Charli XCX extends brat summer into It Girl Thanksgiving on Saturday Night Live

Charli XCX should be the perfect pop-niche mix for Saturday Night Live—and maybe she is? Increasingly, it’s difficult to parse what counts as a zeitgeisty pop-culture joke perfect for the most mainstream sketch-variety show on TV, what counts as a cutesy reference for a small sliver of the audience, and whether either of those are worth pursuing with any particular favor. Charli serving (and also, if I understand correctly, serving?) as both host and musical guest helps really obliterate that line, especially when the show cheerfully leads with material that has enough reprises to put the Spartan Cheerleaders to shame.

On one hand, the first proper sketch of the night sequelized the “Domingo” sketch from just one month ago, with Chloe Fineman’s feckless Domingo-courting woo-girl now knocked up as her besties favor her with a song about their latest weekend away together—a combination of old-SNL grinding down of a delightful original sketch and new-era doing this because the sketch apparently blew up on TikTok. (I’m not on TikTok, but I get it, because I now think of that sketch every time I hear “Espresso.”) Yet at the same time, there is something kind of fun about jumping from Ariana Grande singing a spoof of Sabrina’s Carpenter “Espresso” off-key to Charli XCX singing a spoof of recent musical guest Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go,” all while continuing the increasingly improbable saga of Kelsey and Domingo. I can’t say I’d have a problem with Addison Rae leading an off-key spoof of “Von Dutch” for a trilogy-capper come February.

So is this the hacky reprise or the crowdpleasing encore? Is it brat, or is this calling everything brat on Twitter while everyone escapes to Bluesky? That’s the pop star dilemma, innit? Figuring out when to play the hits, and when to find a new way of presenting your whole ideal? brat pulls the rare trick of doing both at once: Distilling Charli’s persona down to something that feels intensely specific to her (for better or, when she starts to sound a little like Lily Allen, perhaps for worse) while turning those songs into semi-unlikely hits.

Obviously an SNL episode does not need a brat-like replayability, though a few singles to wear out are always appreciated. For the first bunch of the episode, it felt more on the hacky side, simply because it took vexingly long for the show to bring out a genuinely brand new sketch: You get more Biden and Trump and a miniature impression parade; the “Domingo” sequel; a revival of the long-dormant impression-parade auditions sketch; and the reliably amusing bake-off sketch that’s also never really topped the Eddie Murphy installment from some years ago. It’s a bit weird when the most original piece mustered is another new Digital Short. (It seemed like it might be a leftover from one of the weeks where Samberg was hanging around, but turns out this was one of those weeks, too; Charli turns up to help Samberg fussily call the cops on other white people. Pretty good! Not one for Lonely Island’s greatest hits, but no one else on the show is really nailing the musical genre parodies these days.)

But as the episode went on, it found a little more genuine brattiness, not just in two Charli musical performances – which, yes, do affect this episode’s grade; how better to mark what could be this season’s only instance of me owning every album by the musical guest?! – but in the goofy ensemble sketches: the “Banger Boyz” podcast, which took a sidelong trip into the episode’s best sorta-political material; the extremely silly (but novel!) “It Girl Thanksgiving”; and an ideal night-ending sketch where everyone is slightly insane (as befitting any friend group catching Shrek The Musical together). Telling, too, that the one original sketch that really floundered, with Marcello playing a commercial acting coach, was the kind of Chris Kattan-y showcase sketch that overwhelmed the other people in it—save Charli, who did a wonderful job enunciating ODD words AS the teacher’s pet.

In the end, this really was sort of an It Girl Thanksgiving: gathering up a bunch of obvious stuff and more niche references, doing a bunch of impressions that range from spot-on to one-note, and just trying your best to own it.

