The pop superstar takes a break from his world tour to make his highly anticipated return to SNL.
Photo: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
Harry Styles has had a hell of a month. The promotion for his newest album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, has taken him everywhere from the BRIT awards to a live Netflix taping to an episode of Brittany Broski’s podcast. It’s therefore no small feat that the singer made time to pull double duty on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live. The hype around his hosting gig has been building since it was announced, as evidenced by Ryan Gosling’s monologue last week, where Styles made a cameo and jokingly pulled focus. The singer, who hosted back in 2019, is no stranger to Studio 8H, and the very warm crowd who received him last night was prepared to laugh and/or applaud at every move he made.
It was a little surprising, then, that Styles seemed just the tiniest bit in his head during yesterday’s episode. It’s not that he didn’t commit fully to his characters: He broke out his best and loudest Sebastian Maniscalco impression (who knew he had one?) during the first sketch of the night. But there was an air of self-consciousness (or restraint, or perhaps just plain fatigue) to the singer, even as he did objectively funny stuff like kiss Ben Marshall during his monologue. It didn’t make for a bad episode, by any means, and Styles definitely loosened up as the night went along. By the time we got to the 10-to-1 sketch, it was a relief to see that he actually seemed like he was having fun.
The episode kicked off with a cold open featuring — who else — James Austin Johnson as Trump and Colin Jost as Pete Hegseth. The duo addressed the issues of rising gas prices and the war in Iran, and though there were some funny lines (“A promise is just a lie that hasn’t happened yet”), a mid-sketch beat in which Johnson’s Trump calls out Marcello Hernández and Ashley Padilla by name and briefly makes both of them break felt a little too easy. Breaking is best when it’s rare and feels completely unavoidable, and reads as hacky when it’s relied on as a comedic crutch. When it’s happening during the first sketch of the night, particularly after last week’s episode, which featured so much breaking, it just feels cheap. Also, I fear Colin Jost has overstayed his welcome as Pete Hegseth, but that’s another story.
After the cold open, however, the episode shaped up to be a solid one. Here are the highlights:
Hernández returns with his inexplicable impression of comedian Sebastian Maniscalco. This impression is both strange and funny to me because I’m not sure Maniscalco is a household name enough to really warrant it. But it’s hard to care when watching Hernández, who dedicates himself so fully to the character that at one point he actually drools in this sketch (listen for a disgusted audience member who audibly says “Ew!” at the two-minute mark). Styles also breaks out his aforementioned best Maniscalco at the end of the sketch. I’d pay money to hear what the real Maniscalco thinks of all of this.
As far as I know, this is the first appearance of Kenan Thompson as Mr. Pooty, a Best Buy employee who can’t stop “manipulating the nipples” of his co-workers, and I sincerely hope it isn’t the last. On the surface, Mr. Pooty shouldn’t work as a character. There’s not much to him other than saying the phrase “manipulating the nipples” with a weird lisp, but it all works because of Thompson’s God-given talent. This sketch also makes perfect use of Styles, who Mr. Pooty rightly accuses of having a “very strong bisexual magnetism.”
Jeremy Culhane knocks it out of the park with his spot-on impression of Tucker Carlson during this Update desk bit. Culhane captures Carlson perfectly here, particularly with his use of stupid rhetorical questions. (“What are we doing? What’s going on?”) His take on Hamnet will be rattling around in my brain for some time (“Hamnet, because we’re not allowed to say Hamlet anymore. They took the L and gave it to the GBTQ.”) Great stuff from newcomer Culhane, who’s had a quiet but very solid first season.
This fun pre-tape features a group of women (Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline, and Veronika Slowikowska) who surprise their hookups with their love of Irish culture. I liked the escalation here, which starts with riverdancing and builds to Slowikowska cooking Irish cabbage stew and Wickline playing the harp. Wickline’s delivery of “Turned on yet, fella?” is a highlight.
The last sketch of the night, “Harry for Him,” has a silly and excellent premise: ordinary men trying to pull off some of Styles’ most iconic looks from the past several years. Huge props to the costume department, who were able to recreate Styles’ past outfits with extreme accuracy. My personal favorite was Johnson, dressed in Styles’ 2019 Met Gala look (“When Harry wore this, my wife said that he looked like the embodiment of elegant masculinity. When I wore this, she said, ‘You look like a serial killer that’s wearing the clothes of a woman he killed.’”)
• Wickline is really coming into her own. Her deadpan line deliveries in the Maniscalco sketch and the Irish dancer pretape were high points.
• I was wondering why the MAHAspital sketch seemed so familiar, and then I remembered that the Daily Show did the exact same sketch three months ago. Parallel thinking, almost definitely, but still sloppy on SNL’s part.
• Hernández breaking during the cold open was foreshadowing for the night to come. He could barely keep it together during his Update appearance with Mikey Day, as the heart emoji and aerial tramway emoji, respectively (a fun, if slightly underbaked, desk bit).
• I really enjoyed the “White Castle” sketch, and it very nearly made the highlights. Slowikowska and Wickline are a lot of fun together!
• “Trump Elementary: Home of the Fightin’ Allegations.”
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