Saturday Night Live recap: Kate McKinnon brings the holiday cheer

Saturday Night Live’s Christmas episodes aren’t looking for cutting-edge or avant-garde comedy. They’re sketch-comedy at their most comforting, more wistful than weird, so it’s no surprise that the show would bring back one of its most beloved and reliably funny figures, Kate McKinnon, for this year’s holiday edition.

The SNL alum only left the show last year after season 47, though in post-COVID time, that’s about a decade, so it already feels like high time she should make her grand return to the show.

In doing so, McKinnon joins an illustrious group: she becomes the eighth former female SNL cast member to come back as a host, after Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Molly Shannon, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Sarah Silverman. And more than one of those famously funny ladies also pays a visit to Studio 8H to help McKinnon & Co. celebrate the final episode of 2023.

Cold open: Don’t talk politics at Christmas

Yes, it looks like the writers learned after that controversial cold open last week, so this episode, we’re forgoing political commentary entirely.

Instead, we’re at the 95th Annual Christmas Awards, hosted by “two people from the E! Network you’ve never heard of” (played by Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang). Among the categories are “Most Disappointing Gift Given to a 10-Year-Old Boy” (Chloe Fineman’s Gam-Gam wins for buying her grandson pleated khakis instead of a Nintendo Switch) and “Most Unwelcome Uninvited Guest” (nominees include Cousin Mike’s new white girlfriend and a huge untrained bullmastiff.)

It’s not particularly funny but it’s inoffensive stuff, which is more than can be said for last week.

Opening monologue: Home for the holidays

Kate McKinnon kicks off her monologue by acknowledging how weird it is for her to be hosting the whole shebang instead of serving as funny support in the show’s skits and bits. (“I usually play the role of ‘Freak Next to Hot Person.’”) The actress-comedian gives updates on what she’s been up to since leaving SNL, including starring as Weird Barbie in the Greta Gerwig blockbuster Barbie and also injecting her cat with “subcutaneous renal support fluids.”

It’s a joy merely seeing Kate back on that storied stage, but things get better when a tiny piano is slid into frame and even better than that when Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph drop in wearing head-to-toe sequins (“We were just walking by!”), ready to harmonize to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It’s simple, it’s sweet, it’s the holidays—we’ll take it.

The best recurring holiday tradition:

This week’s “Weekend Update” sees the return of Colin Jost and Michael Che’s annual joke swap, a savage tradition in which they “read jokes live on air that the other person has never seen before.” And, as has become hilarious custom, most of the bits involve Che bamboozling the Very Caucasian Colin™ into saying racially insensitive punchlines against his will. This year, however, Mike ups the ante by having poet-author-activist Dr. Hattie Davis watch on as Jost sweats through zingers like calling his famous wife, actress Scarlett Johansson, “an even better black widow than Coretta Scott King.”

Colin gives as good as he gets, though, forcing Che to read: “Last month Beyoncé posted a photo on Instagram of herself in a chrome Versace dress and platinum blonde hair that many people online described as ‘too white…in fact, Beyoncé looked so white that I was finally attracted to her.” Good stuff.

The best sketch of the night:

Gird your loins: we’ve got McKinnon doing her best Brandi Carlile cosplay, earthily crooning behind an acoustic guitar in a field. What initially sounds like a silly country-folk song (“She’s wearing a bandana, she’s eating a banana / Her clothes are made of burlap, her horse’s name is Hannah”) soon enough turns into an ode to…tampon “farms” and the women working them. “Tampon farm, women making cotton, cotton for the tampons, tampons for the blood, tampon farm!” sings McKinnon and a slew of special guests, including Wiig, Rudolph, Eilish and former SNL writer Paula Pell. And in case it’s not already obvious, yes, we will definitely be humming this ditty next time we’re in the feminine care aisle of Duane Rade.

MVP(s) of the night: Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig

Rudolph and Wiig made several cameos throughout the episode, from the opening monologue to that “Tampon Farms” hit, but this album in-faux-mercial was the most gloriously giddy.

Not to be outdone by Cher and her new Christmas album (DJ play a Christmas so-oong), Swedish pop supergroup ABBA are back plugging their own holiday album in an in-faux-mercial, featuring “15 brand new Christmas classics and 85 holiday remakes of their existing songs” like “Santa Queen” and the “Chiquitita”-inspired “Frostitita.” It’s “perfect for everyone, from mothers to their gay sons!”

The rub is the “Fleetwood Mac of the cold” is being portrayed by McKinnon, Wiig, Rudolph and Bowen Yang, each sporting horrifyingly shiny holiday outfits and even worse wigs, which means that the quartet can barely get through the bit without breaking. Watching Kristen and Maya sing into each other’s mouths in terrible Swedish accents is the only holiday gift we could ever want.

Stray observations

• Not to be outdone by her pop contemporary Olivia Rodrigo from last week, musical guest Billie Eilish served up a stunning pair of performances this episode. The first, introduced by McKinnon and Gerwig, was a moving rendition of the Barbie ballad “What Was I Made For?” set against a backdrop of childhood photos of the show’s female cast members. And in case that didn’t make you weepy enough, Eilish and her producer-pianist brother Finneas were back for a cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” fake falling snow and all.
• Saturday Night Live will return on January 20 with Saltburn–slash–Priscilla star Jacob Elordi as host and Reneé Rapp as the musical guest, in case you’re wondering why the nearest 12-year-old is screaming.
• Now that we’re at the last episode of 2023, who has been your favorite host of season 49 so far? Adam Driver? Timothée Chalamet? Emma Stone? Sound off in the comments!