SNL After Party 12/20/25 - S51 E9 “Congrats on a Great Season. Better Luck Next Year”
Host: Teyana Taylor
Musical Guest: Geese
This week’s SNL episode swoops in with a newly minted Academy Award nominee. So, will Teyana Taylor provide us with an Oscar-worthy episode, or will this just be one lame sketch after another?
Let’s Find out at this week’s After Party!
Cold Open
Well, if we must be saddled with a Trump sketch at the top of the show for the foreseeable future, at least we got a slight different format this time around.
Here, James Austin Johnson’s Trump hosts the Trump awards, a spoof of award shows with all of the awards relating to all things Trump.
“Everyone wants to go home with a Trump, except a Melania!” quips JAJ.
The awards include best kiss (mainly of Trump’s ass), best picture (of Trump) and so on.
Trump, of course, manages to win or take away all the awards, pausing to thank his agent, Loki, god of mischief, trickery and chaos.
Mike Meyers cameos as Elon Musk (much to the audience’s delight), and there’s even an in memoriam reel for all that has been lost this year, shown as Carrie Underwood and the construction worker from the Village people sing a mournful version of the America’s Home Video. (The reel includes the East Wing, DEI, and Marjorie Taylor Green).
It’s not a terrible opener, but, yes, it’s more of the incessant tide of Trump opening sketches. I don’t recall this happening under any other President. If Dan Akroyd had opened every episode of the show with a Carter sketch, SNL would have never made it beyond 1977. ’78 tops.
Monologue
Teyana Taylor was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another. (Can we talk about this movie sometime? I’d like everyone else’s input sometime).
Taylor said she was an introvert before showing a clip from her 16th birthday party which was featured on My Super Sweet 16. She told a story about her kids being on their phones during her Golden Globe acceptance speech (before cutting to them in the SNL audience doing the same thing), and she talked about how careful she was during her pregnancies, showing a One Battle clip in which her very pregnant character fires a machine gun.
This was a serviceable monologue. It wasn’t very funny, but it was not a disaster. Taylor seemed genuinely enthusiastic to be there, which helped.
Gate Agents
Passengers deal with airline delays due to weather as Taylor and Kenan Thompson are gate agents who provide updates by singing them as “Shrimp and Grits”.
The singing grows tiresome pretty quickly, but the little bits within the sketch are funny. Kenan hurls nuts at the passengers. Taylor pretends to be a woman a passenger has hooked up with when he call his wife. And, JAJ comes out as a pilot who is drunk because he thought he was drinking virgin margaritas, but turns out they were served “slutty”.
The sketch really doesn’t gel, but there are enough oddball funny bits in it to make it watchable.
Toy Commercial
In this pre-taped commercial, kids play with action figures from One Battle After Another. This is a very funny parody, with kids using their action figures to reenact inappropriate scenes from the film.
As a tag at the end, we see the entire Paul Thomas Anderson line of action figures, with a young lad holding his Daniel Plainview action figure while shouting, “I abandoned my child. I abandoned my boy!”
This was great.
NFL on ESPN
Andrew Dismukes and JAJ are ESPN commentators, and Taylor is a sideline reporter. The whole sketch is based on two things. Denver’s quarterback is injured, and they keep doing promos for “Quefs”, a show about queer chefs.
There’s not much to this one. This is two single premise jokes shoved together, and it really does not work.
Confidence Class
Ashley Padilla teaches a class on confidence, but turns out she is not the best person to teach such a class.
She opens by telling her students that she started her path to this class after she failed to get a job. The class immediately starts asking why she didn’t get the job. They ask what she wore to the interview, and she tells them it was something nice, like leather pants. She also wore leather gloves.
After this, she puts her resume on screen as a template. The resume shows her special talents include voices and her lengthy stint as a Dolly Parton impersonator.
Of course, the class gets her to do some voice work, and she does an absolutely terrible Yoda.
After further disastrous revelations, Padilla says she is confident and happy, and has a boyfriend waiting for her outside. The class wants to meet him, but she declines because he looks bad. “Like if a goblin lived in New York.”
Finally, the class wraps up with the students saying her terrible life has made them feel more confident, and then she favors them with her rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”, which comes off as more of a bad dramatic monologue.
This sketch was very funny, with Padilla doing all the heavy lifting.
