Even with Ryan Gosling back as host tonight, SNL eschewed a Hail Mary for its cold open and went with tradition with another predictable but still hilarious roasting of Pete Hegseth, with some axed and “reassigned under the bus” Kristi Noem tossed in.
Or, as Ashley Padilla’s ICE Barbie insisted, and convinced no one: “I didn’t get fired, I self-deported.”
Well, it is true that Noem’s congressional testimony earlier this week that tried to blame Donald Trump for her unintentionally funny $220 million airport TV ads and inner-office relationships did go south pretty quick. “As I told my plastic surgeon, the work is never done,” Padilla’s pitch-perfect Noem added, never knowing when enough is enough.
The featured player’s Noem was all the more impressive — even if the jokes wrote themselves with the former South Dakota’s governor’s reign of error and terror at DHS over the past year — when you consider Padilla was sharing the screen with Colin Jost as Hegseth.
Kicking off with the Weekend Update co-host as the ex-Fox host keg-guzzling and Sprite-spitting, Jost’s Hegseth proceeded to shoot off about the media asking too many questions about what was happening in Iran. Tapping into the attacks on the murderous rulers of the Islamic Republic for the second SNL cold open in a row, the self-described “white Hamilton” told the press, “you’re all playing chess and I’m playing Grand Theft Auto.”
Jost’s Hegseth kinda summed up the whole missile-tossing situation in the Middle East: “What is happening? Okay, I’ll tell you what’s happening. Okay, we don’t know, okay? And that’s the whole point. If we don’t know what we’re doing, then Iran definitely doesn’t know what we’re doing.”
Certainly coming off a week of Trump flexing over the ongoing undeclared war with Iran, damning allegations from the Epstein Files about the ex-Apprentice host and a minor, some pretty pivotal primaries in Texas and a trio of former presidents attending the funeral of Jesse Jackson, there was a plethora of comedy riches for SNL to draw from in just the political realm alone. Truth be told, the March 5 pink-slipping of Noem and her immediate replacement by ex-MMA fighter and Sen. Markwayne Mullins (R-OK) would have made sense to go solo in the satire spotlight. For that matter, so would have Marco Rubio being gaslighted by Trump and the “I speak American” Hegseth after addressing today’s awkward Shield of Americas summit in fluent Spanish.
With Jost and Padilla in top form, the biggest surprise in tonight’s cold open was that James Austin Johnson did not make a cameo as Trump himself. For once, SNL realized less is more.
With the acclaimed Gorillaz making their debut with the Not-Ready-For-Primetime Players tonight, the 14th episode of SNL’s 51st season sees Gosling back for the fourth time as host. The past multiple Oscar nominee, who put on a pink-tinged and Slash-cameoed version of Barbie’s “I’m Just Ken” at the 2024 Academy Awards, is about to lift off again March 20 with heavily weighted audience pleaser Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s 2021 novel.
Speaking of a minor Hail Mary, next week sees Harry Styles doing double duty on SNL as both host and musical guest. This is the second time the ex-One Direction singer has performed both roles, with Styles previous hosting and musical guest stint in November 2019. Taking all of his musical performances into account and that hosting slot seven years ago, next week with be Styles’ seventh SNL appearance overall — well, if you saw Gosling’s monologue, better make that Styles’ eighth SNL appearance.
