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This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” welcomed Martin Short as the 27th member of its historic Five-Timers Club: guest hosts who have hosted the show at least five times. The concept was first introduced to the series by Tom Hanks back in 1990 and has become a recurring opening sketch ever since. Hanks himself (who has hosted the show 10 times to date) returned to host Short’s ceremony, but he was far from the only celebrity on set. In fact, this was the largest collection of Fiver-Timers Club members yet.
Other guests in attendance: Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy, Emma Stone, Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, John Mulaney and Alec Baldwin. It’s not easy to gather that many stars in one place, so maybe they were all back in New York for the holidays anyway. (Johansson is married to Weekend Update desk anchor Colin Jost, who tried to join her at the exclusive club but was denied entry. There are no escorts in the Five-Timers Club.)
Five-Timers Club sketches tend to be something of a scream fest for the audience as one celebrity after another makes their entrance, and this was no exception. Naturally, there was also some chaos and line changes due to the number of players on set and what was probably a minimal amount of rehearsal time. Still, there’s something quite endearing about the fact that Short struggles and ultimately fails to get both arms into his Five-Timers Club jacket.
Scarlett Johansson witnessed the Christmas Joke Swap again
Since Johansson was already at 30 Rockefeller Plaza anyway, she returned for Colin Jost and Michael Che’s Christmas Joke Swap, in which the two hosts write jokes that the other is forced to read into the teleprompter. In keeping with Che’s tradition of trying to make Jost’s jokes as racist as possible, he began the tactic of Jost having to read each joke in a “black voice.” (The meaning of that was left up to your interpretation.)
Jost did his best to avoid this, but it wasn’t easy as his script was regularly peppered with exclamations of “shiiiiizzzz!” and “I’m not afraid of you, mofos.” Things escalated further when Jost was forced to say, with his wife looking on, that turning 40 meant “I’m about to get out of there.”
At least he has a few weeks to recover, as “Saturday Night Live” takes a break for the holidays and returns on January 18, 2025.
