Charli XCX Brings Brat Fall to ‘Saturday Night Live’

It’s a shame that some may have given up Saturday Night Live under the cold open, at the agonizing sight of James Austin Johnson‘s President Trump and Dana Carvey‘s President Biden sitting knee to knee in the White House. These are not laughing times. Even Carvey’s big turn as Biden—stumbling around for words, eyes popping in and out in confusion—begins to feel tiresome. “It’s my own version of the ‘weave,'” he said. “I call it ‘the walk’.” But then Sarah Sherman entered stage left as Trump’s ridiculous pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz. She was almost unrecognizable under the eyebrows drawn like toddler birds, plastic cut of a forehead and Elvis hair. (Alec Baldwin emerged as Trump’s proposed head of Health and Human Services RFK Jr., but his cameos at this point start to feel rote.) There’s an infectious pleasure Sherman takes in full-tilt buffoonery. And once we got Trump and Biden off the stage, the episode was off to the races.

Host and musical guest Charli XCX is a pretty bitchy sundae. As a sketch partner, she had a good edge and a light touch. As the musical guest who went solo on stripped-down stages for both acts, she had a mesmerizing authority. (Julia Fox was an inspired choice to make the first intro; Bowen Yang a loving one for her second appearance.)

In her monologue, Charli seemed free of nerves and panic. She tried to help the old among us finally understand what it means to be Brat. She pointed at the duplicitous brat Martha Stewart rejoice over the journalist’s death Andrea Savagewho once wrote unfavorably about her, and then Savage declared the next day, “I’m alive, bitch.” What a treat to see Kyle Mooneywho appeared with Charli in the hallucinatory favorite “Christmas Socks” sketch a few years ago, back in Studio 8H, wondering if even a mensch like him could hope for Brat status. “Preferred kind of club?” she asked him. “Probably turkey,” he said. Charli XCX ended her monologue with the promise, “I am here, hang on, we’ll be right back!” Abrupt.