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Milestone 50th Season of 'SNL' Ends with Worst Finale of Modern Era

5/18/2025

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by Julian Spivey
The milestone 50th season of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” concluded on Saturday, May 17, with an episode hosted by five-timer club member Scarlett Johansson, marking her seventh appearance as host.

It was the worst season finale of the show I can remember in my 20-plus years of watching it live, which made it a fitting way to end the 50th season.

There was a great deal of anticipation and excitement leading into this season – the expectation that we would likely see more legendary cast members returning to host or appear in cameos than usual. And, while we did see some returning legends – mostly Dana Carvey and Mike Myers (though somehow never together) – this was mostly relegated to the 50th anniversary special, which unfortunately paled in comparison to the show’s 40th anniversary special.

The finale on Saturday was dishearteningly bad. It felt like the writers were ready to call it a season early and wound up giving the absolute worst ideas and sketches. 
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Picture: Scarlett Johansson with SNL cast
Photo: NBC

Here are the highlights and lowlights from the episode:

Best
‘SNL’ seems more obsessed with President Donald Trump than any other president who has come before him. Maybe it’s because James Austin Johnson’s impression is probably the most accurate Presidential impression in the show’s history? Perhaps it’s just that President Trump truly is that omnipresent? While I’d like the show to not open almost every episode with JAJ’s Trump, there continue to be highlights from these cold openings, even when the entire sketch isn’t hilarious. The part I enjoyed most about this cold opening was JAJ breaking the fourth wall by taking his Trump into the audience, sitting next to them and joking about things like the attractiveness of the show’s audience: “Sevens or more sit on the floor, six and below to the bleachers you go.” 

Worst
Where to start with this episode?

Let’s go with the final sketch of the season – the ridiculous Victorian Ladies at Lunch sketch, which sees Johansson, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner and Sarah Sherman eating the strangest of things, like jellied eel and picked cow’s feet. The joke is that these posh women eat the most disgusting of things, in the most disgusting of ways, and afterward discuss what the foods did to their digestive systems. The cast seemed to be enjoying it at least.

Worst
Johansson and Kenan Thompson played intimacy coordinators on the set of a lesbian romance. The biggest joke of the sketch was Thompson’s character not understanding how lesbians can have sex. It felt like a middle-schooler wrote it.

Worst
Johansson and Bowen Yang played a couple of “Entertainment Weekly”-type TV hosts interviewing the cast of a popular TV show filled with young adults, with the one joke being about how Marcello Hernandez’s character is so cute, while throwing gotcha journalism-type questions to the female cast members, played by Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Jane Wickline, etc.

Worst
In a sequel to last season’s “Bowen is Straight” film with Sydney Sweeney, we got “Bowen’s Still Straight,” where Johansson falls for Bowen Yang, despite being married to the show’s Weekend Update co-anchor, Colin Jost. Again, it’s one recycled joke – what if Yang were portraying gay on television, while being this super masculine heterosexual behind the scenes? It’s worth one chuckle, and that’s it.
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