With her third hosting stint on Saturday Night Live, Ariana Grande brought much-needed Christmas cheer to Studio 8H, leaving Season 51 of the long-running late-nighter better than she found it through her magical holiday touch. The honorary player showcased why she’s a reliable repeat customer, and that’s not even mentioning the responsibility she carried to ensure pal and Wicked co-star Bowen Yang had a proper, meaningful send-off.
Grande, who has been featured as a musical guest twice (once as part of her double-duty in 2016), sang, parodied and disappeared into characters all through the night, flexing her skillset as a host who’s game to try on costumes no matter how ridiculous, impressions no matter how far-fetched.
Kicking the night off with a pitch-perfect monologue, Grande addressed the elephant in the room with a tongue-in-cheek joke; when asked if she would resurrect previous SNL sketches, like the beat-to-death Domingo, she said, to audience laughs, “When something is perfect, it doesn’t need a sequel … What? That’s why I just finished filming Meet the Parents 4.” The two-time Grammy winner also lent her voice to an “All I Want For Christmas Is You” parody, with lyrics like: “I don’t know what to get for Christmas / For my cousin’s boyfriend Steve / I don’t know a thing about him / Only see him on Christmas Eve” and “Is a gift card rude? / What do I get for Christmas for this dude?”
In a similar vein to Grande’s preeminently popular “Castrati” sketch — which she delightfully reincarnated for a brief moment to introduce musical guest Cher‘s second song — “Elf on the Shelf Support Group” married pitiful personas with spot-on comedic timing in what was a standout from tonight. “I wish elves could die,” Grande’s Twinkle Butter bellows as she cries Skittle tears, after a reveal shows viewers she’s been ripped in half by her owners’ new house cat. Mikey Day, whose poor elf is on a shelf in a frat house, laments: “They pose me in ways that aren’t very jolly,” he says, holding up a giant Polaroid of him and Barbie in a compromising sex position. (An added bonus? Everyone’s voice is run through what sounds like a helium speech modulator.)
In a reimagined take on the ending of Home Alone, Grande is Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin, and the sweet familial reunion quickly devolves into a bloody affair as the returning relatives accidentally set off the booby traps she has forgotten to disengage. Yang plays Kieran Culkin’s stand-in, his arms nightmarishly chainsawed off as Ashley Padilla’s Catherine O’Hara equivalent lets out a series of horrified shrieks.
With “Dancing 101,” Grande and Marcello Hernández play under-qualified yet haughty instructors whose graceless teachings yield one of the night’s best lines. The teachers, who have choreographed not one, not two, but three Jardiance commercials believe in the power of dance as literal interpretation, so when Grande spins around and gestures at her veins to indicate she’s not vaccinated, the students are curious to know if that’s actually the case. “You can’t ask me that in RFK’s America,” Grande deadpans, before breaking.
A pastiche of Love Is Blind also offers a highlight, in which Grande’s hopeful bride-to-be Janelle is shocked to discover her partner is the literal Grinch (played by Day). “Hey… What the f…” begins a disconcerted Janelle. “Yeah, I guess it never came up,” the Whoville emigre says, before letting her know he doesn’t actually have a penis and is not really a human being. But, four months on, at the reality show’s reunion, the couple’s love is on full display. They’re even expecting, with the Grinch (ahem, Neil) showing off a sonogram. “Why is he standing up?” Tommy Brennan’s contestant asks about the Baby Grinch in the picture.
Weekend Update — which notably featured Aidy Bryant’s “Trend Forecasters” reunion with Yang — also had its solid lineup of topical jokes: “Well, it’s that time of year when everybody is talking about the man who flies through the air to visit children all over the world: Jeffrey Epstein,” co-anchor Colin Jost said. Of the POTUS’ lack of inclusion in the unearthed documents, he bemoaned, “Donald Trump was my favorite character in the Epstein files; it’s like when House of Cards suddenly stopped starring Kevin Spacey, probably because he had booked a recurring role in the Epstein files.” On RFK’s anti-trans stance, Jost added, “And yet RFK is allowed to slowly transition into Wilson the Volleyball [from Cast Away].”
Update also gave rookie Kam Patterson a chance to shine as co-host Michael Che’s 12-year-old nephew, who’s definitely on the naughty list, but not if he has anything to say (or do) about it first. And, in keeping with yearly tradition, the segment featured its Christmas Joke Swap — except Jost never got the memo. As such, Che took the opportunity to lob more shots at Scarlett Johansson.
“New research shows that millions of women leave the workforce due to menopause, which means there’s only a couple years left on my gravy train,” Jost read, as the screen flashed with an image of his wife. “My girl already be like, ‘Colin, I’m warm. Colin, I’m sweating.’ Bitch, you having a hot flash. But don’t worry about me, I got a backup; they don’t call Wednesday [Jenna Ortega] ‘Hump Day’ for nothing.” If last year is any indication, this is sure to generate reactions from the Eleanor the Great director in the coming weeks.
And last, but certainly not least, just when SNL seemed to have forgotten about giving MVP Yang a curtain call, the episode ended with a heartfelt “Delta Lounge” sketch, featuring a tearful Yang as a retiring crew member.
