Best, Worst Moments from John Mulaney's Sixth 'SNL' Stint

by Julian Spivey
The fifth episode of the milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” saw comedian John Mulaney return for his sixth hosting stint on the show he wrote for from 2008 to 2013.

Mulaney has returned to host an episode in almost every season since his debut in April 2018, and it seems like he’ll give the likes of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin a run for their money in terms of most hosting appearances.

While Mulaney is the most frequent host of this era of ‘SNL’ and one of the funniest comedians alive, his episodes of the show seem to seldom live up to my expectations because I know how funny he is. Saturday night’s (November 2) episode was no different.
​
Here are the highs and lows of the episode: 

Photo: NBC

Best
This may have been a return for John Mulaney and the final episode of ‘SNL’ before the Presidential Election featuring the show’s highest-profile cameo in years, but my favorite thing about the episode was the debut of new Weekend Update characters played by Marcello Hernandez and Jane Wickline as “The Couple You Cannot Believe Are Together.” Hernandez plays the loud, obnoxious frat boy type, which he’s so great at, and Wickline, in her second WU piece in only five episodes on the show, is the quiet and shy nerdy girl. I’m not sure this couple would work in the real world, but it made for some fun laughs on Saturday night. I’ve been impressed by Wickline’s WU work thus far, which showcases what seems to be a type of Gen-Z nervousness that comes off as quirky and humorous to me as an outsider of that generation. I wonder how people of the generation feel about it. 

---

Worst
‘SNL’ has done mostly an excellent job at political cold opens this election season. I’d say the show is a solid 3/5 on them but the final political cold open before the election on Tuesday had few highlights for me, even if many people were thrilled to see Democratic candidate Kamala Harris make a cameo face-to-face with Maya Rudolph, who portrays her on the show. I thought there were some laughs in this sketch, mostly coming from James Austin Johnson as an exasperated Donald Trump and Dana Carvey doing his same old Joe Biden schtick that always gets me but felt the “Kamala, palmala, rom-comala, etc.” rhyming to be too easy for my taste. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s just better to let the show mimic and poke fun at the politicians than invite them on the air. 

---

Best
John Mulaney is one of the top five stand-up comedians in the business right now, and if you wanted to say he was No. 1 on the list, I wouldn’t gripe about it. So, when he returns to host SNL, you know you’re at least going to get a funny monologue, even if, for some reason, his sketches are often disappointing. I particularly enjoyed the bit about having 12 kids in the old days because half of them probably wouldn’t survive childhood. 

---

Worst
How did they even come up with putting rock & roll pioneer Little Richard into a ‘90s family sitcom in 2024? It would seem like a bad idea from the start, and despite some of Kenan Thompson’s best efforts, it didn’t work for me. 

---

Best
Chappell Roan has been the biggest surprise in pop music in 2024, coming essentially out of nowhere to be one of the biggest acts in the music business. While I would’ve liked to have heard “Good Luck, Babe” on her ‘SNL’ debut, it was terrific seeing her inclusive anthem “Pink Pony Club” performed live with all of its theatrics and, especially getting the live Studio 8H audience to sing back to her (which I hope wasn’t rehearsed – and I don’t think it was). 

---

Worst
‘SNL’ has a huge cast, and most of them are talented as hell, but the show is doing a horrible job at the moment of using and distributing them throughout the episodes. Some of this is certainly due to all of the political sketches in the first quarter of the season featuring so many cameos and being longer than the average sketch, but when you have an episode like this one that barely features some of the show’s MVPs like Ego Nwodim and Andrew Dismukes, it makes the problem stand out more than your average show. Hopefully, with the election over, the show can focus on letting its cast cook for the remainder of the season.