by Julian Spivey
For the second straight week, “Saturday Night Live” brought back a memorable host from the show’s past who hadn’t hosted the show in some time, with Jon Hamm, who hosted three times during his “Mad Men” heyday.

​During his monologue, Hamm explained that although it had been 15 years since he last hosted the show, he hadn’t exactly been a stranger to it, making a whopping 14 cameo appearances in the years since.

Here’s the best and worst from Hamm’s episode… 
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Best:
It may have been on the nose. Hell, TV reporter Josef Adalian joked about it on social media earlier in the week, posting: “I was messaging someone about a certain HBO show and autocorrect changed it to ‘the white POTUS.’ There’s your SNL skit right there.” This made me chuckle when the show parodies “The White Lotus,” a week after its season three finale, with “The White POTUS.” I wonder if they saw Adalian’s post?

“The White POTUS” is nearly a pitch-perfect parody of “The White Lotus,” with the only blemish being Sarah Sherman’s take on Aimee Lou Wood’s character, which was horrible. It was so bad that Wood has already called it out for being “mean and unfunny,” which I’d typically roll my eyes at, but it was pretty awful.

The rest of the sketch was perfect with President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) taking on the Jason Isaac’s role and almost catatonic, Chloe Fineman playing Melania Trump but with the outrageous North Carolina accent used by Piper Posey in the HBO drama, and the Ratliff kids from the show being the Trump kids with terrific cameo reprisals by Alex Moffat as Eric Trump and Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump. It was also nice to see Beck Bennett return to the show in a reprisal of his Vladimir Putin impression. My biggest laugh was their use of actual show footage of Jon Gries from “The White Lotus,” because you know he will be there. He’s always there. 

Worst:
Hamm was considered one of the show’s best hosts when he frequently stopped at Studio 8H 15-plus years ago. However, I don’t remember those episodes well and have not re-watched them. So, I greatly anticipated what the show would give him to do this week and was disappointed when it was not much of anything worthwhile. He played a game show contestant so scared of embarrassing himself on TV that everything he said or did was the worst thing he could say or do, which came with a horrible fart sound effect. Later, he played part of a gay couple with Bowen Yang, who appeared at a friend's event with a baby they hadn’t had the night before and were annoyed by the questions about how they got it (there were some laughs, but not enough). The Icebreaker sketch, where Hamm’s icebreaker reveal is that his mom killed his dad on an episode of “Jackass” was equally bad. The show just seemed to be running on steam on its third consecutive week of shows.

Best:
It’s not often that one singular punchline from a Weekend Update joke will give me the biggest belly laugh of any ‘SNL’ episode, but that happened Saturday night with a Michael Che joke I didn’t see coming. Che set up a joke about an incident that occurred on a New York City subway in which a person robbed and sexually assaulted a dead passenger. The punchline was simply Che singing “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” from the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind,” it was so unexpected, it was perfect.

Best:
Lizzo in comeback mode, though it hasn’t been all that long since she was atop the pop game, proved to be one of the best musical guests of season 50 with a medley of “Love in Real Life,” which saw her ripping on guitar (didn’t know she had that in her bag) and “Still Bad,” which proves exactly what the title says. For her second evening performance, she put on her best Tina Turner/Aretha Franklin with “Don’t Make Me Love You,” a quieter ballad than what we typically see from Lizzo, but I felt it worked well. It’ll be interesting to see how her upcoming album Love in Real Life fares among listeners, after some controversies in her life might have her less beloved than she once was, but what I heard on Saturday night was nice.

 
Max’s medical drama “The Pitt” holds the title, at least for the moment, as both the best new series and the best series overall for 2025.

​Season one, which consists of 15 episodes, wrapped on Thursday, April 10, with a fascinating episode that ended a very long, hectic, emotional, and tragic shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room.

“The Pitt,” from creators R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells and Noah Wyle, follows the staff of an E.R. in a teaching hospital in Pittsburgh as they make their way through an ordinary shift that turns into a mass casualty M.A.S.H. unit toward the end of their day.

Wyle, who you’re instantly drawn to thanks to his past role on “E.R.,” is Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, a senior attending still reeling from the loss of his mentor and friend during Covid years before, as he oversees the E.R. with his senior residents, Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) and Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball). There are many faces and names to know in this E.R. with the other primary characters including charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), third-year resident Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), second-year resident Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif), second-year resident Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden), intern Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) and med students Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) and Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez).

I realize almost all of these aren’t household names for most TV watchers, but you’ll be mesmerized by every single one of them at points throughout the season, as well as other characters who pop in and out throughout the 15 hours of this shift.

“The Pitt” is told in real time, with each episode being an hour of the shift method popularized by the Fox drama “24.” I had some concerns at first that this method might cause storylines to drag or lead to a lack of character building, but this certainly wasn’t a problem with the first season.

