Saturday Night Live recap: Jason Momoa can't muscle through a clunky ep

He’s our biggest host of season 49—literally. Six-foot-four superstar Jason Momoa returned for his second hosting gig on this week’s Saturday Night Live, with musical performances by Canadian pop star Tate McRae. (He previously hosted back in 2018, with Mumford and Sons as his musical guest). This time around, he’s promoting his Marvel sea-quel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which hits theaters on Friday, December 22.

For Momoa maniacs, consider it a very early Christmas gift, especially given that this is technically this year’s Thanksgiving episode. (The November 25th edition will be a re-run of the Bad Bunny ep, with the show to return live on December 2 with host Emma Stone.) Alas, despite clear gameness from the jolly buff giant, this week’s sketches couldn’t quite match his enthusiasm.

Cold open: A panda and a president

Bowen Yang to the rescue! Just like Mikey Day’s President Joe Biden used Yang’s “slim-thick” panda to distract from hard-hitting topics like his Middle East policy and his handling of the border crisis during a press conference, the SNL standout mercifully livened up an otherwise tired political opener: “As the rare person who identifies as Black, white and Chinese, I feel like I’m in the unique position to unite many peoples of the world. I’m just like another hot Blasian icon, Tiger Woods!”

Monologue: Jason Momoa is, oddly, too short

Did we initially gasp thinking Jason Momoa had shorn his beloved locks à la Harry Styles? The answer is not no. But the hair gods are on our side: that famous mane is still long and luscious. What was chopped short, however, was the host’s opening monologue, which was low on actual jokes and high on Hawaiian pride. The action star shouted out his mom in the audience (“If you see her, be careful, she’s still recovering from giving birth to me”), downplayed his Baywatch beginnings (“You really don’t want to get stuck in the B-hole”) and highlighted his sustainable water company, Mananalu, which he says means “Suck it, Dasani” in Hawaiian. It was a jarringly speedy opener but Momoa has enough natural charm to distract from its brief duration.

Best sketch of the night:

Several bits made use of our host’s considerable size and strength, including a Castaway-inspired romp starring Momoa as a shockingly buff deserted-island survivor, Chloe Fineman in the Helen Hunt role and Andrew Dismukes as her husband who is deeply uncomfortable about their passionate reunion. But the best of the bunch was this sports mockumentary on Charna Lee Diamond (Sara Sherman), a pre-Billie Jean King tennis pro who hosted her own “Battle of the Sexes” match against a male opponent, Momoa’s Ronnie Dunster, a.k.a “the largest man who’d ever played tennis.” Ronnie’s sheer heft meant that not only did Charna lose the game, she also lost her entire intestinal tract when Dunster lobbed a serve directly through her stomach, leaving behind a Death Becomes Her-style hole in poor Charna’s torso. (We can already see Gay Twitter getting their Halloween costumes ready for next year.) Extras points for the ball boy scooping up Charna’s head from the court.

This should have aired a month ago:

Did the writers’ room just download TikTok? The problem with Saturday Night Live not being live every Saturday means that, sometimes, the show is late to respond to a cultural moment. Case in point: this musical number about a group of women (Ego Nwodim, Punkie Johnson, Chloe Troast) wondering what their partners (Jason Momoa, Kenan Thompson, Mikey Day) are thinking about. The answer, of course, is the Roman Empire, a viral trend that circulated on social media earlier this fall. Even The New York Times, a publication chronically behind where digital trends are concerned, covered it back in September. Yawn.

MVP of the night: Bowen Yang

In his four years as an on-air talent (he joined the writing staff ahead of the show’s 44th season), Bowen Yang’s face has become nearly as reliable as Kenan Thompson’s for eliciting an easy, solid chuckle, always just on the brink of breaking. And this week’s ep put that quality to good use, first in the cold open, then as a flight attendant offering commentary on a parade of holiday-travel archetypes (“a woman who took her Ambien a little too early,” “a gentle parenting father and his evil, out of control child” and so on) and most especially during “Weekend Update,” when he popped up as disgraced U.S. Representative George Santos who was recently found to have spent campaign donations on Botox, OnlyFans and designer clothes. “George, this is serious. They’re calling for your expulsion,” Colin Jost told him. “Well then, girl, ‘expul me!” Yang’s Santos sassed, a quip we want a T-shirt of immediately.

Stray observations

• Sorry, Thanksgiving: that throw-to-commercials pan to birthday boy Lorne Michaels lurking in the side-wings was the real jump scare of the holiday.
• Given the comedic week Emma Stone has already had, her December 2 show with musical guest Noah Kahn should be a memorable one: the Poor Things star has been brilliantly trolling the cast of Anyone But You, late-night hosts, and the entire Internet with her co-star Nathan Fielder as promo for The Curse, their new Showtime black comedy.
• Considering we were very much not born in the year of our lord 2003, we were unfamiliar with the musical stylings of this week’s performer, Tate McRae. However, that dance break was convincingly giving early-2000s pop girl, so we approve. Know your references, children.