Hey, look at that: Things over at Saturday Night Live aren’t entirely inexplicably dumb, and it is still possible to find hosts who aren’t union-busting billionaires! Lorne Michaels just had to be open to inviting hosts over from SNL’s biggest competitor—though it’s only a “competitor” in the sense that some guy selling hamburgers on the street is competing with McDonald’s. Anyway, we’re talking about Mad TV, with former Mad TV cast member Keegan-Michael Key (who apparently went on to do a more high-profile sketch comedy series after that) being named as the host of the show’s upcoming May 15 episode alongside muuusical guest Olivia Rodrigo. Key won’t be the first Mad TVer to appear on SNL (Taran Killam was a cast member on both!), but this is still a positive development for anyone still holding onto some kind of Mad TV/SNL rivalry.
On May 22, SNL will be bringing in Anya Taylor-Joy and muuusical guest Lil Nas X. Taylor-Joy probably never appeared on Mad TV, as she would’ve been 13 or so when it initially went off the air, but she was in The New Mutants and it was worse than any given episode of Mad TV (which was a fine show, let’s be fair here). That has to count for something. As for Lil Nas X, he’s probably big enough at this point that he could do double-duty as host and muuusical guest, right? Actually, he might be big enough that he could just host his own show. Who controls the rights to Mad TV these days? Lil Nas X, Will Sasso, Michael McDonald, and Nicole Sullivan. We’d watch that.