‘SNL’ Recap: Molly Shannon’s Sally O’Malley Is The Bonus Jonas Brother

It’s Holy Week, with Passover, Easter and Ramadan all in full swing, so would Saturday Night Live go religious or secular or both or neithxer this weekend? With cast alum Molly Shannon in the building, one thing’s for sure: We’d get to see the return of at least one of her iconic characters. With a kick, stretch, a kick…and a twist!

What’s The Deal For The SNL Cold Open For Last Night (4/8/23)?

At first, it looked as though the show would lean hard into Easter, what with the voiceover from Steve Higgins and the Biblical scroll leading us straight into a re-enactment of “The Last Supper,” starring Mikey Day as Jesus, Molly Kearney as Judas, and Marcello Hernandez and Bowen Yang in the primo seats next to Mikey’s Jesus. But only after a couple of predictive zingers from SNL’s Jesus about SNL’s Judas, we’re rudely interrupted by a guy who wants his own followers to think he’s Jesus, and some actually do (which in Biblical terms, would actually make him the Antichrist?! but that’s not for this recap to say…), former President Donald J. Trump!

James Austin Johnson brings his usual ridiculous riffing to this holiday affair, but adds some meta layering into it. So we’re treated not only to JAJ’s Trump making his sales pitch to us on how he’s a lot like Christ with his popularity and business savvy (complete with an allusion to Mary Magadelene reference, since “all I did was be friendly to a sex worker and now they want to put me in jail”), and throwing in some expected misinformation, such thinking Easter’s his birthday, knocking him for being a “nepo baby,” and wanting to make Good Friday great. Not only did he call Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis his own Judas (“he did a Judas, and now he can’t even get the gays out of Disney World”). But also, he stopped multiple times to mock his cast mates for freezing in place in the shadows behind him. “Look at the fingers. He’s stuck doing the fingers the whole time. Weird choice with the fingers.” And he poked fun at them for not getting to “say the big line.”

How Did The Guest Host Molly Shannon Do?

Molly Shannon returned to Studio 8H to host for her second time, with a role in the new movie A Good Person, and season three of The Other Two just around the corner on HBO Max. For her monologue, Shannon went the Broadway musical route, but not playing off her memoir, “Hello, Molly!” Instead, she sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy. Molly Kearney interrupts, but not because she’s another Molly. Martin Short makes a cameo offstage to smash his face into a burger and crack up Lorne Michaels. By the end, everything’s coming up “Superstar!” pose.

Weirdly, the first sketch after the monologue did not foretell how much fun the rest of the episode would be, as Vincent’s “Valets” with Dismukes training his new parking valets (JAJ, Shannon, Kenan Thompson) how the job entails a “Lil Joke, Lil Bow, Lil Jog” but the jokes and the scene narrative mostly felt like it was jogging in place? It certainly didn’t go anywhere.

Then we caught up with Shannon’s comedian caricature, the mullet-topped painfully unfunny Jeannie Darcy, has scored Netflix’s second live stand-up comedy special, Jeannie Darcy: Selective Startage!?! With a red-carpet testimonials from Ego Nwodim as Arsenio Hall, Punkie Johnson as Wanda Sykes, and Chloe Fineman as Sarah Silverman, boasting that Darcy gave her the show’s setlist. It reads “Don’t Get Me Started” on every line. ZING! (Note: Netflix’s comedy booker quickly reposted SNL’s IG Reel version, so message received and approved?)

The video above might be titled “Pregnant Co-Worker,” but this live sketch might just be an instant classic. It’s a gas! Shannon plays Suzie, whose coworkers (Heidi Gardner, Yang, Dismukes, Thompson, and Sarah Sherman) throw her a baby shower to celebrate her last day in the office before maternity leave. But it turns out she’s catfishing them, and not in the way that term is normally used! “How much suffering can one mother bear?” This elevates the fart joke to unimagined heights before deflating and exploding, all in just five minutes. Instant classic.

The “please don’t destroy” boys also destroyed thanks to their work with the now-successfully unionizing SNL editing crew on a helluva Molly Shannon video game! Well, games plural. But you’ve got to play “Molly Shannon 2K23,” which comes complete with a Tonight Show side quest to make Jimmy Fallon laugh, an NYU commencement speech where you can decide to make her go on a “cancel culture” tirade. Wait? Shouldn’t she be getting paid for this? Yeah. But at least we can sleep soundly knowing the people who actually made this fake video game are getting paid for it. I wouldn’t even pick up “Super Mario Batali” if it were left on the sidewalk for free, tho.

