The 4 Best Sketches from SNL's Mother's Day Episode

October 19, 2024

Saturday Night Live is nearly at the end of its best season in recent memory and the sketch show delivered another banger of an episode over the weekend, with Benedict Cumberbatch hosting. The MCU star was a natural in the ensemble and the entire episode was hysterical from the Cold Open all the way to the end credits. Here are four of the funniest moments that you definitely need to check out.

Cold Open

The leaked draft of The Supreme Court’s majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade has dominated the news, so it’s no surprise that SNL opened the show with it. The Cold Open focused on Justice Alito citing 13th Century treatises as part of his argument by going back to that time and showing how the decision to outlaw abortion was made by people who also outlawed pointy shoes, and believed the earth was flat (some things never change), and would drill holes in a woman’s heads to “let her brain breathe.” As a local woman (Cecily Strong) complains about the law, the men insisted that they “reached the limit of human knowledge” and vote it into fruition. SNL will sometimes pull its punches politically to appeal to a wider audience but in this case, they made it clear where they stand.

Monologue

Benedict Cumberbatch is a consummate pro so it’s no surprise that he performed his monologue with ease, delivering one-liners about nobody watching Power of the Dog and commiserating about getting beat by Will Smith at the Oscars (“Not physically!). But since he was hosting on the eve of Mother’s Day, the Dr. Strange star took time to shout out the two most important moms in his life: his mom and his wife Sophie. It was just the right amount of sweet with a few jokes sprinkled in.

Mother’s Day Gifts

SNL has a long history of celebrating Mother’s Day and this year was no different, as one of the funniest sketches of the night made fun of the terrible gifts moms tend to receive from their kids and spouse. Aidy Bryant plays the mom opening up an endless supply of mom core signs you see in suburban homes all across the country. They start out corny (“MOM turned upside down spells WOW!”) but get increasingly personal (“Having a Mother-In-Law Is Like Having Crabs”) before devolving into each one implying dear old mom has a drinking problem (“Oh Look! It’s Wine O’Clock! I Love Watch the Sun Rise!”). Bryant is absolutely perfect anchoring the sketch, as she becomes more horrified by her family’s perception of her with each new sign she is forced to read out loud.

The Understudy

The premise here is simple: Chloe Fineman reveals that she is the official “understudy” at Saturday Night Live, meaning that she fills in if any of the other members of the cast have to miss a show. We then see her hilariously imitate Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, and Cecily Strong, but thankfully, not Ego Nwodim, who stops Chloe in her tracks before she can start her impression. She even tricks Cumberbatch into briefly believing in the multi-verse with a dynamite impression of Elizabeth Olsen. Was the entire thing basically an excuse for Fineman to show off her impressions of her fellow female cast members? Absolutely but when they’re this good, nobody is complaining.