Sorry, dads: Because your holiday doesn’t come until June, when “Saturday Night Live” is in reruns, you don’t get anything special from “S.N.L.” But moms, since Mother’s Day arrives the morning after the second-to-last live episode of the season — when everyone at the show has an eye on the door and is saving those last few drops of topical content for the finale — you get a whole brunch-load of “S.N.L.” sketches dedicated to motherhood, beginning with a now-traditional segment in which the cast members trade jokes with their real-life mothers.
This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, which was hosted by Maya Rudolph and featured the musical guest Vampire Weekend, used the occasion of Mother’s Day to take a break from opening sketches that satirize current events, much to the disappointment of Kenan Thompson’s mother. “That’s too bad,” she said, standing on the stage of Studio 8H with her son. “I was excited to see who was going to play Stormy Daniels.”
Andrew Dismukes’s mom shared embarrassing photos of her son in the bathtub, the mothers of Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang told jokes intended for the Netflix roast of Tom Brady, and Sarah Sherman’s mom pitched her daughter an idea: “R.F.K. Jr. said they found a worm in his brain — you could be the worm,” she said. (Stash that away in your own brains for later.)
Rudolph, the “S.N.L.” alumna who returned to host for her third time, used her opening monologue to note the fact that she not only is a mother of four children — she is mother. That ubiquitous bit of internet slang was the framework for a surprisingly synchronized live musical number (à la Madonna’s “Vogue”) where Rudolph navigated some quick costume changes, referenced her roles in movies like “Bridesmaids” and her past “S.N.L.” impersonations of Vice President Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey, while also shouting out other beloved female “S.N.L.” characters like the Sweeney Sisters, Debbie Downer and Mary Katherine Gallagher.
If all of that wasn’t enough to make you O.D. on M-O-M, there was also a filmed segment featuring Rudolph as a beleaguered mother repeatedly rescuing her daughter from slumber parties, and Heidi Gardner offering Mother’s Day gift suggestions on Weekend Update as the character A Woman Who Says She’s Not Mad. Oh, mother.
Welcome rerun of the week
Yes, technically, “S.N.L.” did do a Beyoncé-goes-on-“Hot Ones” sketch the last time that Rudolph hosted, in 2021. But with that online celebrity talk show back in the zeitgeist with some help from another “S.N.L.” alum, Conan O’Brien, it’s as good a time as any for Mikey Day to dust off the bald cap and play the “Hot Ones” host Sean Evans and for Rudolph to once again assume the role of Queen Bey.
This time, Day’s questions were nominally about Beyoncé’s hit country album “Cowboy Carter,” while Rudolph downed spicy chicken wings and tried to soothe herself by ingesting cocoa butter.
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on Stormy Daniels’s testimony in the New York hush-money trial of former President Donald Trump.
Jost began:
This week in court, Stormy Daniels gave a detailed description of sex with Donald Trump, which was so disgusting, even the sky turned green. [His screen showed a picture of aurora borealis. It then showed a courtroom illustration of Daniels on the witness stand.] Stormy Daniels, seen here as drawn by the creator of “Cathy,” was accused by Trump’s lawyers of lying about their affair for profit. Which would make her the only person to do business with Trump and make money. It’s also been implied that Stormy Daniels got into bed with Trump and let him do whatever he wanted just to advance her career. You know, like every Republican. [His screen showed pictures of Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.]
Che continued:
Stormy Daniels testified that during their encounter, Donald Trump did not wear a condom. He tried to put one on but he was blocked by his tie. Stormy Daniels testified at Donald Trump’s hush money trial and was asked to list some of the movies she’s worked on. After she finished, the judge banged the gavel and opened oral arguments … were the names of the movies.
Weekend Update desk character of the week
Hey, remember that pitch that Sarah Sherman’s mother gave her daughter in this weekend’s opening sketch? Well, hopefully mom got a writing credit or a nice little royalty, because they used it in the episode.
Sherman returned to the Weekend Update desk dressed in layers of wrinkly pink skin while sipping from a sizable cup as a character identified as “R.F.K. Jr.’s Brain Worm.” “Look at this guy,” Sherman said, pointing to a photograph of a shirtless Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “What worm wouldn’t love this? He looks like a pack of chicken thighs that someone left out in the sun.”
She went on to say that Kennedy’s body was “a worm’s paradise, OK? Not a single drop of vaccine in sight.”
