York: a Turkish airliner has crashed during landing. A reporter at the scene interviews survivors, all of whom are Americans returning from that nation after receiving obvious cosmetic surgery: hair transplants, lip injections, penis enlargements, and BBLs. Former mayor Eric Adams (Kam Patterson) also pops up on his way back from Istanbul. An impressive array of ridiculous prosthetics.

Next up is an ad aimed at men with aging parents, an affordable alternative to live-in nurses and retirement facilities: Sister. “Years of internalized sexism warps Sister’s brain into thinking caretaking is her responsibility, not yours.” The difficult, thankless tasks fall on her, leaving the sons/brothers to live their best lives. A harsh and bleakly funny indictment of gendered family dynamics, and the best commercial sketch the show has done in a long while.

Four office drones unwind at the local bar after a stressful day at work, only to be intruded upon by their annoying co-worker, “worst person on earth” Kathy (Ashley Padilla). Seated one table over, drinking a massive virgin punch bowl, she continually butts in on their conversation (“We talking transpo? We talking transpo? We talking transpo?”). They attempt to ignore her, but her resolve proves stronger. The last minute or so of the sketch is a slow-burn waiting game, which is admirable, even if it does result in noticeable dead air.

Getting it Done is a reality television program where host Chris Gut (Culhane) visits small businesses across the country. On this week’s episode, he stops at a Rhode Island microbrewery. Drinks with Mulaney’s brewmaster opens something up in both men, leading to a sudden and surprising kiss. This unexpected gay experience has both men questioning who they are and what their hearts actually want. “Did the beer make me do it or allow me to do it?” wonders Gut. Culhane and Mulaney’s make-out sessions are sure to be shared far and wide on social media in the coming days. Also, kudos to all involved for the pitch-perfect aping of travelogue TV aesthetics, down to the handheld camera work and scene transition graphics.

Following the first performance from musical guest Phoebe Bridgers, it’s on to Weekend Update. On the subject of Huang, Colin Jost warns that Nvidia’s plummeting stock could crash the economy: “Which means Jensen Huang had a mid-life crisis so bad, you might lose your house in his divorce.”

Cast member Tommy Brennan joins the desk to play piano and sing a song about all the indignities of Thanksgiving. Intentionally rhythmically awkward – which has heretofore been Wickline’s schtick – the best bits are when he pauses singing to go into further detail about his awkward family gathering, which involves him catching uncle naked, his grandfather continuing to boycott the NFL because Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem, and his “gay and mean” sister coming out to their emotionally distant father.

It wouldn’t be a Mulaney episode without a big musical extravaganza about the seedier side of New York City. This time, Mulaney plays a handsome cab driver who, thanks to the city’s recent ban on horse-drawn carriages, is soon to be jobless. He and his horse Blackie (“Don’t worry, it is racial”) give one last ride through Central Park to two guys visiting from New Jersey. They run into a collection of fun city characters: obsessive marathon runners, dangerous pedicab drivers, aggressive religious vagrants, pervasive stoners, Park Slope cucks and Wall Street stockbrokers arguing over Mamdani, Mary Todd Lincoln herself, and in a rare case of cross-sketch world-building, Kathy from earlier (paying off the “We talking transpo?” line beautifully). The medley of tunes includes numbers from Little Shop of Horrors, Funny Girl, Annie Get Your Gun, Cats, West Side Story, Dream Girls and Hair. Yang reprising his role from Oh, Mary will likely get the lion’s share of press, but it’s Veronika Slowikowska who steals the show by revealing an insane pair of pipes during her parody of Don’t Rain on My Parade.

The musical theme continues in the next sketch, which is set at Woodstock, 1969. A group of friends grooving out to Sly and the Family Stone are interrupted by Mulaney’s mercenary hippie, who sees into the future and argues that they should all embrace the conservative sea change of the ‘80s: “When we get older, I think we should buy all the houses … also, we should have all the money … we should become ruthless corporate climbers, absolutely fetishize money in an almost pornographic way …” Like much of Mulaney’s monologue, this takes angry aim at baby boomer hypocrisy and hits dead center.

Bridgers returns for her second song – a haunting ballad made spookier with some glow-in-the-dark skeleton paint – to close out what is far and away the best episode of this season, arguably the best episode in a couple of seasons. Mulaney remains the greatest recurring host of this generation of SNL, someone who elevates every aspect of the show, in particular the writing. If only he could host every week.