Martin Short’s Star-Studded 5-Timers Induction

With 11 guest stars — 12 if you count Lucy Liu appearing in a cut-for-time sketch (which we’ve incorporated below) — the show felt larger than life, but the guest stars never fully overshadowed either the cast or the host, though much of the cast was relegated to smaller roles on the night; but that often happens with a strong leading host.

All in all, it felt like we were invited to a huge star-studded party where everyone was having a great time. We even saw Martin get a laugh out of Lorne Michaels as he hit the backstage area during his opening musical monologue number.

Martin, obviously, is an absolute legend. He’s one of those rare comic actors who can make a scene funny just by being, no matter the material itself. He elevated his role in a few uneven sketches tonight, but mostly delivered a very strong episode to say goodbye to 2024.

And as we said, he did so without being overshadowed by Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, John Mulaney, and Jimmy Fallon — all of whom welcomed him into the SNL 5-Timers Club … as well as Dana Carvey, back for a very strange cameo later in the show.

The highlight, though, is what’s become one of the best recurring bits in the history of this show. And what’s even better than Michael Che making Colin Jost read racist jokes he’s never seen before in their annual “Joke-Off” segment for Weekend Update? How about him having to tear his wife apart … with her in the building and watching?

As usual, we’re ranking all the sketches from worst to first, including the Monologue, Cold Open, “Weekend Update” and any sketches that were cut for time but made their way online. We’ll skip the musical guests, because they’re not usually funny — unless Ashlee Simpson shows up. We wrap up with a look at the cast-member who had the strongest week.

A fun opportunity for the cast to really showcase ridiculous caricatures of holiday travelers, this one didn’t really bring any laughs. They milked what they could out of a few of those all-star celebrities still hanging around after the Cold Open, but this was a sketch that was never really strong enough to repeat … and yet here we are. Or maybe it’s just that these types of people weren’t exaggerated enough, as we swear we’ve seen every single one of them at the airport at one time or another.

Another repeat sketch on the night with diminished returns, this only works if it is unhinged chaos and it absolutely was not. Plus, why one of the Cold Open’s surprise guests rather than Martin Short himself for the role of the hapless American? It’s kind of odd to skip the host in the first sketch after Weekend Update, effectively giving him a huge break in the middle of the show. Still, it may not have mattered, as this one just didn’t really work on any level. It’s about the chaos and the confusion, and we just got confusion here. If it had been even madder, it could have again worked, but they just didn’t go far enough into the insanity to break the language barrier. Even a fun cameo by Dana Carvey couldn’t save this one.

Just the visual alone of the cast taking on the iconic Peanuts characters and their even more iconic — and ridiculous — dance moves from the climax of A Charlie Brown Christmas was worth the price of admission. Martin Short and Bowen Yang as a new director and choreographer was a fun idea, but we did find ourselves hoping we’d get more of a sense as to what happened to Charlie Brown that he got replaced. The bit didn’t really have much of a punchline, though everyone agrees that Snoopy is inexplicably cool. This wasn’t funny so much as it was charming for the holiday season, and had a sense of fun about it. Sometimes that’s enough for a smile, if not a laugh.

In the spirit of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, as turned into a brutally violent sketch when Martin Short hosted with Steve Martin, the blood, gore and guts were definitely flying in this take on Dr. Seuss’ holiday classic. Martin was perfectly cast in the role of the Grinch, while Lucy Liu was a fun surprise twist at the end to bring it home. It wasn’t as funny as the Dicken’s send-up, but the stream of violence was still entertaining to watch, if only for just how over-the-top they went.

Coming out of an epic Cold Open, this turned into a full-on musical number and backstage tour monologue with Martin Short cheering up the cast by singing about needing a new prescription. The whole piece was kicked off with Sarah Sherman trying not to crack up as he totally ripped on her haircut. Then, along the way, he got to burn Lorne Micheals, make out with Jimmy Fallon, and get a new prescription of his own. It was a rollocking good time that once again established that Martin is a legend and a veteran at this game, able to wring laughs from almost any moment just by the sheer power of his comedic personality.

A brutal satiric finish to this saccharine Christmas story actually worked extremely well as SNL skewered the stereotypical story of a person finding the Christmas spirit and trying to lift someone who’s fallen onto hard times. Even knowing exactly where this plot was likely to wind up going didn’t take away from the laughs when the screw first turned. Heidi Gardner and Kenan Thompson both played their respective roles perfectly, while Mikey Day was the frustrated MVP back home, though we’d have liked a little hint of holiday chaos on his end, just to make things even more stressful for him on top of finding out what his wife is doing.