What was on

Once in a while, a sketch that is (or seems) led by Bowen Yang will feel like it’s just spouting off non-sequiturs for some imagined super-online audience. This Shrek sketch, though, was perfectly judged with its round-robin escalation and rapid-fire strange details; I love it when a sketch rides the line between genuine characterization and outright absurdity. Somehow, frighteningly, the sketch about moron podcasters managed to be the more grounded of the two brightest live-show non-musical highlights; chalk that up to Dismukes and company having a good ear for the stupid bluster of what it is apparently the main source of information, entertainment, and possibly friendship for a not-inconsiderable portion of the population.

What was off

In theory, those endless audition sketches are easy layups. Not every impression deserves its own sketch built around it, and the format leaves room to do quick-hit versions that can last as little as eight seconds. But wouldn’t it be fun if they occasionally dipped into, oh, I don’t know… some movie stars? It’s not like those impressions of Martha Stewart, Janet Jackson, or Bernie Sanders are so amazingly spot-on that they transcend any reason for including them (sorry to Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, and Sarah Sherman, all great performers). But it’s a lot funnier to see a version of Sydney Sweeney in these auditions than… people who aren’t actors. It’s not that I’m eager to fact-check a comedy sketch. It just seems like maybe someone in the massive cast could work up an impression of Jennifer Lawrence, or Leonardo DiCaprio, or Dwayne Johnson, or Ryan Reynolds, or Blake Lively, or Ryan Gosling, or Channing Tatum? As long as we’re trotting out Martha Stewart in 2024, are we gonna have the entire staff of The View on the next one?

Speaking of impression parades: Look, the idea of Trump and Biden’s chummy little fireside meeting is exhausting, but it’s also a perfect opportunity to soft-reboot the robotic formula of political cold opens. Why not, say, write dialogue between the two of them to take full advantage of two good impressions, rather than having them both sort of recite stuff to the camera, and then introduce more, less good impressions? Why, it’s Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz! Must we?

Most valuable player (who may not be ready for prime time)

Sarah Sherman got to sing more about Domingo, do her grieving-animal-widow bit, and make out with Shrek—but it’s Chloe Fineman who better embodies the Charli XCX spirit. Close on, but Chloe wins this week.

Next time

Paul Mescal and Shaboozey, an unlikely pairing that nonetheless feels like someone, somewhere, must have bet correctly on at some point.

Stray observations

• • Wicked audition sketch power rankings: 1. Sydney Sweeney (Chloe); 2. Jojo Siwa (Chloe); 3. Adele (Charli); 4. Sebastian Maniscalco (Marcello); 5. Shannon Sharpe (Devan); 6. Bad Bunny (Marcello); 7. Leslie Mann (Chloe); 8. Troye Sivan (Charli); 9. Mikey Madison (Heidi); 10. Al Pacino (Dana Carvey); 11. Bernie Sanders (Sarah); 12. Fran Lebowitz (Bowen); 13. Martha Stewart (Chloe); 14. Janet Jackson (Ego); 15. Charli XCX (Bowen)
• • Did that Allstate ad count as Please Don’t Destroy’s short, or did they get cut? Sub-question: Were they cut for time as a tribute to special guest Kyle Mooney?
• • Oh yeah, Kyle Mooney was there! He’s presumably in New York to promote his movie Y2K (supposedly he’s going to be at a press screening on Monday night). He’s also now part of SNL’s weird but kind of fun unofficial Season 50 guest roster. We’re a third of the way through the season, and every episode has had at least one, usually two or three, past cast members appearing, often more than once. Carvey has absolutely logged more screen time than several cast members (and not just the newbies!). As this becomes less directly tied to dire politically-themed walk-ons, it also becomes more fun: OK, so this season there will sometimes be a Digital Short or a Carvey impression for a little hint of throwback. That works.
• • Where the hell was…? Here’s the part of the recap where I ask where the hell a particular cast member was. Where the hell was Mikey Day? Actually, it’s fine; he’s in a lot of sketches, let him rest.
• • Don’t tell anyone, but my favorite Charli XCX record is Crash.