SNL After Party 5/2/26 - S51 E18 “Some Say He’s Finding His Voice More Every Week”

Host and Musical Guest: Olivia Rodrigo

The cold open starts with a White House press briefing by Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla). Leavitt notes that she's about to go on maternity leave, which in the White House means you tell the president you have maternity, so he asks you to leave. Leavitt then brings on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, played once again by Colin Jost. Jost is now becoming more prevalent in these things than James Austin Johnson is as Trump himself. As usual, Jost Hegseth makes a lot of wild comments, such as when talking about the war in Iran, saying, "This war has been a movie. Specifically, The Never Ending Story." He mentioned that he wears his religion on his sleeve, by which he means he has a tattoo of Christ choking out Jimmy Kimmel. Hegseth proceeds to take a few questions from the media while also insulting them. For example, when one reporter asks how many bases the U.S. military has hit, Hegseth replies, "More bases than you've ever hit, virgin!"

Hegseth then brings out FBI Director Kash Patel, played in a cameo by Aziz Ansari. Ansari does a great job as Patel making jokes about investigations in which he says, "We dotted every T and bulged every I." When asked about whether he had concerns about being fired, he stated he did not, but then noted, "I'm the first Indian person to suck at my job."

The cold open has high energy and is funny. The Jost as Hegseth bit may be wearing a bit thin, but it was fine here. And Ansari did help up the ante.

Monologue

Rodrigo's monologue can best be described as harmless. The 23-year-old singer notes that everybody's favorite cast is the one they watch as a teenager, so she essentially names the current cast as her favorite. She shows one of her old acting reels in which she appeared in an old Navy commercial and includes a fake outtake. Rodrigo states that she used to do a show called Aardvark with Jake Paul. She says that she told him her dreams were to be a singer who brought to light issues teenage girls are facing, while Paul said, "One day I really want to beat up old guys on Netflix." She says she was glad they were both able to reach their dreams.

She finalizes the monologue by singing a song about getting a real ID (in a parody of her hit "Driver's License"). The song really wasn't that funny, but it was well delivered, and the audience seemed to really like it.

Edge of Destiny

In this parody of 1980s-style nighttime soap operas, Rodrigo confronts various members of a family who believe that she's not good enough to date the son (Marcello Hernandez). She then proceeds to inadvertently and then intentionally hurl people down the stairs. The entire humor of the bit is based on a kind of neat camera trick used to show the people as they comically fall down the stairs one after another.

As a kind of neat aside, as the show went to a break following the sketch, we got to see how the falling effect was accomplished. That was fun.

My Room

This pre-taped piece is one of the Saturday Night Live Midnight Matinee shorts. In it, Rodrigo sings about how much she loves her room, only to reveal that she is, in fact, an exhibit in a bug people's zoo. The song is cute, if a tad long, but it works for its absurdity and execution.

Shop TV

Well, here we go again. In this parody of QVC-style shows, Padilla and Mikey Day appear as television hosts introducing Rodrigo as the owner of Daisy's Custom Cakes. Daisy is selling a chocolate lava cake (with reusable pan, no less) that unfortunately looks like, well, a certain body part in ones and other regions.

When asked if he's ever seen anything quite like this cake, Day says, "Just my wife's once and my cat's every day." The hosts are then forced to sniff the cake in close-up, and Day is required to reach in and get some filling, which unfortunately is peanut butter. The whole thing is a juvenile gross-out sketch. That's not to say it doesn't get laughs. It certainly does. But man, this is some low-hanging fruit that has been plucked before in this format.

My Ex

Hernandez's character is having a birthday party and had invited Rodrigo and Ben Marshall's characters before they broke up. In order to deal with the breakup, Rodrigo asks a fellow partygoer (Tommy Brennan) to act like her date to make Marshall jealous. Brennan agrees, and it works. To counter this, Marshall asks a woman at his table (Padilla) to do the same, and she enthusiastically does so. She (this is one of those sketches where they just let Padilla go) goes over the top. When asked to chuckle at a joke, Marshall says he's told she loudly criticizes him for telling a gay joke. When Rodrigo and Brennan boop each other's noses with whipped cream, Padilla slathers them both with mashed potatoes and so on.

