‘Saturday Night Live’ Awkwardly Celebrates Mother’s Day With Pete Davidson Joking About Masturbation In Front Of His Mom

Saturday Night Live opened with Kyle Mooney’s Chuck Todd hosting an episode of Meet The Press, questioning Republicans Mitch McConnell (Beck Bennett), Susan Collins (Cecily Strong), and Lindsey Graham (Kate McKinnon) on having opposed tariffs in the past, but supporting them now.

But really, his grilling is to ask: “What would it take for the president to lose your support?” Strong plays into Collins’ cowardice, noting that certain events might just be enough for her to wag her finger, and getting so flustered at the possibility of having to take a stand that she trails off mid-sentence, burying her chin in her chest. Graham admits that “the best way to uphold the law is to be above it.” Whatever Todd asks, the Republicans contort themselves into position to support the president no matter what. Asking if they would still support him if he turned out to be Muslim, McConnell says it “makes me wanna stress eat,” then pulls out a strand of lettuce, like a turtle might do. Graham is on board as long as they still get tax cuts.

The sketch is fine, but its point – that Republicans will support the president no matter what he does – is so old and obvious it seems almost quaint to try to mock it with a comedy sketch.

Emma Thompson is here to host the Mother’s Day episode. With her daughter in the crowd, she talks about how mothers tend to speak in code, and brought out fellow moms Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to help explain. When a mom says she just wants to “relax” for Mother’s Day, Poehler says what she really means is, “How does one buy weed?” When Mom says, “Can we not talk about politics,” what she means, Poehler says, is, “Please don’t ruin Joe Biden for me. He’s what I picture.” The trio got some laughs, Fey and Poehler slipped in their hometown Philly and Boston accents, respectively, Poehler mentioned her new movie Wine Country, and they went out on a touching note, telling their kids they love them.

The first sketch found Leslie Jones portraying a cousin of Meghan Markle, in the UK to see the royal baby. But one cannot just see the royal baby – there’s etiquette involved, and Thompson plays the etiquette coach brought in to train her on the proper way to do things. Singing a song about how to stir tea, it seems almost a Mary Poppins-type sketch until Thompson violently slaps a teacup out of Jones’ hand. Then, when Jones puts a spoon in her mouth, Thompson slaps her across the face. The terms become clear: if Jones wants to see the baby, she must endure whatever Thompson puts her through, which comes to include violent chokeholds. This was basically the whole sketch. The studio audience howled at this. I was less enthused. In the end, this offered the sight of Thompson, however out of character, beating the crap out of Jones and little else.

Next comes a short film called “The Perfect Mother,” a warm Mother’s Day salute featuring Heidi Gardner as a harried young mom and Thompson as her mother. Gardner is on her last nerve with her baby, asking husband Mikey Day for a break. As Day takes the child into the other room, Gardner and Thompson have a heart to heart. Gardner talks about how Thompson was always such a patient mom, never screaming, handling everything with such steady decorum. As Thompson says it was all because Gardner was a model kid, we see flashbacks to the truth, with young Thompson going through very much the same pushed-to-the-limit travails as her daughter. The film jumped back and forth between manicured memories and harsh realities in a way that recalled 2016’s “A Girl’s Halloween,” a short film where Strong, Aidy Bryant and Vanessa Bayer prepared for Halloween with high hopes, and the film flashed back and forth between that and the drunken disaster the night became. This was a very sweet and funny look at the realities of motherhood, with spot-on performances by all three actors.

Kenan Thompson brings back Cinema Classics host Reese De’What to introduce a movie starring actresses played by McKinnon and Thompson. Thompson explains that the actresses were real-life rivals who both likely had the right to utter the last word in every scene written into their contracts. The ensuing scene is predictable, with the two prolonging a scene with nonsense words to try to have the final word. I can see why this appealed on paper – McKinnon vs. Thompson as two old-timey feuding actresses sounds like gold – but this never really found its footing, and couldn’t turn the premise into much more than a log line.

