SNL After Party (S50 E16 Air Date 3/29/25) - "Feminism Destroyed Joann's"

Host: Mikey Madison

Musical Guest: Morgan Wallen

Fresh off her Oscar win for Anora, Mikey Madison takes to the stage in Studio 8H. Does she deliver a great show, or are viewers as disappointed as Demi Moore?

Let’s find out in the After Party.

Cold Open

In a rare move, Madison takes part in the cold open, along with Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman as a group of teens in a group text. We all know where this is going as soon as the set up is established. And sure enough, Pete Hegseth (Andrew Dismukes) pops in to drop military plans to the group. Bowen Yang joins in as J.D. Vance (from Greenland) and Marcello Hernandez is there as Marco Rubio. There are some funny lines in an otherwise completely predictable sketch.

Not the strongest start.

Monologue

Madison is charming in her monologue, but there’s just not much to it. She tells a cute story about being a “horse girl” and shows a picture of her as a kid on Halloween with a horse. She says it’s a couples costume with a story. They are dressed in prison garb because they stole each others’ hearts. Awww.

She then talks about doing her own stunt work in Anora, including pole dancing, which she says she will prove. She approaches a pole, and then there’s an obvious cut where a muscular stand-in does the actual dance.

Again, more cutesy than funny. But, it’ll do.

Acting Teacher 2

Hernandez brings back his bad acting teacher character for another round of giving terrible acting advice to students who want to appear in commercials.

The bit doesn’t warrant a second outing…and certainly not in this slot.

But, Hernandez seems to be having fun, so what the hey! The originality of the sketch is apparent by the fact that the show just labelled it “Acting Teacher 2”

Big Dumb Line

The first of four - can that be right - pre-taped pieces of the night.
In this, Madison, Yang and Heidi Gardner sing about long lines that inexplicably pop up in New York for the latest trending food truck. The lines are never worth the wait, and the food is always “fine”. Joe Jonas joins in the song.

The sketch kind of lives up to the premise….

Jury Duty

This is one of those fun sketches that is really just an opportunity for people to do quick characters that are funny for a short period, but would probably not be worth a whole sketch (see Fineman’s funny impression of Parker Posey from the White Lotus, for example).

In this outing, Nwodim is a judge talking to perspective jurors who are trying to get out of jury duty. Mikey Day is the CEO of Google Bird’s Mobile Dog Grooming Service, Kenan is a weirdo, Madison claims to be a celebrity, Sherman is a bisexual for mass incarceration,Yang is a time traveller, and so on.

The bits are so quick and amusing that the whole thing works pretty well.

Spring Break

The earnest melodrama played out in front of a window beyond which chaos reigns returns. We’ve seen it - perhaps best- at a Waffle House in the past.
This time it’s in a hotel room where a couple of (Fineman and Hernandez) have a serious talk about whether they are ready to get married, while Day leads the absurdity outside. There’s puking, broken arms, security guards and an alligator.

It’s funny enough, but the bit doesn’t feel particularly fresh anymore.

For some reason the video is age restricted. Maybe it’s the alligator.

Weekend Update

The guys seemed a little low energy this week, but the jokes were decent. The SecDef text snafu got coverage. They played a clip of Hegseth discussing it and ending with “And that’s all I’ve got to say about that,” leading to the notation that “He went full Gump.”

There was discussion of Tesla vandalism being labelled domestic terrorism, “which is a serious crime punishable by a full pardon.”

And, in perhaps the best joke of the night, it was noted that Will Smith has released his first new album in 20 years, leading Che to say “Ironically, the album doesn’t slap.”

The desk guests were a mixed bag. Devon Walker came on to show his day in the life video which was meant to make fun Ashton Hall’s viral morning ritual video. The video is okay, but Walker’s digs at Che are what make the bit funny. It’s nice that Colin gets a break for a week. (Colin isn’t off the hook completely. He does a piece that feels like one of those things Che wrote for him without him seeing it in advance that is a take down of Paddington. The bear. It’s funny).

The second desk bit is funnier. Ashley Padilla appears as Joann, the owner of Joann’s Fabric stores to discuss the chain’s closure. Padilla is proving herself to be arguably the best actor currently on the show. She points out that the closing of the stores means a lot to “women with boring husbands and a mean dog.,” and she blames feminism for the stores’ troubles. It’s solid.

Pop’s Big Reget

Dismukes is the old man gangster with his son’s (Hernandez and James Austin Johnson) who is gunned down by a rival gang.

But he has time to share his regerets…such as not seeing his grandkids growup or try his hand at standup comedy.

He then proceeds to share some of his joke concepts, which are gloriously terrible, and includes his catch phrase “Make that make sense.”

It’s a ridiculous premise, but I liked it (probably because it hit a little close to the many, many times I’ve sat in clubs listening to open mic comics riff after the show).

Barry the Midwife

Yang’s Barry the midwife returns in a sketch that is essentially the same thing it was when he did it last season.

I’m not saying it’s not funny. But, man, there’s a lot of repeated stuff this episode. And this character was funny because it was so weird and different.

The first time.

Please Don’t Destroy

Madison shows up in the lads’ office dressed as Squidward from SpongeBob Squarepants. She reveals that she wants to do an HBO style live action show with the SpongeBob cast. And, they proceed to show us scenes from Treading Water, a Girls style take on the Bikini Bottoms gang.

This one fell into the more clever than hilarious category, but, still, it was well executed.

So, Like, What Are We?

Would SNL even be SNL if there wasn’t a game show sketch?

This one is a tad weak. Madison hosts a show in which she grills a guy she’s dating (Michael Longfellow) abut what their relationship is.

It’s more cringe than comical.

Planning New York

An animated piece with Yang and Longfellow planning New York’s streets in the 1620’s.

It is a funny examination on the odd layout of Manhattan.

This is probably funnier for residents of Gotham, but it is very smart and funny.

The Goodbye Wave

Best Sketch: There were no classics this week. So, I’ll go with Pop’s Big Regret , just because it was close to home with me.

Worst Sketch: There’s a handful I could chose from here. So, I’ll just randomly go with Acting Teacher 2. It edges out the competition by including the 2 right in the title.

Random Notes:

-There was a lot of repeat material this week. Much more than usual. Maybe everyone is just trying to get back in the groove after the latest break?

-Were the cool bumpers from last episode gone, or was that just because of the stream I watched?

-Morgan Wallen left the show during the goodbyes. Some people wonder if it’s related to his having been cancelled from the show during COVID due to mask issues. Or it could have been a simple matter of him getting confused about blocking. Either way, it makes for entertaining speculation.

-This one had more New York based material than usual. Two of the pretaped bits were strictly New Yorkcentric (and one of the others was set in New York, but that would probably be quibbling).

Mikey Madison was not given much to do this episode. What she did, she did fine. But there was no break out sketch for her to shine in.

This was very much a middling episode full of repeat sketches and a plethora of pre-taped pieces.

Not a bad show, by any means. But just kind of meh.

Make that make sense.

Grade: C

As always, we grade SNL episodes in comparison to other SNL episodes. Not TV in general.

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