The 18th episodeof Season 51 was hosted by Olivia Rodrigo, who also served as musical guest. Compared with recent ho-hum episodes, this one was pretty good. Rodrigo showed an ability to sort of be Ariana Grande Lite, if you will: a capable actress, excellent musical performer, and sex symbol on stage in Studio 8H. Sort of a quasi cast member.
Cold Open
Ashley Padilla as Karoline Leavitt at the podium for a press conference. Padilla is on-screen only for a short time before giving way to Colin Jost‘s bro-pression of Pete Hegseth.
Aziz Ansari appears as FBI Director Kash Patel who explains that he is “the first Indian person to suck at his job.”
Ben Marshall, Jeremy Culhane, Tommy Brennan, Marcello Hernandez, Sarah Sherman, and Kam Patterson appear as reporters.
The “Live From New York…” line is delivered by Ansari and Jost. Anzari became the 301st person to say LFNY to start the show.
Monologue
Wearing a pink dress, Rodrigo discusses her early acting career, including an appearance in the Disney program “Bizaardvark” with Jake Paul. She also shares bloopers from previous concert performances.
The host finished off the monologue playing the piano and singing alternate lyrics to “Drivers License,” explaining her coming of age experience using a fake ID.
Best line: “The lady said you need a pay stub; and I said ‘what the hell is that, I’m 23?'”
A nice start, showing off a funny side and versatility to Rodrigo.
Edge of Destiny
Scenes from a 1983 television soap opera titled “Edge of Destiny,” airing on PlutoTV, with an outlandish setup where Chloe Fineman and other characters fall down an impossibly long set of stairs after being confronted by Marguerite, played by Rodrigo.
Andrew Dismukes appears as Jonas, an attorney; Sherman as Daisha, and Mikey Day as Randall. We also see Kenan Thompson as a clumsy servant named Terrance, who falls on the stairs but stabs himself before he gets to the bottom. Finally we see Marguerite be pushed by Thompson, who somehow survived his tumble
This sketch required an elaborate set and intricate camera work that made it look like the cast were actually going down stairs.
Zoo on a Bug People Planet
Rodrigo appears singing in a Dan Bulla produced pretape as a teenage girl in a typical teenage girl bedroom. The only catch: we learn she’s actually a human being displayed in a zoo on a bug people planet.
Felt like something Ariana Grande or Sabrina Carpenter could have done. A highly-produced pretape with great CGI, special effects, costumes, and music.
ShopTV: Daisy’s Custom Cakes
Day and Padilla are back as hosts of ShopTV. The guest is Rodrigo, owner of Daisy’s Custom Cakes, who reveals she’s selling a cake that looks like a butthole. She calls it the “fudge hole.”
This is indistinguishable from the cake wars sketches where the cakes end up looking like penises. It’s not tough getting the cheap, easy laughs that come from these type of sketches, filled with “bung hole” jokes. Felt like a Mikey Day idea. Which is just another reason it’s time for Day to step aside and let someone else onto this cast after the conclusion of Season 51.
James Austin Johnson also appears as the author of a YA Christian book.
Exes
Rodrigo and Marshall are exes attending a birthday party. They both ask other people (Brennan and Padilla) to pretend to be their new partners.
Padilla is an intense woman who pretends to be Marshall’s new girlfriend, but takes it too far with her theatrics. It results in both Marshall and Padilla smeared with potatoes and taking clothes off.
Ultimately, Rodrigo confesses her love to Marshall, but an over-committed Padilla fights for her fake boyfriend.
This sketch was a good romp and a chance for Padilla to show off her Will Ferrell-like outrageousness. Few cast members in the last 20-30 years have had the ability to carry a sketch with acting and humor like Padilla does here.
Musical Performance No. 1: Olivia Rodrigo
Deborah Harry appears in Studio 8H to introduce Rodrigo’s first musical number.
Looking delightful on stage, Rodrigo performed her No. 1 hit “Drop Dead.” Appropriately, this song includes a rap section, à la vintage Harry. The musical performance, lyrics (“stalked you on the Internet”), performance, lighting: everything was perfect.
Weekend Update
Many jokes here targeting Trump following a busy week of stupidity from the White House and his administration. One of the best was Jost asking how the war could be costing so much:
“What are we bombing [Iran] with…ballrooms?”
Social media influencers Alex Cooper (Fineman) and Alix Earle (Veronika Slowikowska) appear behind the Weekend Update desk to discuss their online feud. This segment was about three minutes of uptalk, and it worked just fine. A fine performance by both Fineman and the underutilized Slowikowska.
Patterson appears to discuss the breakup of Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson, where he explains that it was Thompson’s “white half that cheated” on Stallion. A simple vehicle for Patterson to get some air time and use his own name. It’s too much like many other WU appearances we’ve seen from cast members with much more talent.
Weekend Update timed in at 14 minutes.
“Busted”
Rodrigo and Hernandez as an engaged couple who have a confrontation after she comes home late following a night out with her girlfriends. They sing their way through the fight, finding themselves interrupted by JAJ, who appears as a thief.
Jane Wickline, Fineman, and Thompson also appear, to varying degrees of success. Shout out to Fineman, who shines here as a sultry woman having an affair with the thief in the closet. This was the only sighting of Wickline all evening.
Not sure who this sketch is intended for. It’s not silly. It’s not particularly clever. The music and singing is terrible (somehow even Rodrigo comes off bad here). Has to rank as one of the three worst sketches of Season 51.
Musical Performance No. 2: Olivia Rodrigo
Rodrigo is back, this time on a swing performing an unreleased song (possibly titled “Begged”) from her third album, “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love.” This time it’s a heartbreaking ballad, and she nails it.
She was introduced by FOTS Connor Storrie.
Uber Driver Rasta Guy
Rodrigo and Slowikowska appear as friends in an Uber heading to the nightclub. The pair make each other promise not to do stupid things while out on the town.
Uber driver Dismukes goes into a frenzied vocal of a Jamaican dance song. When confronted by the women, he claims to have been possessed while he went into the performance.
“I really don’t want to be a white rasta guy!” Dismukes says.
This is the type of unhinged sketch we don’t see much of any more. But I’m glad this type of zaniness still gets on the show.
10-to-1 Sketch: SafeGuard
In this pretape we see SafeGuard’s new video service, which promises your security video footage will definitely go viral.
“When your alarm goes off, we send an influencer to help your footage go viral.”
Definitely felt like this episode was light on time and the producers needed to slide this short pretape in to fill the last couple of minutes of the show.
Episode Grade: B+
Kudos to Olivia Rodrigo for a bang-up job in her first hosting gig. It seems like she did well enough to earn an invite to return.
Best sketch of the night was “The Exes,” followed by “Uber Driver Rasta Guy.” We were light on total sketches: only five live and two pretapes.
The music was possibly the best or second best we saw all season. And the special guests were on-spot, especially Ansari as Kash Patel.
