Saturday Night Live recap: Bottoms star Ayo Edebiri comes out on top

Has anyone been more booked and busy in recent memory than Ayo Edebiri? Everyone’s favorite Irish celebrity scooped up TV awards galore this year for her role as sous chef Sydney in The Bear, starred in two of 2023's funniest comedies (Bottoms and Theater Camp), leant her voice to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and still managed to find time to pop up in episodes of Abbott Elementary, Black Mirror and Clone High (as Harriet Tubman, natch).

And if that exhausting CV wasn’t proof enough that Edebiri has carved out a spot as one of comedy’s freshest voices, her hosting debut during this week’s Saturday Night Live more than did the trick, fully imbued with the performer’s brand of goofy sincerity and fast-paced absurdism. Even a very unwelcome cold-open cameo from real-life Nikki Haley, asking James Austin Johnson’s Trump questions during a CNN Town Hall, couldn’t dull Ayo’s shine as the stand up-slash-actress mercifully ushered us out of the mundanity of the past few episodes. Add a high-energy return from musical guest Jennifer Lopez (who literally danced her own wig off) and you’ve got the makings of one of season 49's best showings.

Opening monologue: Ayo tears up, and so do we

“SNL means so much to me, this really is a dream come true,” Edebiri tearfully opened the show on Saturday night and that pinch-me fulfillment could be felt throughout the entire episode. But Ayo also brought the receipts: an unsubmitted sketch packet she wrote years ago when she was “doing stand-up comedy shows in the backs of laundromats” in NYC. The jokes are run-of-the-mill (“I wanted to do a sketch called ‘White Jeopardy’ which didn’t work because it was just white people playing Jeopardy”) but our host is so buzzing with gleeful gratitude and natural charm that it’s hard to mind.

The most meta sketch of the night:

We’ll admit, we were curious about how the show was going to handle the elephant in the room: the recent resurfacing of some less-than-complimentary comments Edebiri had previously made about the vocal stylings of this week’s musical guest, while appearing on the Scam Goddess podcast in 2020. (For her part, J.Lo performed two tracks off her upcoming ninth studio album, This Is Me…Now, on Saturday: a high-kicking, weave-snatching rendition of “Can’t Get Enough” with Latto and Redman, and a bloom-heavy take on the album’s title ballad.)

The writers cut to the awkwardness quick during the first post-monologue sketch, a “Why’d You Say It?” game show in which contestants had to explain mean comments they’ve left on Instagram posts. (Ex: Ayo’s character leaving a brutal “Die.” on that delightful video of Drew Barrymore enjoying the rain.) After getting a good shaming from Kenan Thompson’s host, Edebiri unleashes a meta mouthful: “Okay, we get it! It’s wrong to leave mean comments, or post comments just for clout, or run your mouth on a podcast, and you don’t consider the impact because you’re 24 and stupid. But I think I speak for everyone when I say from now on, we’re going to be a lot more thoughtful about what we post online.”

The best bop of the night:

Again, no offense to Jennifer Lopez’s new songs (we will be tuning into that accompanying visual album of hers, FYI, and not just because it looks genuinely insane), but the song of the night goes to this pop ballad about the excitement and nervousness of losing one’s virginity. No, not to your sweet high-school classmate who looks like Ayo Edebiri, but to the terrifying yet erotic popcorn buckets that the Dune: Part Two marketing team has launched to tie-in with the release of the sci-fi epic.

Modeled off the sandworms of Arrakis, the thing looks like a Fleshlight from hell (“We didn’t make this up, this is a real thing,” the cast croons), but that doesn’t stop Marcello Hernandez from lighting candles, spritzing cologne and proclaiming that a “little bit of butter makes it feel so good.”

The best sketch of the night:

Like Adam Driver and Emma Stone before her, Ayo was committed to every bit of the evening but her braces-wearing, maybe-bisexual high schooler Solomon was an instant classic and a character we can see getting the recurring-sketch treatment should Edebiri return to Studio 8H. (And, in case it’s not already obvious, she should.)

A “professional” hypnotist (Andrew Dismukes) has come to Solomon’s classroom to entertain the teen students, which leads to Solomon pretending to be hypnotized so that he can divulge truths about himself, from his sexual identity to his singing bonafides (via a spirited rendition of that Jordin Sparks classic, “No Air”). Edebiri goes all in on Solomon’s every caw and convulsion—she’s a physical-comedy powerhouse here.

The MVP(s) of the night: Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman

Ego Nwodim and Ayo Edebiri had killer chemistry throughout this week’s episode, first on a “Trivia Quest” sketch that saw Ego’s quiz-show host giving Ayo’s contestant some preferential treatment (including a great phone-a-friend bit) and later on a “People’s Court” episode, with Ego playing a hairdresser who leaves her displeased clients not only partially bald but brained. (“When it’s windy out, I can feel my damn memories blow away!”)

But we’ve also gotta shout-out Sarah Sherman, who popped up during “Weekend Update” as CJ Rossitano, a clean-cut teen who won the storied SNL ticket lottery and just happens to look an awful lot like Update anchor Colin Jost. Sherman roasting Jost has become a familiar bit but definitely not an unwelcome one, with CJ referring to his maybe-father as “El Diablo de Los Hamptons” and dinking Jost’s real-life marriage to Scarlett Johansson. Sherman’s goofily yearning faces during those “Cat’s in the Cradle” cutaways were alone enough to make us want to see CJ again.

Stray observations

• It looks like we’re not getting a new episode for two weeks: SNL will return on February 24 with comedian Shane Gillis as host and 21 Savage as the musical guest. It should prove to be an interesting one, as Gillis was famously fired mere days into his Saturday Night Live tenure back in 2019 due to the resurfacing of old podcast clips that featured the comic using an ethnic slur. The YouTube comment section should be fun that Saturday.