Dave Itzkoff is a former culture reporter for The New York Times, but he's still dabbling as their Saturday Night Live correspondent. At the end of Season 51, "Ditzkoff" (his X handle) naturally loved the liberal-pleasing comedy bits in his "Best of SNL" list.
First, Ditz loves the horrendous Colin Jost impression of Pete Hegseth, which has all the comic panache of a guy who's watched Revenge of the Nerds a few too many times. Jost probably screams "Boooger!" into the mirror eight times in his dressing room before heading to the stage.
Recurring character of the season
There are few comedians as good at impersonating President Trump as James Austin Johnson is, but does every cold open have to feature this character? It seemed like “S.N.L.” was going to test this theory, until it was handed a strange gift.
After more than 20 years at the show, a dozen of them as an anchor at the "Weekend Update" desk, Colin Jost turned out to have just the right mixture of preppy looks and fratty rage to play Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an increasingly visible figure during the invasion of Venezuela and the war in Iran. Like a shot of beer with a pint of whiskey dropped into it, Jost gave the cold opens a whole new flavor. Glad to see things are finally going his way.
Let's agree that James Austin Johnson does a good impression of Trump and is actually funny doing it -- he speaks in perfect Trump-speak, and not every sentence sounds like a Bluesky bleat. In other words, he's the polar opposite of Alec "Shooter" Baldwin, who could only channel all his inner rage at Trump and call it an impression. That's the same spirit that Jost seems to be using.
Then there's Jeremy Culhane's Tucker Carlson -- it's a good impression, but it's performed from some sort of comedy time capsule, channeling the Fox News-hosting version of Carlson from about five years ago. Apparently, Team NBC doesn't want to mock the current Tucker, the Israel-hating conspiracist that Mark Levin calls "Qatarlson."
Weekend Update desk character of the season
In his rookie year on “S.N.L.”, Jeremy Culhane, a frequent face on the online comedy platform Dropout, has made entire meals out of seemingly single-serving Weekend Update characters: For example, Mr. On Blast, who punctuates his emphatic opinions with air-keyboard flourishes and entire dance routines. But Culhane’s pièce de résistance was his strangely hypnotic impression of Tucker Carlson, the conservative media personality, whom the actor successfully summed up with an adenoidal laugh and a few repeated conspiratorial turns of phrase. (“That’s the rule. That’s the goal now.”)
And for good measure, we'll throw in Ditzkoff's love for a skit about a MAGA mom having second thoughts about Trump, but her liberal children are having trouble accepting her journey off the Trump trail.
Sketch of the season
In the parlance of an earlier “S.N.L.” era, “Mom Confession” had everything: an inherently political conceit (conservative mother gingerly voices her regret about voting for Trump, and her liberal children freak out); clever camouflage to wrap this premise in the gentle guise of a family gathering; and — oh yes — the perfect, patient timing of Ashley Padilla to make said mom an instantly memorable (and meme-able) character.
The Times writer called this a "classic" as he began:
This year, in Season 51, with none of those [50-year anniversary] distractions to worry about, “S.N.L.” got back to the bits, characters and talent that make it what it is. It found clever ways to satirize the Trump administration without making President Trump the focal point of every segment, minting at least one classic sketch in the process.
