Cecily Strong Crashes Walton Goggins’ Night for Mother’s Day

The White Lotus, Righteous Gemstones and Fallout star took the stage for the first time and he did everything that was asked of him. Based on what we saw, except for one sketch where he could not stay in character, Walton was not the problem. He was poorly served by half-baked sketches and sloppy writing.

Even cameo appearances by Sam Rockwell and Cecily Strong, while they made for great moments in themselves, could not save the show from itself. There were definitely a lot of big laughs and funny scenes throughout the night, but so many of the sketches were either marred by bad or frustrating endings, or just a lack of digging deeper into the material for bigger laughs.

We did get some sincerity for Mother’s Day, though of course Donald Trump had to come along and ruin that, too. James Austin Johnson crashed the monologue because of course he did, but it was the return of Strong’s drunken Judge Jeanine Pirro who really stole the show with her surprise appearance opposite Trump and Colin Jost, of all people, as Pete Hegseth.

Next week, the season wraps with Jost’s wife, Scarlett Johansson, taking the hosting gig. She’s always brought reliable laughs in her many previous appearances, with this gig also leading some to speculate it could possible be Jost’s last. Could his wife take him away from all of this?

The “Weekend Update” anchor already has the fourth-longest tenure of any cast member, with co-host Michael Che tied for fifth just behind him. Season 50 marks the end of an era no matter how you look at it, but could it also mark the end of the longest-running “Update” team of all time?

Other players who are getting deep into their runs and might be ready to go, aside from Kenan Thompson (of course), include Mikey Day at nine seasons, Heidi Gardner at eight, and Ego Nwodim at seven, which marks the end of the initial SNL contract. Could any of them be ready to sail on to brighter and newer things?

How about Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman (six seasons each), or even Andrew Dismukes (at five)? Or the biggest question of all … will he or won’t he? Would Lorne Michaels retire on-camera, or try to quietly shuffle off after a season? Or will he ever even retire?

And then there are this season’s new featured players, Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim, and Jane Wickline. All have had brief moments to shine — Jane gets one tonight — but Ashley has certainly had the biggest breakout success as an ensemble performer, followed by Emil. Can all three survive? We may get some ideas in or after next week’s show.

As usual, we’re ranking all the sketches from worst to first, including the Monologue, Cold Open, “Weekend Update” and any sketches that were cut for time but made their way online. We’ll skip the musical guests, because they’re not usually funny — unless Ashlee Simpson shows up. We wrap up with a look at the cast-member who had the strongest week.

This could have been a lot more chaotic — we thought the dogs would storm the stage — but it still had its charm. The premise was certainly there for laughs, and we found a few with prop dog arms for silly things, but we’d have probably enjoyed it more had the dogs been doing dog things instead of acting like theater patrons who just weren’t enjoying the production. Walton Goggins and Heidi Gardner were doing fine as the subpar leads with an unexpected twist, but the whole sketch didn’t bring nearly the joy it should have.

Walton Goggins stumbled his way through some of these lines a little too much, but the overall premise was a success as he portrays a waiter taking his flirting with two moms further than their sons are certainly comfortable with. Both Heidi Gardner and Sarah Sherman were hamming it up as the moms loving all of the sexual innuendos, and more overt commentary, while Andrew Dismukes and Mikey Day were great as their uncomfortable sons. If Walton could have avoided giggling and losing his composure when confronting them, the hits would have landed more effectively, but it was still an enjoyable piece.

“Guns.” For Walton Goggins’ first-ever sketch on Saturday Night Live, he was told to play it cool and say as little as possible. And yet, he made a huge impact as “Matt,” a member of the first United States Congress that proposed the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Now, they could have gone a lot of directions with this early focus on the right to bear arms, but we kind of like the simplicity of Matt’s take, which was to just be cooler than everyone else in the room and get this right enshrined in the constitution. We also like that the sketch itself didn’t wear out its welcome, knowing when to cut and run.

What was taken from us by Trump in the Cold Open was returned in spades when Walton Goggins went from decrying headlines about him being an unlikely sex symbol considering — you know — his looks, to celebrating his mom. Just the key change in his vocal delivery as he shifted to talking about his tough upbringing, raised by his mom, aunts, and grandmother. But the icing on the cake was when he had the bad “kick it up a notch” like the old honky-tonk days so he and mom could two-step and clog on home base together. It was such a sweet and sincere moment, pure to the two of them, that we got the feels we like having on a Mother’s Day episode. Thanks, Walton Goggins’ mom (Janet Long)!

While we were expecting a reprise of the ghoulish dining experience from earlier this season, we found ourselves enjoying this ill-prepared death-staurant sketch with its inept staff, ill-prepared backstory and most importantly, the performances of Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim, talking in tandem at times and having no good responses. Ashley Padilla continues to impress with how she delivers a straight roll with little touches of humanity. The sketch didn’t really go anywhere, but it was charming in its off-beat way.