Poor Brian (Devon Walker). All he wants is to support his playwright girlfriend (Gardner) at the opening of her newest production, only to learn one devastating reveal after another as the play isn’t so “loosely based” on her life, with Shannon playing her, and Thompson playing him as a total dweeb who’s bad in the sack but just happened to hit her magic number.

Thompson also ends up partnering with Shannon as the two leads in a TV “Drug Commercial” that’s about menopause, but never quite gets around to making that point. There are some funny jokes to be made in the drug’s side effects, to be sure, but it’s no Happy Fun Ball, Colon Blow or even the real TV ad for Skyrizi that aired in NYC afterward. Nothing is everything, indeed. Whoa-oh-oh-whoa-oh!

How Relevant Was The Musical Guest Jonas Brothers?

Jonas Brothers made their third trip as a trio to the show, promoting their forthcoming album, “The Album,” which comes out May 12. They opened with the second single off of it, “Waffle House.”

Then they followed up with “Walls,” which is the closing track on the album. How many people does it take to sing “Walls”? Who knows, who cares, who makes the walls cry, who let the dogs out? There’s a lot of backing vocals going on here, but there’s also a lot of rock balladeering going on here.

Which Sketch Will We Be Sharing: “Sally O’Malley: Jonas Brothers”

I was all ready to proclaim the “please don’t destroy” tribute to Shannon as this week’s Sharing Is Caring winner, but then the Jonas Brothers had to go all Sally O’Malley on us. Shannon was kicking, stretching and kicking as a “50-year-old” since her early 30s on SNL, but doing it now at 58 might be a stretch, or not, depending upon how literally you want to take this. But she puts everyone else in their place, making the other choreographers (Yang and Fineman) laugh at her cameltoe and reminding them: “Honey, I been 50 since before youse was born.” Seeing them rip off their clothes to reveal matching O’Malley red jumpsuits makes everyone “put some bonus in your Jonas.”

Who Stopped By Weekend Update?

No hijinks between Michael Che and Colin Jost this week. No time for that as the welcomed three guests to the Update desk. The first two were timely; the last one, timeless.

Jafar from Aladdin (Yang) came to comment on the running DeSantis vs. Disney feud goes. “As far as villains go, the boy’s an amateur.” It’s the second character in this episode to pointedly call Disney a Magic Kingdom for the LGBTQ+ community. Six Flags is for straights, apparently.

LSU basketball star Angel Reese (Johnson) ruffled some feathers among non-hoops players for her trash-talking in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship last weekend, but she reminded even her critics how everyone thought women’s sports were boring before now. And she sees some potential commercial sponsorships in her future, if only she can throw in some trash talk as their new corporate slogans.

Last but certainly not least, Gardner showed up as Crystal, the Co-Worker Who’s Extremely Busy Doing Seemingly Nothing. Even her answers to Jost are extremely busy, because she’s got lots of receipts. And emails received! But for whom is she really working? That deserves further investigation!

What Sketch Filled The “10-to-1” Slot?

The Sally O’Malley Jonas Brothers spectacular started at 12:50 a.m. Eastern, but it ended with enough time for another ad break and one final pre-tape.

So the weird finale honors, at 12:57 a.m., went to a fake ad for CNZen, an app wherein you can find soothing meditation for all of your Trump-related anxiety, thanks to CNN anchors and personalities whispering sweet nothingburgers into your ears. Featuring Michael Longfellow as Anderson Cooper, Walker as Van Jones, Fineman as Dana Bash, Sarah Sherman as Wolf Blitzer, Shannon as NYT reporter Maggie Haberman, JAJ as Lindsey Graham, plus ASMR, and “audio erotica” of Alvin Bragg (Thompson) reading all 34 counts of Trump’s New York indictment.

Who Was The Episode’s MVP?

Plenty of contenders this week. Usually it’s tougher for any individual SNL cast member to carry the load when the host is an SNL alum, because the audience hopes and expects to see a bunch of that alum’s characters once more. Honorable mentions to Bowen Yang and Heidi Gardner, who got to flex in live sketches and Update, and it was nice to see more Andrew Dismukes in one episode than we’d seen in months, if not all season? But Kenan Thompson partnered up with or appeared side-by-side with Shannon in three live sketches (“Valets” “The Play” “Drug Commercial”) and one pre-tape (“CNN App”), and played Shannon’s boss in “Pregnant Co-Worker,” so that in itself signaled his value to making this episode succeed.

Next week: Ana de Armas hosts with musical guest Karol G.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.