Weekend Update
There were some very pointed current events jokes this week about Trump and ICE, and a lot of material which the audience couldn’t determine whether or not it went too far.
Other jokes included a comment that Trump inviting Russia and Saudi Arabia to his Council of Peace was like have Diddy star in Law & Order SVU.
In non-political news, there was a story about a video of a “Dorito-shaped” object flying through the sky. “It’s called a triangle, fat-ass,” Che remarked
The desk guests were weak this episode. Marcello Hernandez appeared as a Gen Z slang translator, and whenever Jost used the word in question, it was immediately pronounced dead. Not that funny, but Hernandez’s goofy, breezy manner made it far superior to the second guest.
Jeremy Culhane appeared as Mr. On Blast, a guy who likes to give his opinions. This is an excuse to do a series of bad jokes punctuated by a little dance. This was excruciating, repetitive and not funny. Which, of course, means it is destined to become a recurring character.
Sorry for putting this on blast.
Grandpa at the Wedding
This does not deserve much description. Taylor is a grandfather at a wedding who - get this - dances way better than he should!
Grandpa - and I swear this is true - even starts breakdancing.
This trend was dead in 1986. It does not need to be revived.
Backstab Island
In another one joke sketch, reality show contestants point out they are not there to make friends, but to win. Taylor’s character, however, wants to make friends. The premise itself is not particularly funny, and does not benefit from being a full sketch.
Beyond the Headlines
Oof.
In this PBS news show, Taylor moderates a panel that includes Thompson, Chloe Fineman and Mikey Day. Day and Fineman talks about how current law enforcement issues are unprecedented, which causes Taylor, Thompson (and even cameraman Kam Patterson) to make interrupting noises.
There’s a solid point to be made here about how different groups view current events, and how the media is not always attuned to the issues facing black America, but this sketch just did not work on any level. And repetition did not help the premise.
Blowing It
Please Don’t Destroy member Martin Herlihy appears in a taped bit as a guy selling a book on how get your girlfriend to dump you.
The scenarios he presents with his girlfriend (Sarah Sherman) are increasingly ridiculous. From Herlihy mocking Sherman’s father’s accent, to giving her a box of tampons for Valentines Day to appearing at a funeral dressed as a member of the Lumineers.
This is the kind of goofball, ridiculous piece that really makes me miss Please Don’t Destroy, and made me laugh throughout. Stick around for the end of this one.
The Goodbye Wave:
Best Sketch:
Blowing It was the last sketch of the night, and was easily the funniest. Herlihy’s piece did what Please Don’t Destroy often did. It took a premise and heightened it to absurd levels. This was in stark contrast to so many sketches this week that had a premise that did nothing but flatline over the course of a few minutes. This was genuinely hilarious and well-crafted.
Worst Sketch:
We have an embarrassment of riches to choose from for this category this week. I rarely like to do this, particularly when there are “normal” sketches to choose from, but Culhane’s Mr. On Blast was so annoying that I considered bestowing this week’s award to it. We can only hope that this doesn’t somehow return and/or become a feature length film. But, all that said, Grandpa at the Wedding manages to steal the honors here for being such an old, tired premise that doesn’t do anything to make the trope worthy of being called back into action 40 years after it was already dead.
Random Notes:
Man, this cast is too big. Performers are just disappearing or getting practically no screen time on any given week.
I don’t like to talk too much about the musical act because I don’t really feel qualified to do so, and because I realize that most of my critiques would sound like an old man screaming at the kids today. But, and I say this with all the kindness I can muster, what the actual hell was up with Geese. The first song had a guy just mumbling rhymes, while the second song was a much inferior rip-off of “The End” by The Doors. A song which wasn’t that good in the first place. I don’t know, did they win a contest to be on the show or something?
I don’t think I can muster the excitement for a Mike Meyers sighting that I think I am supposed to have.
Teyana Taylor was great in One Battle After Another. But, it just does not seem that sketch comedy is in her wheelhouse. She never felt natural in any sketch, and seemed to kind of stiffly act her way through them. This is odd considering her acting chops, but not all actors are a match for this form of comedy. Combine that with some stale premises (breakdancing grandpa! A Stevie Wonder is blind joke!), and this show was kind of a mess. Though redeemed by a couple of strong sketches, the overall show was a weak offering. Let’s somehow blame it on the weather, and hope for the best next week.
Grade: D+
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