Over a long career, and especially during his recent resurgence on “Only Murders in the Building,” Martin Short has pressured to a perfect diamond the Martin Short Thing, which is: saying very mean and petty things in a way that is both hilarious and somehow endearing. It’s his thing and maybe nobody except Don Rickles got away with it for so long.
For “Saturday Night Live,” which Short guest-hosted for the fifth time (cue Five-Timers’ cold open), it’s a perfect fit. With the comic actor’s manic energy, perfect delivery of cutting lines, and ability to still dance and sing at 74 made his monologue and sketch appearances pretty much flawless, though he was a little light in the show.
That was partly because a raft of celebrities (though not his co-stars Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, though they were mentioned, or rumored romantic partner Meryl Streep) filled up parts in lots of sketches and dominated the cold open. They included Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, who provided live reaction to jokes about her from a particularly brutal “Weekend Update” joke swap between Michael Che and her husband, Colin Jost.
Short scored as an aggressive Delta lounge employee in a sketch about a Christmas parade that takes place at an airport gate, an angry mall parking lot driver, and a demanding director of the “Charlie Brown Christmas” pageant. But he was absent in the episode’s pre-taped piece, “An Act of Kindness,” about a homeless man (Kenan Thompson) helped by a gullible woman (Heidi Gardner), and a sequel to the Nate Bargatze “Sábado Gigante” sketch — with Marcello Hernández as host Don Francisco — that featured Rudd and an appearance from Dana Carvey.
The crowded episode didn’t give Short much opportunity to bring back classic characters or to break new ground, but it didn’t matter much because the show overall had strong sketches and when Short was deployed, he nailed every moment.
Musical guest Hozier performed “Too Sweet” and a cover of The Pogues’s “Fairytale of New York.”
If you’re an “SNL” completist and faithful fan, the best piece of the entire show for you may have been the cold open, which features a huge number of past guest hosts who’ve done the task five or more times. Hanks, who will narrate NBC’s documentary series “The Americas” in February, kicked off the sketch with Rudd welcoming Short into the Five-Timers Club, who responded, “What a surprise that I’ve known about all week.” Fey, Baldwin, Stone, Melissa McCarthy, Johansson, Kristen Wiig, John Mulaney and even Jimmy Fallon all got to tell a joke or two each, the best perhaps being when each made a confession. “Ant-Man’s powers aren’t good,” Rudd admitted. “It’s me that’s flying those drones. All of them,” Fey revealed. “I never had Covid,” Hanks shared. When Short received his Five Timers’ jacket, sized women’s small, he did some physical comedy making it impossible to put the garment on properly before saying, “From the bottom of my heart: I love most of you so much.”
Short started his monologue with some one-liners, suggesting that he’d be playing an elf in 10 sketches and joking that his Uber driver, Matt Gaetz, was waiting outside before discussing his long friendship with “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels. “We’re kind of like (President-elect) Trump and Elon Musk, without the sexual tension.” When cast member Sarah Sherman appeared onstage to ask for some holiday cheer to get her out of her funk, Short launched into a song that sent him on a journey through the studio, throwing a kid off Santa’s lap, taking shots at actor Armie Hammer and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before encountering Michaels and Fallon. “I didn’t know Jack Daniels made cologne,” Short quipped before planting a big kiss on Fallon. Once Short was gone, Fallon said, “You never kiss me like that anymore,” to a nonplussed Michaels. It was a high-energy performance not unlike Maya Rudolph’s “Mother” monologue from earlier this year.
Best sketch of the night: Like celebrity cameos? Here’s more
Returning from last year’s Thanksgiving parade sketch at Newark Liberty International, two TSA agents, Umberto and Chartreuse Hamilton (Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim), host a TV Christmas special this time around with an array of characters. They include Rudd as himself trying to get into the Delta Lounge (Short spits water in his face), McCarthy as a gate attendant mispronouncing names such as Gina Sowdry, Wiig as a passenger riding a motorized suitcase, and Hanks reprising his role as Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the famous US Airways pilot who was the subject of a movie. The sketch overall is a scattershot assortment of jokes, but the enthusiasm and star power goes a long way with this one.
Also good: Melissa McCarthy did what to your car?
Like the airport sketch, this was also a new edition of a prior sketch from last year, the traffic altercation featuring Quinta Brunson. As in the previous one, Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman play a father and daughter who get into an argument with a driver in another car that includes lots of hand signals and body language to express what they’re trying to say. In this situation, Short is a driver competing for the same parking spot as them at a mall on Christmas Eve. All three comics do a fine job physically expressing phrases such as “bull crap” and “super Christian,” but the sketch goes to a whole other level when McCarthy shows up as Short’s wife, banging on the family’s car window and threatening to eat the dad’s face with her own face. That would be a fine cap to a sketch, but McCarthy then spits coffee on the window and does something to the window with her body that may never have been shown before on broadcast television. In an episode stuffed with huge stars, leave it to McCarthy to give the show its most GIFable and potentially viral moment.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Two men owe Scarlett Johansson a huge apology
On any other week, Bowen Yang’s portrayal of a New Jersey drone would have easily walked away as the best thing on “Update,” a comedy bit full of great jokes that concluded with a “Wicked” song parody. But this wasn’t just any week: It was time for Che and Jost’s annual joke swap, in which each writes awful, offensive jokes that the other must read out loud. Jost’s jokes for Che included jokes about awful sex, insinuations that Che supports Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a truly gross joke about Disney’s Moana. But it was Jost who was more thoroughly roasted when he was forced to deliver jokes in a “Black voice,” starting with one about white reparations and Kamala Harris, and moving on to a series of jokes about Johansson, who was shown backstage watching “Update” on a monitor. The jokes included one about Jost leaving Johansson because she just turned 40 and a truly awful joke about her genitals. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed backstage, apparently unable to believe what came out of her husband’s mouth. The high-wire act of keeping the segment going with the subject’s live reactions elevated what has become a truly offensive, yet compelling annual tradition to see how far and how low “Update” will go. The answer? There appears to be no bottom.