This is another one of those sketches where Padilla's performance completely sells the bit and renders something hilarious that probably would have just been middling otherwise. Kenan Thompson shows up at the end with a weird button to the sketch. It's not necessary, but it's always nice

Weekend Update:

Weekend Update

This week's weekend update felt like it was intentionally just trying to get groans out of the audience. There are a lot of jokes that clearly weren't going to get a laugh because they went too far, and that's okay, but the formula doesn't really work when it's so obviously being applied. That said, there were plenty of good jokes on topics ranging from Spirit Airlines' sudden closure to King Charles meeting New York Mayor Mamdani. Che quipped that he was surprised the King didn't take Mamdani back with him, as he is, "an Indian treasure." There were also jokes about the President putting his picture on Passports Now, which will allow people to "always carry a reminder of why you fled the country." It was fairly funny when Jost read a joke about doctors telling people they should stop scrolling their phone while on the toilet to avoid hemorrhoids. Jost then screamed out, "No!"

The desk bits were a little weaker than usual. Chloe Feinman and Veronika Slowikowska played feuding bloggers who, essentially, just made no sense. This bit sank.

Kam Patterson showed up to talk about rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s break-up from NBA star Klay Thompson. The predictable bit here is that Patterson wanted to use that as an opportunity to take his shot to get a date with Megan Thee Stallion. Patterson's stand-up sensibilities did come through here, and he was funny. There just was not much to this bit.

Busted

I honestly don't know why someone in 2026 decided that R Kelly's "Stuck in a Closet" needed a parody, but here we are. Here, Rodrigo's is sneaking into the house as her fiancé (Hernandez) waits for her. They then break into a song, making very excuses for their various behaviors as a parade of other people emerge from a closet or, in one case, the couch. This sketch maybe could have worked at some point, but it felt out of place and not that funny here.

I was mainly glad when the whole affair came to an end.

Rasta Driver

On the other hand, the next sketch featured a song or two and was delightfully odd and funny. The sketch begins when Rodrigo and Slowikowska are getting into an Uber driven by Andrew Dismukes (with a fake gray mustache to make him look older). The passengers talk to each other in the back promising themselves that they will not do stupid things that evening. Suddenly and loudly Dismukes begins to sing a Jamaican dance hall song. When he finishes, the passengers are stunned, as is the driver. He doesn't know why he did it or how he came up with the song. He is upset because he "just realized I'm one of the most talented Rasta emcees on Earth." That he must now follow his destiny. He bemoans that he does not want to be a white Rasta guy. The sketch then ends with a second song. It's quick, it's funny, it's surprising. This was a fun piece.

Home Security Ad

In this pre-taped commercial parody, a home security service will not only post videos of criminals caught in the act of breaking into your home, it will also make sure that those videos go viral so that the ne'er-do-wells can be quickly identified. This includes several influencers asking the kind of questions that get asked in viral videos. Cam Patterson shows up doing his stand-up to one would-be burglar, while Cory Booker makes the scene to help make the piece go viral. As a side note, I am not entirely sure whether or not that was actually Cory Booker. I think it was? The sketch is funny and a little different than things we've seen before. Not a bad last sketch of the night.

The Goodbye Wave

Best Sketch: Spoiled for choices are we this week. One could make a case for three or four sketches. In a close race, I am going to go with Fashion District Robbery. Everyone - particularly Domingo - was so on fire in this one, and the writing was great. But, check back tomorrow and I might switch to “Would It Surprise You….”. Both sketches feature hilarious, absurd writing and pitch perfect performances from the guest host.

Worst Sketch: This is another close one, and the sketches that qualify would likely not be in the running on a normal week. The Cold Open is middling, and Beastomorphs is just silly and juvenile, but I am going to go with Grandpa’s Wake. This was not at all a bad sketch, but I have to pick one, and this piece did seem to go on a bit long for as little payoff as it had.

The Goodbye Wave

Best Sketch: Rasta Driver made me laugh more than anything else. There was almost nothing to the sketch, but it did not overstay its welcome and it was genuinely funny, so it eeks out the Birthday Party sketch.

Worst Sketch: I’ll go with Busted here. It was a lot of work for a disproportionately small pay off.

Random Notes:

- Blondie’s Debbie Harry popped in to introduce Rodrigo’s first song of the night, while Connor Storie came back after hosting earlier this season to introduce the second. Both were kind of head scratchers, but what the hey!

- Barstool Sports got two shoutouts this episode. Which seems like a lot.

- Some woman in the audience really wanted to make sure the mics caught her laughter. And, look, I get it. I got to see one SNL episode live, and I will admit I did the same thing for one joke during Weekend Update. To this day, I will swear it worked. (I can’t find a clip offhand. It was the SNL hosted episode in 2007).

This was an average (or slightly below average episode, maybe), but Rodrigo herself was game and solid as a host. Her musical numbers featured somewhat elaborate sets, and anytime she sang (sketch or musical number) she was genuinely good.

This one won’t go in the time capsule, but it shouldn’t fuel the usual claims that SNL is on its last legs. It was entertaining enough, and that is okay.

Grade: C

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