Most of the season is told about typical cases you would see come into a hospital E.R., such as broken bones, drowning victims, burn victims, etc. The cases and procedures used to help save the patients are among the most realistic and lifelike you’ve ever seen, which keeps your attention and often mesmerizes you with their realism.

If you suspect “The Pitt” isn’t the most realistic medical show you’ve ever seen, just wait for episode 11 when there’s a birth scene.

The season truly ramped up as the day shift doctors were nearing the end of their shifts, when a mass shooting took place at a local music festival, and injuries came flooding into the hospital en masse. I was entertained and happy enough with the regular run of the mill E.R. cases for the bulk of the season that I don’t worry about the show in the future. Hopefully, viewers of the show won’t need the sort of mass casualty event you can’t have every season to thrive.

Wyle’s Dr. Robby is the emotional heart of the series. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this kind of performance out of him – I didn’t stick with TNT’s “Falling Skies” long, and despite enjoying TNT’s “The Librarians,” it wasn’t this kind of show – that I think I forgot what he was capable of. Season one gives us everything from Wyle’s character: charm, humor, sadness, depression, caring, anger, heroism and more, and he knocks every aspect of it out of the park. Wyle has assuredly locked up an Emmy nomination for the performance and might be considered the front-runner.

I think the cast overall is too much of an ensemble to garner more award consideration, especially when it shares a category with “The White Lotus,” which will receive multiple supporting nominations, whether worthy or not (and “The Pitt” is certainly better). Make no mistake, though, every single performance should be considered. Among my favorites of the season were Ganesh as Mohan, Dearden as King and Shawn Hatosy as Dr. Jack Abbot, a night shift attending, who only appears in about a third of the season.

I can’t wait for the second season of “The Pitt,” which should be out around the beginning of 2026. It is supposedly set 10 months after the events of season one over a hectic July 4 weekend.​

by Julian Spivey
In the early 2000s, actor Jack Black was among the most popular hosts of the legendary NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. He hosted three times in short succession and looked to be on a fast track to joining the “five-timer’s club.” Then, 20 years passed without him hosting the show, until Saturday, April 5, when the 55-year-old returned triumphantly to the famed Studio 8H.
​
Here’s the best and worst of Black’s return to ‘SNL’ … 
​

Best:
James Austin Johnson’s impression of President Donald Trump is perfect. It’s always been great, but many times I’m so sick of the real-life Trump that I don’t want to see his impression on the show. This week was worth it, with Johnson mocking the President’s recent tariff announcement and all of its idiocies, including imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands, which only have penguins. My favorite joke of the cold opening was about McDonald Island and how Trump envisioned Big Macs in hula skirts with the hilarious, “Get me to God’s Country, right? Remember that?,” mocking the previous week’s dumbass musical guest Morgan Wallen’s Instagram caption after walking off the show during the goodnights segment. I also enjoyed the new slogan, “MAGDA,” meaning Make America Great Depression Again. It’s a wild and sad time for America right now, but at least Johnson’s terrific take on the President can make us laugh about it for a while. 

Worst:   
Jack Black was excited for his ‘SNL’ return and brought tremendous energy to the show. But many of the sketches throughout the evening were pretty average. They weren’t outright terrible, but not as great as I had hoped. Many featured one joke repeated over and over throughout the sketch, like the dinner sketch early on in which a group of friends who hadn’t seen each other in years attempt to one-up one another, while looking goofily into the camera as an eagle screeched sound played behind it. Then there was the post-Weekend Update sketch, in which Black played the frontman of a cover band doing a show where anyone in the audience could bring their instrument on stage and join in the jam while playing Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and every single person who did so was a bass player until the entire stage was one big bass fest. 

Best:
The Weekend Update guests this week were excellent. It was maybe the best 1-2 punch of Update guest characters the show has seen all season. Marcello Hernandez and Jane Wickline brought back their couple you would never expect to be together duo, where Hernandez is an outgoing, bro-y jock and Wickline a shy and quiet nerd. It’s an excellent showcase for Hernandez, who’s fantastic at these hyper-outgoing characters, but it works because he plays off the Wickline character. My favorite moments were when he described “Doctor Who” as an “Aussie in a port-a-potty” and how he got his girl a clarinet because “don’t my baby look like she’d go stupid on a woodwind.” The second guest was Ego Nwodim, playing off of the White House Correspondents Association cancelling comedian Amber Ruffin’s White House Correspondents Dinner performance, and how she could do it without being political. Nwodim played it as a Def Jam comedian, to the noticeable giggles of Update co-anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost. Thinks got really out of hand when she opened it up to crowd participation when she said: “These men ain’t what?” and multiple people in the audience shouted, “worth shit,” a word that isn’t supposed to be said on NBC. This led to the excellent Nwodim ad-lib: “We finna get fined for that. Y’all gonna have to pay for that. Lorne gonna be mad at y’all.” Unfortunately, the show has censored this segment on online replays. 

