Best Sketches From Ryan Gosling Hosting

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Ryan Gosling brings his loose, giddy energy back to Studio 8H, letting the cast relax and have fun — the results are, as always, charming.
Photo: Will Heath/NBC

When Ryan Gosling hosts Saturday Night Live now, you know what you’re gonna get: good vibes and a whole lot of breaking. That might not be everyone’s taste — a little goes a long way for me when it comes to performers bursting into laughter during a sketch, and sometimes here it obscured some well-written punchlines — but it does lead to a nice sense of cast camaraderie. Everyone seemed happy to lean into that looseness, which created an above-average show this week. And I respect the choice to eschew fan-favorite Gosling sketches like “Close Encounter,” “Papyrus,” and “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

It’s Gosling’s fourth time hosting now, and he spent his monologue immediately decentering himself, instead building anticipation for next week’s Harry Styles-hosted show. Styles popped in for a cameo tonight, sitting in the audience just to “get a feel for” the show and making Gosling nervous with his cool, serene presence. It’s funny, especially whenever camera No. 2 inexplicably cuts back to Styles nodding thoughtfully along to Gosling’s unconfident “Sign of the Times” performance, but it also ensures that the monologue has barely anything to do with the current host. Some mentions of outer space for Project Hail Mary, but otherwise this could’ve happened any week preceding a Styles show.

Truth be told, Gosling didn’t always try all that hard throughout this episode, bringing the same general energy to most of his characters. (One notable exception: his role as the whimsical baker Monty McTreat, a Willy Wonka analog. He employs a race of Oompa Loompa-esque doughy slaves who kill themselves every spring to free up resources for women and children. The first shot of the hanging corpse is worth the wait.) And sometimes a good premise didn’t really go anywhere, as was the case with the hotel charges sketch. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed out loud at the concept of the hotel having a “goo goo man,” and there are some nice touches, like Jeremy Cuthane’s fellow goo goo connoisseur. But there was something slightly missing.

Still, Gosling is a funny and lovable guy, and you can tell the cast has a ton of fun hanging out with him. It’s hard not to be charmed — especially with that little birthday shoutout to Sarah Sherman at the very end.

Here are the highlights:

Gosling’s role as a gold-suited wedding guest named Donathan was the first of many to provoke inopportune mid-joke snorts from the host, and in this case, his laughter only added to the proceedings. Donathan really likes making people kiss, whether it’s the bride and groom or the bride’s siblings, and there’s something hilarious about the way he runs with the logic of the glass-clinking tradition — especially when “poozy” and “poonis” get involved. It sounds so dumb when I write the words out, but I was laughing.

The only weird aspect of this one is the choice to actually use a real brand name rather than creating some other fake Skyrizi competitor. Otherwise, I really enjoyed this bit of weirdness, advertising Otezla as some otherworldly force that defies the laws of nature and our understanding of time. It looks like a pill, but transforms when humans look away; it cannot be created or destroyed; it shows up throughout human civilization. Gosling cheerfully notes, “Nine out of ten dermatologists recommend Otezla. The tenth dermatologist carved a bunch of numbers into a wall and then shot himself.” This kind of thing always tends to work on me.

Three cyclopes arrive at a locked door in search of a great treasure and face a test of the mind: a riddle delivered by two increasingly frustrated maidens. The best part of this one is how desperately Veronika Slowikowska and especially Ashley Padilla try to give them the answers, throwing them bone after bone only to receive the same dead-eyed responses and requests (“Can you open the door?”). Padilla’s breaking is also pretty understandable; you can imagine it’d be hard to stop laughing when those guys just keep turning and shuffling back.

Not one of the best Updates of the season this time, but we get into the basics: Kristi Noem, Kalshi, Iran, and Heated Rivalry. And RFK Jr. does look like an air-fried Walton Goggins. There are some decent gross jokes, like the one about the dead deer, but nothing super standout. And the only guests this time are Kenan Thompson’s Pastor Update and his bandleader, Teddy (James Austin Johnson). Thompson does good work as the pastor keeps getting sidetracked mid-“unifying” message, but I’m partial to Teddy’s nonsensical aphorisms — and Johnson’s vivid, weirdo energy, conveyed with his consistent grin.

Padilla anchors another sketch, this time as a teacher who’s trying to stop her students from passing notes in class. Of course, the notes turn out to mostly be about her as well as the principal (played by Gosling), detailing their most pathetic behaviors. There’s a ton of breaking in this one, likely the result of the writers swapping out the notes and letting the performers organically react to jokes they’re reading for the first time. I do appreciate the willingness to evoke Mulaney in that way. But it’s just a tad too much laughing for my tastes, especially in this episode, and especially when I wanted to focus on the pitiful imagery of the notes themselves. Still, hard not to giggle along when Padilla lets out an uncontrollable whimper-laugh upon finding a Ziploc bag full of spaghetti marked “lunch #2” in her desk.

• Jost leaned into alcoholic frat-boy smarm again to play Pete Hegseth for this week’s political cold open, during which he answered questions about the military operation in Iran in the only way he knows how to talk. Padilla’s Kristi Noem also popped by, of course, clarifying that she “self-deported” from her job at DHS. My biggest laugh, personally, came from Noem’s piece of wisdom: “You miss 100 percent of the dogs you don’t shoot.” That’s how she deserves to be remembered.

• “I’m not going to kiss my wife’s poozy.” “Wouldn’t kill ya.”

• “The rules are the rules!” Nice work from Jane Wickline in this moment.

• “They should’ve known something was up when Epstein’s ranch was all ponies.”

• “That’s not what you told me. You said you wanted her to Sheryl on your Lee until you Ralphed.”

• Truth be told, Martin Herlihy’s weirdness only sometimes works for me, and “Lies” never really exceeds “mildly amusing.” But it’s a solid gag to see him go undercover as Jost and appear on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

• Not much Ben Marshall this week, but we got tons of Padilla and Mikey Day.