Actor and Road house star jake gyllenhaal – along with musical guest sabrina carpenter – closed season 49 of Saturday evening live. Here are some highlights from Saturday’s episode:
📺 Cold open: Trump’s summer
As Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial enters its sixth week on Monday, James Austin Johnson performed his impersonation of the former president in a “very strange and depressing” hallway outside the Manhattan courthouse.
Johnson-as-Trump held a meandering press conference about his Veepstakes, with Devon Walker returning as Senator Tim Scott and Heidi Gardner as Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noembrandishing a gun next to a fake dog.
He wrapped things up by mentioning his summer events, including “another January 6, this time in July […] you see all those guys back in the Capitol, but this time in shorts.
🎤 Monologue: It’s the end of season 49
Jake Gyllenhaal’s vocal talent was on full display to kick off the Season 49 finale – the last before the momentous 50th anniversary season. The Road house The star began serenading the crowd with a rendition of Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” and changed the lyrics, claiming he was the last resort to host the finale.
“They asked Pedro Pascal, but he wasn’t there. Zendaya said no because she would be out of town. Even asked [Ryan] Gosling coming back again, he just hosted three shows ago,” he sang.
🐝 Most vivid sketch: Random acts of violence
NYPD Sergeant Jeff McDougal (played by Gyllenhaal) gave a press conference about random acts of violence in New York City and had one message: “Stop punching character actors in the face.” The sketch followed news that actor Steve Buscemi was recently targeted, as was Rick Moranis in 2020. The sketch featured Sgt. McDougal also warned character actors like Seinfeld friends (like Lauren Graham from Gilmore Girls) and said Stephen Root had been assigned a security detail.
💩What didn’t land
‘Cancel a flight’
Gyllenhaal played a frustrated Southwest Airlines customer who kept getting transferred while trying to change a flight. The sketch did not quite resonate with some critics. Reviewers at AV Club thought it sounded too much like a Spectrum-related sketch from season 47 Succession actor Kieran Culkin. “Like the show is We will be bringing back previously created concepts, we appreciate it when there is a new angle or twist on the bit,” the AV Club wrote.
📰 Taken from the headlines: Biden/Trump debate, two crickets and a joke exchange
“Weekend Update” co-hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che lashed out at this week’s announcement that President Biden and Trump have agreed to two debates this summer. Jost joked, “To get a taste of the debates, take a bottle of AmBien and Adderall at the same time.”
Che added that Trump asked the two to stand instead of sit, and joked, “I think we can learn a lot more if we watch them both try to get out of a bean bag.”
Later in the segment, Jost interviewed two cicadas (played by Keenan Thompson and Marcello Hernández), as more than a trillion cicadas will come to the U.S. this summer, with two broods expected to emerge.
In honor of the season 49 finale, Jost and Che agreed to do a “joke swap”, where the two write jokes for each other to read on camera for the first time.
Jost was also forced to read a joke about his wife, actress Scarlett Johansson: “ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in Her, which I never looked at,” he read painfully. “Because what’s the point of listening without that body?”
Che was also forced to read jokes about rapper Kendrick Lamar, inadvertently starting a war with him.
🎹 Musical performances:
Sabrina Carpenter took the stage with performances of her latest single “Espresso” and sang a medley of “Feather” and “Nonsense.”
