As we mentioned the last time Sabrina Carpenter hosted SNL, there's no substitute for a dedicated SNL host.
He may not be pulling double duty as host and musical guest like Carpenter, but Miles Teller seems to have fully embraced the challenge of returning as host for a second time (the first time was in 2022). The “Top Gun 2: Maverick” star, who will next star in the film “Eternals,” gave a stellar performance and appeared in nearly every sketch, including cold open and two pre-recorded videos.
He made his debut as New York City mayoral candidate and former Governor Andrew Cuomo, with support from Rami Youssef and Sean Gillis as rivals Zoran Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa.
Taylor has since played a Hangover game show contestant recovering from Halloween, a hockey player filming a PSA for the unfortunately named Nashville Predators, and twin real estate brothers in a short video about the current White House renovation.
Teller also created a sketch about a TV newsroom that decided to show viewers what its backstage staff was doing; a Netflix promo about a true-crime story about a husband who doesn't know where his wife is; a story about a police press conference; and a show finale about a goofy Italian restaurant in Nebraska.
Teller handled it well. He had a great accent and got laughs, especially playing two characters at once in a “Property Brothers” sketch and as Como in a cold open.
Musical guest Brandi Carlile performed “Church and State” and “Humanity.”
This week's cold open featured one of the strongest (or at least funnier) political sketches of the season so far, involving the New York mayoral race. Moderated by Errol Lewis (Kenan Thompson), “Saturday Night Live’s most inconspicuous impersonator,” the debate sketches painted Cuomo (Teller) as a sexual harasser pandering to Jewish voters (“Yadda yadda yadda, honking, honking, squeezing, squeezing”) and Mamdani (Youssef) as a forced-laughing, TikTok-flirting candidate he’s pretty sure he won’t do. able to deliver on his promises; and hopeful Sliva (Gillis), an “old-school New York nut” who tells one traumatic story after another. This time, he also sang a song from “The Phantom of the Opera” to end the sketch.
Taylor's monologue was short and simple, recounting how “Saturday Night Live” was a constant as a kid who spent much of his childhood moving around. He shared a photo of himself and his sisters dressed as characters from the show, and then listed memories from the show, such as his first beer in the audience and falling over after a few beers. Taylor mentioned that he and his wife lost their Palisades home in the Los Angeles fires in January. Therefore, he made sure to point out the fire exits for the audience.
Best sketch of the night: The ultimate White House makeover
Real estate brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott (Teller times two) meet their toughest clients yet: Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (Chloe Fineman), who need help with the current White House renovations to make way for a new ballroom. Melania shared her skeleton and dead tree decorations (“They're for Christmas,” she said) as the couple complained that the 55,000 square feet and 132 rooms were not enough space. With a budget of “$350 million to infinity,” the brothers got to work during the government shutdown with the help of park rangers and astronauts. But problems arise when it comes to how much they are paid for their work. “Aren't you Canadians?” the president asked. He then reported it to ICE.
Also good: no one asked for it this High transparency of news
On a show called “Newspoint,” the host (Fineman) and her guest (Thompson) are trying to have a serious news discussion, but because the show opens the entire newsroom to the audience, all the backstage staff are paying attention. These include Mikey Day, who awkwardly notices the camera being trained on him and then spills a basket of drinks; Bowen Yang as a worker who gets electrocuted by a copy machine; and Teller, who has pornographic cartoons displayed on his work screen. It's nice to see some physical comedy in Day, especially the sketch's visual gags which work well.
“Weekend Update” Winner: Jorge Santos is back and as dishonest as ever!
Andrew Dimskix and Ashley Padilla (who should be a regular cast member at this point rather than a featured actor) play a couple who have just made out but are trying to discuss the government shutdown. But it was Young's character, veteran con man Jorge Santos, who stole “Update” (and some jewelry) after Young passed up the chance to play a former representative whose sentence had been commuted by Trump on the final episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Santos claimed he had completed the New York City Marathon, but that had not happened yet, and kept interrupting his chat with “Update” co-host Colin Yost, using his prison window and body-worn phone to field calls from inmates. He claims to have spoken with Ghislaine Maxwell, Luigi Mangione and Sean “Diddy” Combs before revealing that the key to making prison rice pudding is preheating the toilet to 350 degrees. Santos ended the show by showing off the necklace he stole from the Louvre and insisting he had just won the World Series.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.