Best:
Seeing Elton John and Brandi Carlile as musical guests was fantastic, especially given the horrible musical guest from the episode the week before. Elton John and Carlile were promoting their recent album collaboration, Who Believes in Angels? with the performances “Little Richard’s Bible” and the title track. Unfortunately, the performance of “Little Richard’s Bible” was a mess on the show; the mix in the studio must have been wonky, which made the lyrics almost impossible to hear. You should check it out on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music, as it’s a good rocking number. The piano playing by Elton John during the performance was terrific as ever. The performance of “Who Believes in Angels” was much better, as you could hear the vocals. Carlile and Elton John’s voices played brilliantly together.  

The Bondsman (Prime Video) – April 3
Amazon Prime Video’s newest horror-action-drama, “The Bondsman,” from Blumhouse Television, feels like a perfect vehicle for Kevin Bacon. Bacon plays a murdered bounty hunter who is brought back to life by the Devil to hunt and bring demons back to Hell. He’s given new life, but if he fails on his mission, he’ll spend all eternity in Hell. The series premieres Thursday, April 3. 

The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu – Sixth & Final Season) – April 8
Hulu’s dystopian drama “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which feels a bit less dystopian today than when it began, premieres its sixth and final season on Tuesday, April 8. Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, the series has won 15 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series for its first season and Elisabeth Moss's leading role as Offred. 

Black Mirror (Netflix – Season 7) – April 10
After a two-year gap, Charlie Brooker’s anthology series “Black Mirror” returns to Netflix for its seventh season on Thursday, April 10. Like a modern-day “Twilight Zone” with a satirical bent, the series will feature six episodes, including a sequel to one of its most popular episodes, “USS Callister,” which aired in season four. Actors appearing in season seven include Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin, Paul Giamatti, Rashida Jones, Cristin Milioti, Will Poulter, Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, and more. 

Hacks (Max – Season 4) – April 10
Max’s “Hacks,” starring three-time Emmy-winner Jean Smart and should-be Emmy-winner Hannah Einbinder, is one of those rare TV shows that started 10/10 and has continued to be 10/10 for its entire three-season run. Hot off a win for Outstanding Comey Series at the 2024 Emmy Awards, “Hacks” returns for its fourth season on Thursday, April 10, and sees Smart’s comedian Deborah Vance and her writer/on-again-off-again friend Ava Daniels, played by Einbinder, as equals for the first time, thanks to Ava’s surprising power-play at the end of season three. 

Your Friends & Neighbors (AppleTV+) – April 11
Jon Hamm has been everywhere lately in supporting roles. The actor, who made a name for himself in the Emmy-winning AMC drama “Mad Men,” has recently had significant and Emmy-nominated turns in FX’s anthology series “Fargo” and AppleTV+’s drama “The Morning Show.” He returns to a lead series role with AppleTV+’s drama “Your Friends and Neighbors,” premiering Friday, April 11. In the series, Hamm plays Coop, a recently divorced and unemployed hedge fund manager who uses criminal methods to maintain his lavish lifestyle. The first nine-episode first season will feature Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet in supporting roles. 

Doctor Who (Disney+) – April 12
Ncuti Gatwa’s first season as The Doctor on the long-running British sci-fi series “Doctor Who,” which began streaming in America on Disney+ in late 2023, was pretty impressive. Russell T. Davies’ return as executive producer also helped solidify the show, which had found itself on unsteady ground during the run of its predecessor. The upcoming season of “Doctor Who” will again see The Doctor meeting a new companion in the form of Varada Sethu’s Belinda Chandra, but don’t fear if you loved Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday. Gibson is apparently continuing with the show, despite reports that made it seem like series 14 would be her only one with the show. Series 15, premiering Saturday, April 12 on Disney+, is set to comprise eight episodes. 

The Last of Us (HBO – Season 2) – April 13
The second season of HBO’s “The Last of Us” is potentially the most anticipated TV season of the year. Season one, which aired in 2023, was one of that year's biggest surprises and best shows. “The Last of Us” surprised many who didn’t think a video game could make for exhilarating, prestige television with terrific acting from leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey and guest roles from Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett, Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid and more. “The Last of Us” probably would’ve won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series had it not conflicted with the final season of “Succession.” Season two, which premieres on HBO on Sunday, April 13 and will be streaming on Max, is expected to partly adapt the second of “The Last of Us” video game series, 2020’s “The Last of Us Part II” – set five years after season one left off. Season two will feature Pascal and Ramsey joined by Kaitlyn Dever, Young Mazino, Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Wright in significant roles.