Photo: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC

Somehow, Charli earned five Grammy nominations, still unequivocally emerged as the music story of the year.

The successful British club kid arrived in 2024 via perhaps the best-executed album cycle of all time. Brat had instantly recognizable iconography in its color palette, a title concept so strong that it bent the local language to its will, but more importantly, it managed to capture intense cultural attention for five months, an eternity in TikTok era. Now her coronation ends with Charli’s SNLhosting debut, in an episode whose structure mirrored the brat album rollout: huge impact at the top, surprising twists to keep the momentum going and a strong finish.

Although she will appear in films soon, including a film she co-wrote with Jeremy O. Harris this summer (!), the singer doesn’t yet have the acting experience of recent host Ariana Grande and may not be ready to wear a sketch like Grande’s ‘Charades’. Still, her established, fashionably bored British persona translated well into several sketch roles, including fellow singers Adele and Victoria Beckham. She earned laughs throughout the show without breaking a sweat or breaking character.

Elsewhere in the episode, Marcello Hernández cemented himself as the new cast member with the most range. Perhaps it was the rare absence of Mikey Day, normally a utility player who appears in a ton of sketches, but Hernández seemed ubiquitous all night, vacillating nonchalantly between leading and supporting roles, original characters and celebrity impressions. Like Charli XCX, he’s been a rising star for a while, and now he’s risen.

With the election still all too fresh in Americans’ minds, the writers wisely avoided the cultural resonance of the host’s presidential endorsement. There was no meeting between Charli and Maya Rudolph, with the latter assuring that Kamala Harris is still brat. Instead, we simply got a largely consistent evening of comedy to help viewers forget what ever happened.

Here are the highlights:

Joe Biden spent much of his time in the White House stooping to prove his bipartisan bona fides while paradoxically highlighting the other party’s fascist intentions. The only consequence of his overly sunny embrace of Trump as president-elect is that it means more Dana Carvey as Biden. SNL. The cold open immortalized the couple’s cozy summit and also introduced Trump’s Dr. Caligari-esque cabinet of horrors. (“They are some of the most dynamic, free-thinking, animal-murdering, sexually criminal, medically crazy people in the country,” says James Austin Johnson’s Trump.) Sarah Sherman dons a Neanderthal forehead and chevron eyebrows to portray a freakazoid congresswoman to play Matt Gaetz, while Alec Baldwin lowered his voice just a tiny bit to play RFK Jr. to play. While Sherman’s portrayal has a lot of potential, it would be better for humanity if we never see either character on this show again.

Like a supercharged episode of It workedthis sketch revels in the baking competition show challenges gone horribly wrong. But the wide variety of ways they go wrong, along with the immediate dismissal of Heidi Gardner’s only competent baker, is what makes this sketch a success. Charli You pretty much have to give it up for any sketch that’s sure to ruin multiple viewers’ Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, this episode’s weekend update was a bountiful celebration. Whether it was just the universe providing a plethora of material to work with or a burst of inspiration, the political jokes were razor sharp. (Well, except for one unfortunate Michael Che joke that would have fit nicely into Bill Burr’s unfortunate monologue last week.) Bowen Yang brought out a four-years-late Joe Exotic impression that hit the beats so hard, it felt right on time. After the enormous puppet tiger claw disappeared from that segment, it was soon replaced by another wild animal: Sherman’s widow squirrel. In a very physical feat, she achieved a level of facial gymnastics that I never thought possible.

Look, this sketch isn’t for everyone. If you happen to be the kind of demented pervert it was created for, it will be so up your alley that the alley might have to be renamed after it. There are so many different types of humor coming together, all of them silly. Yang’s character is inexplicably named Gidget. (Although he almost breaks when he accidentally says “Gadget.”) Sherman’s character seems exhausted when she has to remind her friends, “Yes, directors can Gentlemen te.” Someone in the Avatar The theme park apparently hands out bursting stones and calls them “unobtanium.” It’s a heady strange concoction and a high note to end the episode on.

Although a Please Don’t Destroy short was promised in the credits, it never quite made it into the East Coast feed. However, it must have aired on the West Coast, as the sketch appeared on YouTube this morning without being marked as ‘Cut for Time’. In any case, it’s a shame this one didn’t hit the airwaves, because this is the best PDD short in a long time. It has the same brazenly self-deprecating humor as the incredible “Roast Battle” short from last season’s Dakota Johnson episode, including another nepo-baby jab. This time, the boys went a step further and acknowledged that they now only appear on the show “once every six or seven episodes.” Ouch. However, if they really wanted to take a chance on themselves, perhaps the boys could have mentioned the very real insurance commercial that confusingly appeared to them between sketches.

• Surprising to see former cast member Kyle Mooney’s cameo in the monologue, as well as the bake-off sketch, without mentioning that he wrote and directed an A24 film coming out in three weeks. I don’t think he wanted to spoon-feed us baby birds, and we appreciate his trust in us.

• It feels a little too early to bring Kel Squad back another song dedicated to ‘Domingo’, but considering the former has 10 million YouTube views and launched countless TikTok videos, the rush to return is understandable. However, this new version worked better, in part by abandoning the painful premise of Kel Squad being awkward at singing and choreo.

• The Wicked Auditions sketch was a great opportunity to welcome back beloved impressions like Yang’s Fran Lebowitz and Devon Walker’s Shannon Sharpe, and introduce some new ones, like Chloe Fineman’s immaculate Leslie Mann. And in the same way that having Andy Samberg on contract for election reasons means a bonus Lonely island songhaving Carvey here translates into a fresh celebrity impression of him: Al Pacino.

• Julia Fox introduced Charli XCX her performance of “360” because she is indeed the Julia referenced in that song’s “I’m so Julia” chorus.

• The hosts of Banger Boyz Going from a story about a bag bump to a discussion about how the pyramids were built while surrounded by bottles of Prime was a solid encapsulation of the kind of podcast Trump frequented during the election. However, The Cold ended with such a great joke about Trump’s cabinet choices that it felt a little unnecessary to weave that thread a little further here.

• Hernández’s quirky commercial acting instructor who helps his students ‘almost’ land roll may just have the juice to become a recurring character.

• I can’t stop thinking about Heidi Gardner’s Cher wearing a black chef’s hat with a diamond-studded pilgrim buckle during the It Girl Thanksgiving sketch.

• Sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that Alec Baldwin’s fly was completely open during the farewell.