Saturday Night Live recap: Kristen Wiig gets a starry induction into the Five-Timers Club

Just a few months after our most recent inductee into the Five-Timers Club—that would be Emma Stone, who hit her fifth hosting gig this past December—we saw another 30 Rock regular receive one of those coveted smoking jackets on this week’s edition of Saturday Night Live: that would be SNL legend Kristen Wiig, who joins fellow former cast members like Chevy Chase, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell in the elite group

Wiig, who was a daffy and dominant force during her seven-year tenure on the sketch comedy series from 2005 to 2012, is making the promo rounds for her new Apple TV+ series Palm Royale. And while diehard fans might be disappointed not to see the return of the comedienne’s most famous original characters—spoiler alert: there’s no Gilly, Dooneese or Target Lady to be found—Wiig leveraged both her own comic genius and plenty of her famous pals to put on one of the best installments of the season.

Opening monologue: Five time’s a charm

After a very skippable March Madness cold open—it felt like such a missed opportunity to not have Sarah Sherman pop in for a Caitlin Clark cameo—Wiig’s opening monologue livened things up with Hollywood cameos galore. Fellow SNL greats like Will Forte, Fred Armisen and Martin Short returned to Studio 8H to honor this week’s host, as did actual Five Timer Paul Rudd.

But then some decidedly non-Five Timers Club members like Girls5Eva’s Paul Pell, Matt Damon, Jon Hamm and Ryan Gosling showed up to jokingly downplay the jacket’s significant (“They pretty much hand those out to everybody like free maxi pads!”) before sweetly serenading Kristen.

Lorne & Co. clearly have a soft spot for Wiig—her “She’s a Rainbow”-soundtracked farewell episode was one of the most moving editions of the decades-spanning franchise—and her Five Timers Club induction was no exception. (Speaking of Lorne’s favorites, loved seeing that Martin Short can still break him.)

The best drinking game of the night:

If you took a drink every time the word “Jumanji” was uttered last night, you’d very much be unalive right now. In this silly sketch, Wiig plays a woman meeting her boyfriend’s buddies (Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman, Andrew Dismukes) during a casual house hang.

However, things take a turn when one of them suggests breaking out a boardgame, which Wiig’s character refuses to play because she’s afraid of getting “Jumanji’d.” Why? Because “Jumanji is a series of jungle emergencies,” of course. The comedy continues to crank up the more furiously Wiig and Dismukes debate the details of the 1995 Robin Williams-led children’s movie. (“The kids don’t go into Jumanji, the Jumanji comes out of Jumaji!”) Good stuff.

The best satire of the night:

“From the creator of Saw X and the marketing director of Alo comes a chilling new look at girl horror,” begins this sharply written movie trailer for the horror film Pilates, which features Chloe Fineman and Molly Kearney attending a Pilates class for the first time.

Anyone who has been menacingly called “Mama!” while entering a yoga-studio torture chamber of foot straps, hand straps and “one pound” dumbbells knows exactly what chills and thrills lie ahead. Namely, “eight gorgeous women, one gay man not wearing underwear and, sometimes, Kaia Gerber.”

The best character break of the night:

Hooray for Heidi Gardner! She officially has a recurring character in Trudy, the uber-dedicated secretary the performer debuted back in the Pete Davidson-hosted season 49 premiere. This time around, Trudy has company in Tootie (Wiig), the second secretary of a Don Draper-esque boss (played, naturally, by Jon Hamm) who is equally eager but ineffectual. (Yes, she picked up her boss’s baby daughter, but may be housing said infant in a fine-cabinet drawer.)

Garner and Wiig ham it up with the physical comedy here, jostling around a cocktail shaker between their chests and flailing about in their undergarments, but the skit gets good when it goes wrong: when Wiig as Trudy struggles to fling herself through the office desk, requiring the comic to hysterically attempt a take two. And any remaining composure the actors had is entirely tossed aside when Gardner fail-flops through a breakaway wall.

The best (and only) return of a Wiig classic:

As mentioned, Wiig didn’t utilize her Rolodex of recurring characters much during her fifth hosting gig, but we did see get a characteristically eyeroll-heavy “Weekend Update” cameo from Aunt Linda, that perpetually cranky Karen of a film critic. A lot has changed in the 14 years since Linda last paid us a visit: she’s divorced, for one, and the “Update” seats are occupied by entirely new people, not that she’s noticed. (To Colin Jost: “Well, hello Seth! Someone’s gotten some work done.”)

Aunt Linda has finally caught up on the biggest movies of last year and she has thoughts. She wasn’t the biggest fan of Oppenheimer (“directed by Christopher No-Thanks!”) and she didn’t take to America Ferrara’s feminist-101 monologue in Barbie (“I love wearing a bra!”). But even grumpy Linda couldn’t deny the infectious charm of Ryan Gosling (“He’s very hard to make fun of”), nor the power of the Paw Patrol movie. (“Dogs saving the world in uniforms? Here’s my alley and this movie went straight up it!)

Stray observations

• Though delightful, the Gosling cameo last night wasn’t entirely a shock: Ryan is imbuing Studio 8H with his Kenergy as SNL host next week, April 13, to promote his new action-comedy The Fall Guy. He’ll be joined by country crooner Chris Stapleton as musical guest.
• What do you think of the Five Timers Club? Does it still host the same panache as in the past or is the frequency dulling the prestige?