Martin Short hosts a celebrity-studded “SNL” holiday episode

Over a long career, and especially during his recent resurgence on “Only Murders in the Building,” Martin Short has honed the Martin Short Thing to a perfect diamond, which is: saying very mean and petty things in a way that is both amusing and funny. somehow endearing. It’s his thing, and maybe no one except Don Rickles got away with it for so long.

For “Saturday Night Live,” which Short hosted for the fifth time (cue Five-Timers’ cold open), it’s a perfect fit. The comic actor’s manic energy, perfect delivery of cutting lines and ability to still dance and sing at 74 made his monologue and skit performances largely flawless, even if he was a bit light on the show.

This was partly due to a number of celebrities (though not his co-stars Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, although they were mentioned, or rumored romantic partner Meryl Streep) filled parts in plenty of sketches and dominated the cold open. They included Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, who provided live reactions to jokes about her from a particularly brutal “Weekend Update” joke swap between Michael Che and her husband, Colin Jost.

Short scored as an aggressive Delta lounge employee in a skit about a Christmas parade that takes place at an airport gatean angry one mall parking lot driverand one demanding director of the “Charlie Brown Christmas” contest. But he was absent from the episode’s pre-taped piece, “An Act of Kindness,” about a homeless man (Kenan Thompson) helped by a gullible woman (Heidi Gardner), and a sequel to Nate Bargatze “Sábado Gigante” sketch – with Marcello Hernández as host Don Francisco – which featured Rudd and an appearance from Dana Carvey.

The crowded episode didn’t give Short many opportunities to bring back classic characters or break new ground, but that didn’t matter much because the show generally had strong sketches, and since Short was deployed, he nailed every moment.

Musical guest Hozier performed “Too cute” and a cover of The Pogues’Adventures about New York.”

If you’re an “SNL” contestant and die-hard fan, the best part of the entire show for you may have been the cold open, which features a slew of former guest hosts who have done the job five or more times. Hanks, who will narrate NBC’s docuseries “The Americas” in February, started the skit with Rudd welcoming Short to the Five-Timers Club, who replied, “What a surprise that I’ve known about all week.” Fey, Baldwin, Stone, Melissa McCarthy, Johansson, Kristen Wiig, John Mulaney and even Jimmy Fallon all got to tell a joke or two each, the best perhaps being when each made a confession. “Ant-Man’s powers are not good,” Rudd admitted. “I’m the one flying they drone. All of them,” Fey revealed. “I’ve never had Covid,” Hanks shared. When Short received his Five Timers jacket, in women’s size, he did some physical comedy that made it impossible to put the garment on properly before saying: “From the bottom of my heart: I love most of you so loudly.”

Short started his monologue with some one-liners suggesting he’d play an elf in 10 sketches and joked that his Uber driver, Matt Gaetz, was waiting outside before discussing his longtime friendship with the “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels. “We’re kind of like (President-elect) Trump and Elon Musk without the sexual tension.” When cast member Sarah Sherman appeared on stage to ask for some Christmas cheer to snap her out of her funk, Short launched into a song that sent him on a journey through the studio, throwing a child out of Santa’s lap, taking pictures of actor Armie Hammer and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before running into Michaels and Fallon. “I didn’t know Jack Daniels made cologne,” Short said before kissing Fallon. When Short was gone, Fallon said, “You’re never kissing me like that anymore,” to an upset Michaels. It was a high-energy performance not unlike Maya Rudolph’s “Mother” monologue from earlier this year.

Best sketch of the night: Do you like celebrity cameos? Here’s more

Returning from last year’s Thanksgiving parade skit at Newark Liberty International, two TSA agents, Umberto and Chartreuse Hamilton (Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim), host a TV Christmas special this time with a variety of characters. They include Rudd as himself trying to get into the Delta Lounge (Short spits water in his face), McCarthy as a gate attendant who mispronounces names like Gina Sowdry, Wiig as a passenger riding a motorized suitcase, and Hanks, reprising his role as Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the famous US Airways pilot who was the subject of a movie. The sketch overall is a scattershot selection of jokes, but the enthusiasm and star power goes a long way with this one.

Also good: What did Melissa McCarthy do to your car?

Like the airport sketch, this was also a rehash of an earlier sketch from last year, the traffic dispute with Quinta Brunson. As in the previous one, Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman play a father and daughter who get into an argument with a driver in another car that includes lots of hand signals and body language to express what they’re trying to say. In this situation, Short is a driver competing for the same parking space as them at a mall on Christmas Eve. All three comics do a fine job of physically expressing phrases like “bullshit” and “super Christian,” but the sketch goes to a whole other level when McCarthy shows up as Short’s wife, knocks on the family car window and threatens to eat it. father’s face with her own face. It would make a nice cap for a skit, but McCarthy then spits coffee on the window and does something to the window with her body that may never have been seen on TV before. In an episode filled with huge stars, leave it to McCarthy to give the show its most GIF-able and potentially viral moment.

Winner of ‘Weekend Update’: Two men owe Scarlett Johansson a huge apology

On any other week, Bowen Yang’s portrayal of a New Jersey drone would easily have walked away as the best thing on “Update,” a comedy filled with good jokes that ended with a “Wicked” song parody. But it wasn’t just any week: It was time for Che and Jost’s annual joke swap, where each writes terrible, offensive jokes for the other to read aloud. Jost’s jokes for Che included jokes about terrible sex, insinuations that Che supports Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a really gross joke about Disney’s Moana. But it was Jost who was more thoroughly grilled when he was forced to deliver jokes in a “black voice,” starting with one about white replacements and Kamala Harris, and progressing to a series of jokes about Johansson shown backstage and saw “Update” on a screen. The jokes included one about Jost leaving Johansson because she just turned 40 and a really terrible joke about her genitalia. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed backstage, apparently out of able to believe what came out of her husband’s mouth The high thread of keeping the segment going with the subject’s live reactions elevated what has become a truly offensive yet compelling annual tradition to see how far and How low will “Update” go? The answer is there is no bottom.