A parody of Chopped came next, with Jones and Melissa Villasenor as the two remaining contestants. This was nothing more than an excuse to be ridiculously silly, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. No premise to speak of here, just a surreal journey through the competition with bizarre details added at every turn. Ingredients they used included loose sugar and a five-pound horse penis. Jones is expected to make an artichoke slider, but puts a live kitten on a hamburger bun instead. At some point, a talking steak is involved, as are an actual shoot-out and judge Alex Moffat petting a goat. The go-for-broke tone of the sketch recalled for me the 2007 “Business Meeting” sketch with Rainn Wilson and Arcade Fire. This sort of pure silliness is something I’d love to see more of on the show.

A take on Judge Judy-type shows find McKinnon, Bryant and Thompson playing three judges hearing cases together side by side on Judge Court. Turns out they’re highly devoted best friends and also horrible judges who all finished last in their law school classes, and wind up sending every plaintiff to jail for no reason. Brief and with an appearance by musical guest The Jonas Brothers, this found the three actresses having fun playing over-the-top characters, and provided the right amount of laughs for its brief runtime.

Gardner brought teen movie critic Bailey Gismert back to Weekend Update to talk about summer movies. She doesn’t get Aladdin, since “that’s not what a lamp looks like,” and the rubbing of the lamp makes her uncomfortable. But she has a crush on Pikachu and falls into an embarrassment rabbit hole. “He’s smart, he’s hot, and short guys are usually funny.” Gardner’s cycles through the many degrees of teen angst better than most, and nails every aspect of a teen breakdown here.

Pete Davidson, who seems to spend more time in gossip columns than on SNL these days, came out to talk about Mother’s Day, since he now lives with his mother – he bought a house with her, and they both live there with Davidson’s sister. This wasn’t much of anything, just Davidson riffing on the weirdness of living with his mom including a joke about getting caught masturbating in the kitchen. He brought his mom out in the end, and this was kind of sweet, kind of weird, kind of WTF. I usually enjoy Davidson’s Update bits, but it seemed like he barely bothered writing anything for this. Bringing your mom out is a cute extra, but it’s not a comedy bit unto itself. This needed a re-write – or, just a write would have been fine.

The opening of the next sketch certainly grabbed your attention, introducing a live action version of Beauty and the Beast for the Disney Channel, but also for “Growlr, the dating site for gay bears.” The joke here is that the Beast (Bennett) works out, and his gym equipment comes to life, revealing that the Beast is kind of a bro. Also, he has sex with the singing teapot (Thompson), and they had a kid, Davidson as a teacup with hair. Some decent performances here, but this mystified me. Random to the point of senselessness.

McKinnon plays Tracy, host of an exploitive syndicated Maury-like advice show. Thompson plays a father on the show because his daughter, Ego Nwodim, is out of control, screaming “You don’t know me” to the crowd. Taking questions from the crowd, it turns out they know her pretty well, rightly guessing everything from her love of learning to her feelings that Crossfit is too culty. Thompson plays a fake psychiatrist there to help her, but really to collect money because Ego hit her car. This felt throughout like it was building to a funny point, constantly building on the premise but never quite getting to a punchline. By the end, this was a clear misfire.

SNL weirdly went to the old movie trope for the second time in a show, with a fake TCM show called, “Wait a Second, That Shouldn’t Be There!” Inspired by the coffee cup left in a Game of Thrones scene last week, Mooney is host Frank Parisi, there to look at some of Hollywood’s worst continuity errors. The 2016 Roots remake finds a White Castle box and a Big Gulp; in Shakespeare in Love, Shakespeare (Day) eats Sun Chips in front of an N*Sync poster while Gwyneth Paltrow’s character (McKinnon) wields a blood-dripping back tattoo. Also, Shakespeare has a laptop. Downton Abbey finds Thompson’s Maggie Smith getting a pizza delivered. That’s pretty much the sketch – a few quick and very obvious laughs here.

Next week is the season finale, with host Paul Rudd and musical guest DJ Khaled.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.

Where to stream Saturday Night Live