Lady Gaga was a dynamic, engaged host in the well-written sketches prepared for her, and her musical performances raised the bar high in terms of the visual spectacles Saturday Night Live is capable of presenting. Here's everything that happened on SNL this week.
The Cold Open
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio were in the White House, discussing the latter's conflicts with Elon Musk. James Austin Johnson played Trump as deranged as usual, while Marcello Hernández portrayed Rubio as Trump-subservient but also annoyed by his predicament. Mike Myers returned to play Musk as a frenetic alien-robot man-child, who irked Rubio to no end. Myers scored points for conflating Musk with his own Dr. Evil creation, and the satire here was likely just sharp enough to bother its real-life targets.
The Monologue
Lady Gaga joked about her age and her 2013 appearance on the show with R. Kelly. She also repeatedly stressed how well or not-great her acting career is going. Bowen Yang appeared to behave nervously before Gaga mentioned the story of her engagement, which was funny, although most of this monologue was written to elicit applause breaks, which was theatre kid-contrived and off-putting (but still more charming than last week's Shane Gillis fiasco).
Rideable Luggage
Marcello Hernández and Gaga played a couple with a dog, who were parting because she was studying to become a chef in Paris. He gave her a motorized piece of luggage, which she took all the way to the airport. On the freeway, she was approached by a Hell's Angels-like trio of other luggage riders. This led to a ride through studio 8H, all of which was a bit chaotic and somewhat amusing display of physical comedy.
SNL Midnight Matinee: Pip
The recurring Midnight Matinee short films returned, this time as a musical starring Gaga, singing an inspirational song about a high school weightlifting competition where one of the unlikely competitors was a mouse named Pip. When the roof collapsed, Pip saved… most of the victims, which was darkly funny.
Wonderful Tonight
Bowen Yang, outfitted as a ridiculous yuppy, played a character on a date with Gaga, and the pair soon began dancing in a restaurant, while singing a parody of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight." This was absurd and good.
The Fun in Funeral
Gaga and Heidi Gardner played Greta and Elyse, funeral directors comforting a couple played by Ego Nwodim and Andrew Dismukes, who were mourning her father. Things quickly took a turn when Greta and Elyse started pitching strange funeral themes like "the roaring '20s," which was perplexing.
L'Oreal Easy Run Mascara
In this remote, many of the cast's women took part in an ad campaign about a mascara that purposefully ran to make women look like they're upset, which was pretty amusing.
Lady Gaga
Apparent super fan Bowen Yang excitedly introduced Gaga's first musical performance, which featured her dressed in red, encased inside a glass house and surrounded by dancers in black, moving their bodies spookily while blasting through "Abracadabra." It was a classic, theatrical performance with sonic echoes of Madonna (and even past Gaga hits) by the peerless pop music icon.
Again with the utterly unique staging, Gaga and her crew began "Killah" in the backstage hallways of SNL, lurching their way to the stage while performing a song that was so derivative of David Bowie, it even stole the main guitar lick from "Fame." Still, it's hard to imagine a musical guest on this show ever topping this spectacle.
Weekend Update
Colin Jost launched Update by reminding us to set our clocks ahead four years, before sending up Trump's war in Canada. Michael Che got groans for a soccer joke, but he too went after Trump's bizarre tariff threats against Mexico and Canada. Jost called Elon Musk "white Kanye," which was funny as hell, and Che also joked about Musk's numerous children. Jost had a good joke about the prospect of DJT Jr. running for president in 2028.
Che introduced us to Kenan Thompson's impression of the very irritating ESPN NBA analyst, Kendrick Perkins, who spat terribly incorrect facts and bad takes, just like the real thing.
Che told us about Sesame Street layoffs with a saucy Cookie Monster visual gag, while Jost pined for lesbian dolls. Jost also reported on a former Starbucks manager suing for discrimination by his gay staff members, while Che got a huge laugh for a Labia Puffs/Honey Smacks joke.
Mikey Day appeared as Gaga's husband, Lord Gaga, a British textile baron who seemed to be from the 18th century. Lord Gaga made several Gaga song puns, and amusingly told us the story of their lives. This wound up being a sharp roast of Jost's relationship with Scarlett Johansson and was rather great.
Friendly's
A quartet of friends were eating at a Friendly's when one of them revealed that he'd lied to the staff about one of them celebrating a birthday. Instead of a birthday song, a dark, bloody, Temple of Doom ritual began to punish the faker, all of which was ambitious, hilarious and impressive.
Little Red Glasses
Gaga, Sarah Sherman and Ego Nwodim were in a fake, in-studio commercial for little red glasses for older women who are hip, but aging out of it. Other cast members got in on the action, which made this overly long but, given that it was an end-of-the-night time-killer, its expansiveness made sense.
No More Slay
Oh wait, there was one more — and it was good. At a restaurant gathering of annoying friends, Gaga and Bowen Yang played characters singing a song condemning people still using tired and appropriated phrases like "slay," "bop," and anything else that 40 year olds desperately trying to stay young by speaking in memes and online lingo do. Really astute and sharp stuff that was giving snark (sorry).