SNL After Party 12/6/25 - S51 E7 “I Am A Woman…And Yonkers Is A Village.”
Host: Melissa McCarthy
Musical Guest: Dijon
SNL returns after a two-week holiday hiatus, and the show hopes to jumpstart the return by having always reliable six-time host Melissa McCarthy helm the show.
Did McCarthy bring holiday goodies, or should she have rested on her Five-Timer Club laurels and stayed at home?
Let’s find out in this week’s After Party
Cold Open:
We open with a fake press conference on CSPAN (“Hey Netflix, we’re for sale too”) as Colin Jost brings back his amped up Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Jost plays well to his supposed universal dislikeability (which is not really a thing. Like Jessica Rabbit, he can’t help it, he’s just drawn that way).
Hegseth insults the press, calling them fat, and telling one (Ashley Padilla) to “Oh, get a husband!”. Padilla’s shouts back, “I’m trying!”
Hegseth states that “As you probably read in some gay newspaper we are at war with Venezuela.”
He answers questions about the recent attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying “I had a drink for every Venezuelan we killed, I’d really like that number of drinks.” He also managed to throw in a “6-7 bit”.
Sarah Sherman shows up as Matt Gaetz to make sure that drug trafficking is the only kind of trafficking that the Administration is out to stop.
And then, inevitably, Trump (James Austin Johnson) shows up.
But, this time he’s asleep on stage, muttering in his sleep to newly elected NYC Mayor Mamdani, “You can freeze my rent anytime.”
Trump does take over, but it is fortunately brief, and is mainly a vehicle to mock his sleepiness.
Jost is really good with this character. I assume he’d be a good repertory player, but it makes sense to keep the Update Desk anchors out of sketches by and large.
The show is off to a good start.
First time host and star of the upcoming Running Man remake takes to stage at Studio 8H. Is he a fireball, or is his performance sub-zero?
Let’s find out at The After Party
Monologue
Melissa McCarthy is the absolute master at combining physical comedy with an absolute disregard as to how ridiculous she comes off. And she does it here very well.
She plays her “mouth horn,” which is just her pretending she is playing an instrument by making vaguely horn-like noises. It is stupid and hilarious.
Then she asks for fake snow, which is unceremoniously dumped on her, before she says she will do a mouth horn and piano duet. Marcello Hernandez, dressed as an elf, wheels out a piano, shoving McCarthy around the stage and setting up some more physical silliness.
Finally, Kenan comes out and accompanies McCarthy in a duet of Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).
This was a fun, silly opening with some great energy.
Hopes for this episode are very high.
Free Sample:
McCarthy brings back her socially awkward and inappropriate character in this sketch in which Jeremy Culhane is passing out cheese samples in a store. McCarthy’s character is overwhelmed by this show of generosity, and tries to offer him her foster mother’s ring, an exceptionally uncomfortable hug (“May I express my thanks to you physically?”), and a full mouthed-kiss.
This sketch is terrific, both because of McCarthy’s excellent character work, but also because of some very funny tangential writing about McCarthy’s pack of racist dogs outside the store and her less than perfect childhood.
McCarthy does this kind of character better than anyone, and although she has done it before on SNL, it’s still just plain funny and fresh. And, Culhane really holds his own here.
A Helping Hand:
In this taped piece, a child sees his elderly neighbor (McCarthy) struggling to shovel snow from her sidewalk. When the old woman goes inside, the boy takes care of the walkway. The remainder of the sketch shows the grateful neighbor repaying the lad’s kindness in increasingly odd and violent ways. This is a solid segment that deftly incorporates heightening and increasing stakes. It’s also pretty funny. McCarthy is - so far - bringing it.
UPS Delivery Driver:
McCarthy is a UPS driver who has to answer to the company’s H.R. reps (Padilla and Mikey Day) based on customer complaints.
The complaints include Ring camera footage of McCarthy abusing packages, releasing a bat into the house she is delivering to, and culminates in her relieving herself off the side of the porch (a process that takes several hours). The surveillance videos are funny, as are McCarthy’s efforts to escape the meeting by pretending to faint and trying to roll out of the meeting in her chair.
This is just a really fun showcase of McCarthy’s ability to combine physical and verbal comedy. It’s a genuinely funny sketch, and even has a strong “bow” for an ending.
Weekend Update:
Well, the show had to take a turn somewhere….
The fake news this week is fine. Not one of the stronger news segments, but fine. Che jokes about the World Cup, noting the US drew Paraguay in the first round, and is likely to win due to the team’s star player . . . ICE.
