Saturday Night Live‘s season finale brought its usual laughs — thanks to awkward Zoom calls and pranks on working-from-home parents — as well as bittersweet throwbacks to a pre-pandemic New York.
Kristen Wiig served as host for the socially distanced finale, teasing it as the Mother’s Day episode before singing a tune dedicated to her mother ahead of the finale’s sketches.
Sketches on the episode included a Zoom catch-up call featuring Martin Short as a traveler having just returned from Italy.
A public service announcement parody featured the castmembers singing about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. “Let kids drink,” the cast sang.
A new MasterClass sketch featured Chloe Fineman as Phoebe Waller-Bridge offering writing advice. In her previous iteration of this sketch, she played Timothee Chalamet and Carole Baskin. Melissa Villaseñor did a spot-on John Mulaney impression, teaching a class about comedy. Fineman also appeared as Britney Spears, gifting those staying at home with classes on painting.
One sketch mocked virtual church services, featuring Kenan Thompson as a pastor in a Baptist church who couldn’t get his congregation to mute themselves on Zoom and kept overhearing everyone.
Pete Davidson starred in a new at-home music video, this time paying tribute to Danny Tejo, who has a documentary coming out.
Wiig did a sketch with Aidy Bryant that parodied hairstyling tutorials.
Michael Che introduced the surprise musical guest, Boyz II Men, as a tribute to Mother’s Day. Photos of the castmembers with their moms played over the performance.
Che and Colin Jost did their final at-home installment of “Weekend Update” for the season finale. Tina Fey contributed to the segment, saying that she was trying to focus on the positive. “I miss going to the grocery store,” she said. “If you’re baking cookies and you don’t have any flour, you can just go to bed,” she added as a cooking hack. Cecily Strong appeared as Jeanine Pirro, commenting on COVID-19 while drinking a carton of wine.
A game show sketch featured moms trying to identify what was wrong with the picture.
Bryant starred in a sketch with animated animals and people that took a quick turn for the creepy. Davidson played an animated character who propositioned her for a group sex situation.
In another sketch, a character played by Mikey Day was tormented by his kid while trying to work from home.
Kate McKinnon played a sea captain in her black-and-white sketch. “In case it weren’t clear before, I’ve gone absolutely mad by the sea,” she said. In recent remotely filmed episodes, McKinnon played Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Kyle Mooney contributed a sketch in which roommates tried to rob a bank for beer money.
The last sketch of the finale featured most of the castmembers experiencing typical “New York City” things in their dreams but with interruptions that turned them into nightmares. Strong woke up at the end with a slice of pizza in bed.
“Well, that’s our show for the night,” Wiig said from bed. “See you in September.”