For the first time in too long we got a proper 5-Timers sketch, taking place in the lounge and genuinely bringing back a whole host of … well, former hosts. Tom Hanks kicked off the festivities by narrating the sketch like it was a documentary or something. It was a clever way for him to share that he invented the 5-Timers Club in December 1990, an act he called “an ingeniously lazy way to avoid writing a monologue.”

From there, he was joined by Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, John Mulaney, and finally Jimmy Fallon to actually present Martin Short’s jacket. That proved a bit of a disaster as no one could get his arm in it, so finally Martin just went with it, playing it off pretty well.

While it was a lot of recognition applause as each celeb came in, there were some funny bits sprinkled throughout, like Baldwin’s quip during a sequence of honesty — “I have too many children” — or Kristen involved in two different segments where someone isn’t the same person they were last year when there was an awkward sexual encounter.

All in all, these pieces are meant to be celebrity-filled nostalgia pieces to celebrate a personal milestone and honor the legacy of the show. With solid jokes sprinkled throughout, and funny mishaps like Scarlett not quite succeeding in slamming the door in husband Colin Jost’s face, this opener hit all the right buttons to celebrate a genuine icon in comedy joining the ranks of people who were much younger than him when they got there.

Just as we thought this sketch about two people fighting over the same parking spot was poised to go on too long and start getting repetitive, Melissa McCarthy showed up to liven things up, getting huge laughs from the cast along the way. The conceit of the piece was that the drivers — and Chloe Fineman as Mikey Day’s daughter — were badly miming each key word of their dialogue … which led to some extremely graphically awkward moments when Chloe said Martin Short “blows” and is a “jerk.” Seriously, this was edgy stuff while the whole piece skirted the edge of good taste and laughs, always managing to stay on the right side of both.

Poor Michael Che. A perfectly fantastic joke about Eric Trump and he completely botched it. Luckily, the joke itself was strong enough to withstand it, as is the goodwill audiences have for this popular duo who had some typically sharp barbs for the year that Diddy, Trump, and Musk had. Colin Jost chastised the crowd for again cheering at the mention of Luigi Mangione — though not as much as Che quipped Diddy was cheering to find out they were sharing a prison.

As soon as Michael set up this segment on the drone sightings in New Jersey, we knew Bowen Yang was going to come out as a drone because he’s won Emmys for his work as random objects. This approach to the drone by having the mysterious objects angry about all the speculation on what it is, why it’s there, worked perfectly. Bowen paralleled the barrage of questions to the LGBTQIA+ experience, with a dash of Wicked thrown in for good measure, to great effect. All the indignation and passion made this a great statement piece on just letting people live, while also acknowledging that mysterious machines are actually potentially terrifying for real.

The boys’ second news segment was particularly short, though they had another great dig at Spirit Airlines, but it was brought home with an extremely dark joke about how to end depression. Really, though, it was just to set up our favorite holiday tradition — the joke swap!

To help Colin feel more comfortable in this piece, Che had him deliver his lines in “Black voice,” while we got to see and hear Scarlett Johansson’s responses to the requisite burns about her and their relationship now that they have a kid and she’s turned 40. As for Che’s jokes, Colin had him joking about Jeffrey Epstein, Jay-Z and Diddy, so he continues to up his game in being just as awful.

With much of the cast appearing in ensemble roles, and Martin Short taking the clear lead in most of the sketches he appeared in, it comes down to who found their moments to shine in an absolutely packed episode.

Mikey Day had a strong night, appearing as both a flustered husband opposite Heidi Garnder and a frustrated driver fighting for a parking spot at a crowded mall.

Bowen managed to make an indignant drone into a would-be Broadway star before stealing that Charlie Brown sketch as the perfect pairing for Martin Short’s unhinged children’s pageant director.

But it was Kenan Thompson who killed it as Snoopy, held his own in a couple of key smaller roles, and played both sincere and devilish in equal measure opposite Mikey and Heidi as a homeless man who manages to make his own holiday dreams come true. It’s always fun to see Kenan really embrace the show and give his all after literal decades on this cast.

Saturday Night Live’s 50th season continues next year.