Jost reports on the photos recently released from Epstein’s island, noting “It’s not as nice as I remember.” And there was a clip of Trump from Home Alone 2 edited to make it look like Kevin was asking him where to find Epstein.
It was all serviceable, if not great, stuff.
But then Ben Marshall shows up as a redhead who just went on vacation. The whole joke, and I kid you not, was that fair-skinned people get sunburns. This segment crashed and (sun)burned pretty badly.
The second desk segment fared better. Sarah Sherman was a drunk raccoon. That’s really all you need to know. Her physicality here was off the charts. Again, this may not have been the best ever desk bit, but my goodness Sherman committed to it, and that paid off.
Update ended with Che saying, “Colin’s fat, goodnight!” And, for some reason this made me laugh.
Truth or Dare:
Adult women decide to play truth or dare at a party. It starts off with bland questions, but the dares instantly become sexual. And that is the whole sketch. No, really. That’s it. This one was a clunker. But, at least it gave Chloe Fineman something to do this week, and as bad as the sketch was, it did give cast members a chance to show off some acting chops.
Sunday Supper:
McCarthy and Andrew Dismukes host a Sunday dinner party. As they sit around, Dismukes declares he would like to do a Sunday Supper every week. The guests say they really can’t because of kids or other commitments. As a result, Dismukes has a childish tantrum and threatens to run away with his hobo bindle. This silliness increases as various other ideas are shot down, to the point where Dismukes pours gasoline on himself (“You keep a jug of gasoline behind your couch?” Bowen Yang asks).
Ultimately Dismukes runs away, leading McCarthy to express her gratitude that he’s gone. But that is short lived, as Dismukes returns due to the neighbor’s dog being out and scaring him.
This was original at least, if not hysterical.
Cousin Planet:
Look, every now and then I have to acknowledge that I am decades older than SNL’s target demographic. This is one of those times. This pre-taped music video featuring Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska asks the burning question of where do cousins go after holiday gatherings. The answer is Cousin Planet. This is just an odd video that seems to be weird for weird’s sake without any real payoff.
I like oddball sketches, but this one just seemed to be so self-consciously weird that it just didn’t work for me.
Christopher & Guillaume:
Well, speaking of weird, the last sketch of the evening featured McCarthy and Yang as a couple who have various holiday oddities in their home. They are interviewed by a local reporter (Tommy Brennan) with a name that is too stupid even for SNL dumb name standards.
The whole sketch is basically the couple showing off their strange items, such as s Minion nativity scene, a “Fashion Jesus”, a Gingerbread house of whichthey are slumlords, a snow baby tree decoration in which the infant has “the Benjamin Button disease.”
So, this was the kind of oddness that Yang is good at. Why did I like it better than Cousin Planet? I don’t know. It felt like here the strangeness was in service of an overall sketch, but that the sketch wasn’t just “Hey, look. Weird, huh?”
I may be overthinking this.
The Goodbye Wave:
Best Sketch:
I could make a case for almost any sketch in the show’s first half. But, I am just such a fan of the awkward Melissa McCarthy characters that I am going with Free Samples. It has physical comedy, smart, off-kilter writing, and a strong beginning, middle and end. The other residents of my house would have picked A Helping Hand, and I can’t really argue against that. Or UPS Delivery Driver.
Worst Sketch:
I mentioned last week that I try not to include Update as the best sketch. I also try not to do that with worst if there’s a viable alternative. I came really close to listing Ben Marshall’s redhead back from vacation appearance, but Truth or Dare was weak enough that I couldn’t see my way clear not to list it as the worst of the night. So there it is, and here we are.
Random Notes:
The writers have not found a space for Kam Patterson yet. He needs a sketch built around him soon if he has hope of making it to his second season.
Okay, this is a legitimate question. Is the sound mix as bad as I think it is for musical guests, or do I have some setting off on my TV? Both of Dijon’s numbers sounded like the main vocals were cranked to 11, while everything else was hovering around 2. This sounded weird considering the number of artists on stage. So, really, was this a me problem or a 30 Rock problem?
The show had an in memoriam bumper card for Craig Kellem. Kellem was a producer and talent coordinator on the show’s inaugural 1975-76 season.
McCarthy is always great on the show. And, the first half of the episode was fantastic. But it seemed to just lose steam around the time that Weekend Update rolled around, and never really recovered.
This had the makings of a great show at first, but the second half converted it into just a good one. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it would have been nice if the show could have maintained the momentum it had at the top of the episode.
Nonetheless, this was one of the better episodes of the season, so no point in me being a Grinch about it.
Grade: B+
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