Colin Jost and Michael Che tore into Trump from a variety of angles in this first segment, from his AI depictions of himself as a Sith lord and the Pope, to talks of reopening Alcatraz and creating tension between Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. Jost also laughed off concerns the new Pope would be “woke” because, um, being a woke Catholic just means you aren’t Catholic anymore. Che got some groans for his carefully worded attack about Catholics and “juvenile” humor like the AI Pope image, but they definitely were not pushing this audience as much as usual. Either that, or the audience was just a bit more sleepy.

Marcello Hernández’s recurring Movie Guy character is offering us diminished returns in each subsequent appearance, and this one was perhaps the least funny of them all. From the schtick of mispronouncing names to the random Garfield joke and him, of course, not seeing any of the summer films he was there to talk about, Movie Guy just didn’t have anything funny to say. As recurring characters go, this might be the worst active one right now.

The big laughs and shocked groans they missed out on the first round, the boys found in bucket-loads here with jokes about Lisa’s not-Rose-Parks image on her crotch and a later joke about the r-word’s growth in usage. Che got both of the big reactions, first for praising Parks for being “in the front” and then getting more laughs from Movie Guy’s catchphrase than the whole character got. Then, when he pointed out that Elon Musk and Kanye West using the r-word is leading to increased usage, he explained it with, “Yeah, but they can say it because — — they’re rich.” Later, Che got another great reaction with his explanation for how Smokey Robinson “plans to beat” allegations of sexual assault by former housekeepers as they wrapped up strong.

Mikey Day came out to talk about tariffs as “guy who just walked into a spider web” and this was the kind of physical comedy SNL used to be known for in the early days and has largely strayed away from. Mikey went all in, convinced that there was a spider on him, and the way he said “skin” has our skin crawling. We’ve all been there, Mikey, though we may not have freaked out quite as much. Wow, did he nail this delivery, though. Just beautiful madness and chaos.

To find out all about visiting New York, you definitely want to get advice from a woman who only knows what she’s read on Facebook. The misinformation was flowing as Heidi Gardner shared the ludicrous stories that have her afraid to leave her hotel or lose sight of her bag as she fails to take in any of the sights. You don’t want sunglasses to replace your memories with porn, do you?!

It’s always a treat when you’re not quite sure where a sketch is going, and that’s definitely what we got with this rare Jane Wickline feature. The new cast member took the lead as a woman who found a tiny baby shoe in a zoo and began looking for its owner, prepared to be that baby’s mama — even if it already has one. But then, she found who owned the shoe and things took a drastic turn with false expectations, a surprise appearance by Sam Rockwell, and a full-blown moral lesson at the end of this charming (and very weird) musical number. We wish Jane had gotten more spotlights like this early on, because she’s got a unique comedic approach and it’s gone almost completely unseen this season.

We have no idea what to think about the wild turn at the end, but were totally on board with everything up to that point as Andrew Dismukes took an innocent discovery in the bathroom of his boss after making partner and let his imagination run wild. Sarah Sherman and Walton Goggins were hilarious in his imaginings of them as things got more and more absurd. If it could have landed a coherent punchline at the end, this would have been a classic.

SNL set the stage for another sweet Mother’s Day opening with Marcello Hernández, Kenan Thompson, and Bowen Yang hitting center stage with their moms and even starting to sing a special song for them. Unfortunately, this is the era of Trump 2.0 and he takes over every conversation, every moment, every holiday. And so, James Austin Johnson’s Trump came out and ushered everyone else off stage. He was a little more animated and almost giddy in his delivery of many of his lines, presenting almost a carefree take on the usual bumbling buffoon word salad, but the highlight came a little later.

As soon as the real Trump announced Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro as his interim U.S. Attorney for D.C., we knew they’d at least try to get Cecily Strong back. But they did us one even better. Not only did Strong come back, with her bottle of wine in a satchel, but Colin Jost actually entered a sketch for the second time in a row. This time, he portrayed Pete Hegseth, seemingly just so Cecily’s Pirro could spit wine in his face again like she used to on “Weekend Update.” And it was just as daft and delightful here.

Heidi Gardner was definitely our most prolific cast member in a week that didn’t see a lot of great lead opportunities for anyone. But she always manages to make the most out of the moments she does find, juxtaposing a 100-year-old woman, with a theatrical diva, and a great paranoid woman on the “Update” desk.

The night was almost hers, but we have to give credit for the breakout moment of the night, coming from one of the show’s most reliable performers and voices. On top of that, Mikey Day proves he can bring laughs with an array of different personalities, as well, like we saw in the 2nd Amendment sketch, and his turn as a son frustrated with the watier aggressively flirting with his mom.

But there’s just no way to deny the complete abandon with which he threw himself into his character as a guy who just walked into a spider-web, nor the complete abandon with which he threw himself around the set. It wasn’t just the physicality, either, as his line deliveries were so masterfully given, Mikey embodied that discomfort in a way that was uncomfortable for us, too — but also hilarious!

Saturday Night Live returns next week for its Season 50 finale with host Scarlett Johansson and musical guest Bad Bunny.