Saturday Night Live recap: Adam Driver remains a deranged delight

We’re two for two, folks: coming off of a solid episode last week, hosted by newly minted Five Timers Club member Emma Stone, Adam Driver pulled into Saturday Night Live last night for his fourth time as host, in promotion for his upcoming role as ex-racer turned auto emperor Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann’s Ferrari.

With Gen Z pop icon Olivia Rodrigo as musical guest, the unlikely pairing already had TikTok-breaking potential, but the episode also solidified Driver as a VIP SNL host, a gifted dramatic actor who also just happens to have killer comedic instincts and a wholehearted gameness to immerse himself in any idea, no matter how ludicrous. (Yes, that includes dick-shaped chocolate Santas and babies with giant man heads, but more on all that in a bit.) We very much see one of those famed Five Timers Club jackets in Driver’s future.

Opening monologue: A serenade for Santa

To celebrate his favorite holiday (“largely because I have a very deep and personal relationship with Santa”), Driver took to the baby grand for a musical rendition of his Christmas list, in lieu of a traditional opening monologue. (And in case you were wondering if that was really the star tickling the ivories, he prompted a close-up of his “very big hands.” Somewhere, the entirety of Wattpad is exploding.) “It’s me, Adam Driver, from the Nice List and also Girls,” the actor reminded Jolly Old Saint Nick before asking for five pairs of Chinos, a Tesla Cybertruck to pair perfectly with his “teeny, tiny micro penis” and for all of the people from those “TikToks where the couples do pranks on each other” to die.

The most relatable sketch of the night:

Finally, SNL has tackled one of the grossest realties of adulthood: having to hear that your friends are raw-dogging it on the regular, a.k.a. “trying” for a baby. (Nobody needs to know your semen status, Deborah.) This sketch bitingly poked fun at the TMI phenomenon, having three couples gathered at a wintry log cabin discuss their own fertility plans. The rub? One twosome is a same-sex duo (played by Driver and Bowen Yang) who refuse to let biology hinder their baby-making aims. (“Are you going to adopt?” “No, we’re just gonna try!”) Along with excellent details including Yang’s “pregnancy” cravings (ham and cocaine) and how many holes they’ve “tried” it in so far (3 out of 7), Driver’s poker-faced interjections (“And that’s on period”) made this one a snarky standout.

The second most relatable sketch of the night:

Going home for the holidays often means running into characters from your past. Such is the case for this digital short, which finds Jake (Mikey Day) making plans to reconnect with his childhood best friend Keith (Driver). That is, until Keith’s texts become more illuminating about what he’s been up to all these years and therefore increasingly more alarming. (“Is it more than 1,000 feet from a school?” he asks when Jake suggests a bar for their reunion.) Eventually, we find out that Keith was the subject of a Netflix documentary called The Man With 600 Kids, about a sperm-bank janitor who secretly switched hundreds of donor samples with his own. The moral of the story? Delete your Facebook app, ASAP.

The “gift to every millennial woman watching” sketch:

Okay, sure, the Save the Last Dance renaissance happened on social media well over a month ago, so Chloe Fineman popping up during “Weekend Update” to do a spot-on hop-and-point impersonation of Julia Stiles’ iconic Julliard audition scene from that 2001 teen dance flick might’ve felt a bit behind schedule. That is, until Stiles herself joined the comedian, ballet leotard and all, for that big, dorky chair-dance finale. A holiday gift, indeed.

The best sketch of the night:

Imagine Look Who’s Talking as a horror film: Adam Driver plays an “overcooked” baby experiencing his first ever flight with his mother (Sarah Sherman). (“You mean, 11 months and 15,000 days?” Kenan quips upon seeing the large-headed “baby monster.”) Again, Driver sucking down a baby’s bottle will no doubt awaken a very specific subset of the Internet, but it’s his hysterically accurate depictions of an infant’s inner dialogue—he dubs an iPad “the Peppa Pig device!” and the disappearance of his favorite teddy bear during peek-a-boo earns his mom a “Christ, he’s gone! You killed him, you bitch!”—that certifies this super-silly bit as one of the season’s best.

MVP of the night: Adam Driver

Honestly, nobody was as ferociously game or as genuinely funny as Driver himself was this week, whether playing an infomercial chocolatier whose Willy Wonka-esque creations lean a little too heavy on the willy end of things, or a heavily mustached suburban dad who becomes embroiled in an escalating feud over the buffet placement of a Christmas casserole. Next week’s host, returning SNL great Kate McKinnon, has some serious competition.

Stray observations

• And it wasn’t just the comedy that was high-quality this week: Olivia Rodrigo’s musical performances were a pop-rocking good time, featuring a piano-and-vocals rendition of the singer’s GUTS lead single “Vampire,” followed by a punky, pissed-off production of “All-American Bitch” that saw Rodrigo gleefully destroying a tea party.
• The December 16th episode, hosted by Kate McKinnon with musical guest Billie Eilish, marks the last one of 2023, so we’ve got to ask: who’s had your favorite episode so far this season? Sound off!