First-time Saturday Night Live host Teyana Taylor is a woman of many talents — she’s a model, Grammy-nominated singer and seems to be a shoo-in for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar this year for her turn as the formidable and enigmatic Perfidia Beverly Hills in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.
As she joked during her opening monologue tonight, she’s lived many lives — from appearing on MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 to winning The Masked Singer Season 7.
The Harlem-born multihyphenate and current culinary school attendee said during the opening that she’s like a “Glade plug-in.” “Why only plug me into the bathroom when I can make the whole building smell good?”
Indeed. Which is why it can be so frustrating to see Taylor — who has clear comedic and dramatic chops in equal measure — be given middling material on the late-nighter. The evening kicked off with a flat note, even as Taylor and Kenan Thompson literally hit the right ones during an airport sketch where they play two staff workers informing passengers via song that their flights are woefully delayed.
As part of a singing duo Shrimp & Grits, the two parody famous tracks to let the impatient crowd know there’s “no wings” on their plane. When the wings are located, James Austin Johnson’s pilot is unfortunately drunk — news he delivers by covering a couple of lines from “Blame It” and “4 Minutes.”
In “NFL on ESPN,” what begins as typical coverage of the AFC Championship Game by Joe Buck (Johnson), Troy Aikman (Andrew Dismukes) and Lisa Salters (Taylor) quickly devolves into promo for a new show called “Quefs,” which is “a steamy new lesbian culinary drama” that ends up guest-starring Gavin Newsom. Here, as later in the episode, much of the humor comes from the one-note joke about “Quefs” sounding like a certain other word missing an extra “e.”
Capping off the episode is a stand-alone pretaped sketch from Martin Herlily that eschews Taylor as a guest star entirely. While funny enough — Herlily stars as a man increasingly desperate to get his girlfriend to break up with him in this on-brand tongue-in-cheek skit — it’ll be interesting to see if SNL will release another cut-for-time sketch with Taylor (as it did for last week’s host Finn Wolfhard) tomorrow.
Despite some misses, some of the material gave Taylor breadth to play. In one uproarious sketch, she stars as an eightysomething grandpa to Kam Patterson’s newlywed. Despite using a walker, Taylor — donning a bald cap and fake belly — can’t resist the groove when the DJ (Mikey Day) plays the infectious music of Earth, Wind & Fire. At one point, she’s doubled over and grinding on Ashley Padilla’s bride and at another, a stunt actor is called in to gleefully breakdance. When the patriarch collapses, Johnson’s doctor solemnly informs the family that his “bones are all gone” and turned to “powder.” Before panic can set in, the DJ jumps to the rescue, reviving gramps’ hips with the power of music. (Before SNL cut to commercial, Taylor could be seen continuing to tear up the dance floor, as a crew member moved to usher her to her next sketch, exemplifying her joyful commitment to the bit.)
An obligatory and pretaped “Toy Commercial” sketch spoofed a series of One Battle After Another action figures for children, the humor of which largely leaned on how mature the themes of the film are for kids. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio’s burnout revolutionary comes equipped with a joint, while Benicio Del Toro’s sensei relies on “a few small beers.” In a final kicker, Mattel has even released a “PTA master set,” featuring Daniel Day-Lewis’ “I’ve abandoned my child” monologue from There Will Be Blood.
Another decent standout is “Backstab Island,” featuring Taylor as the sole reality show contestant who’s genuinely there to make friends. The sketch includes some zingers: “My personality disorder is my greatest advantage,” Chloe Fineman’s character quips. “I’m here to burn bridges and show off my body on TV,” says Marcello Hernandez’s contestant.
And, keeping in tradition with what Season 51 has showcased all year, Padilla nails it in “Confidence Class,” playing self-help coach Cassidy Flask who could use a little guidance herself. The writing here is sharp, the visual aids are brilliant and Padilla is so dialed in that her breaks seem completely earned.
In “Beyond the Headlines,” SNL seems to do a more solemn version of “Mid-Day News,” the bygone SNL segment that featured alumna Ego Nwodim and Thompson as two anchors struggling to hide their reactions when the races of certain criminals are revealed. What starts off as a strong political commentary — in which Day and Fineman’s journalists awkwardly attempt to characterize the U.S. as anything but aggressive toward policing and imperialism (Thompson at one point quips, “Has she met America?”) — loses steam when it loses focus. Instead of leaning into the disparities between the two Americas experienced by the privileged and the marginalized, respectively, the sketch plays it a bit tame when Taylor concludes the segment with: “Next up, we talk to a woman whose job was replaced by AI; not artificial intelligence but former NBA star Allen Iverson.” (It’s worth noting: SNL Season 51 is the first time in a decade where no Black women are represented in the cast.)
On “Weekend Update,” co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che went after President Donald Trump (and his supposed plans for Greenland) and ICE. Meanwhile, guests on the desk were Hernandez (serving as a “Gen Z translator” for Jost with the standout line: “Basically Black people start saying something, then young people think it’s cool so they start saying it, then white people say it, and once Elon Musk says it, it’s over.”) and Jeremy Culhane (playing a character named Mr. On Blast, or as Jost deemed him — “a blackjack dealer on a Disney cruise”).
In its debut, Brooklyn-based alt-rock band and sensation Geese performed tracks “Au pays du cocaine” and jammed out to high-energy “Trinidad.”
