Retirement Party – Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how this sketch made it to air so early in the show. I’m betting it’s because it features tons of cast members and nearly all of the guest stars who popped in during Kristen Wiig’s Five Timers Club induction. But the premise lends itself to a traditional 10-to-1 vibe, with the endless train of peculiar characters attending this retirement party for Jerry (Kenan Thompson). Clocking in at seven minutes, this is a long sketch that’s worth pretty much every second, especially when Matt Damon shows up as himself. Of course, the presence of all the guest stars made it so that the cast didn’t really get to shine, which was actually a symptom throughout the entire evening. But when a show is this fun, and those guest stars are all wonderful, it’s hard to complain.
Go-Karts – One of Kristen Wiig’s many gifts is having the ability to play timid, awkward moments with just the right amount of uneasiness. This time, James Austin Johnson joins her, with the two playing a pair of parents who have taken their kids out for a fun day, but they’re about to ruin it with some bad news. Well, maybe. They can’t decide if they’re going to do it before or after the go-karts. Maybe they’ll wait until after the bumper boats. The cut to Chloe Troast as their daughter, who isn’t seen until the middle of the sketch, brings a great surprise, especially since it’s her birthday. The only thing holding this back from being truly great is a lack of escalation, especially since the bomb of the bad news never really goes off, and that would have been a great opportunity for another joke layer.
Secretaries – Well, this certainly wasn’t a sketch that I was expecting to turn into a recurring bit when it debuted with Pete Davidson back in October 2023. But here we are with Heidi Gardner back as a 1950s secretary who acts like she’s good at her job when she’s actually just a walking stereotype of a sexualized secretary — even though that’s not what her boss actually wants at all. Kristen Wiig joins in the fun this time. While the punchlines aren’t always hits, this is one of those instances where a couple of flubs actually made the sketch funnier. Both Wiig and Gardner had trouble with breakaway pieces of the set that were supposed to easily bust apart with a pratfall, but the failure of the stunts may have actually gotten bigger laughs than if they were successful. Either way, it brought laughs, and that’s what counts.
As for the rest of the episode, there wasn’t a flat out terrible sketch among them. Pilates delivered a horror movie trailer that zeroes in on how terrifying that exercise routine can be. A riff on the TBS coverage of March Madness for the cold open made us grateful that we didn’t have to endure any political satire this week, other than some punchlines from Weekend Update (which brought back a Kristen Wiig favorite and threw down a pro wrestling style face-off between the New York earthquake and the upcoming solar eclipse). If there was a bottom of the barrel, it was the strange PBS “Sonic Pioneers” retrospective on the obscure French variety show called “La Maison du Bang.” While this sketch had an amusing assembly of characters, the punchlines felt weak and it had a whimper of an ending. But watching Wiig dance was still amusing.