Saturday Night Live review: Matt Damon returns as Brett Kavanaugh

Saturday Night Live closed out 2018 with Matt Damon and Miley Cyrus. But for the holiday episode, the show was barely filled with holiday cheer.

For the end of the year episode, Matt Damon’s went off without much of a bang. For an episode that’s supposed to be one of the biggest of the year (the Christmas episode, of course), the energy level just wasn’t there this week. The cold open was certainly a strong one, but things sort of flat-lined from there.

Aside from the cold open having its share of notable celebrities, there were no surprises through the rest of the episode. And to further put a damper on the holiday spirit, the holiday sketches in this episode didn’t quite meet the mark either.

Matt Damon returned as the host after 16 years, and those 16 years away didn’t show at all. He still followed through fantastically in sketches (oddly enough being attached to Cecily Strong in pretty much every single one), but it was the strength of the sketches that made this episode so mediocre.

With all that said, we picked out the best of the best for you to watch. And to be honest, it was even hard picking out three sketches that were worthy of being watched in the first place — but these picks are still pretty strong compared to the rest of the episode.

Cold Open

In a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life (aptly titled It’s a Wonderful Trump), Alec Baldwin returns as Donald Trump, who gets visited by an angel when he declares he doesn’t want to be president anymore. As we all might guess, everyone is much better off if Trump had lost the election. And the reveals about his administration’s alternate universe lives are hilarious indeed. This cold open is chockful of all the celebrity cameos we’ve seen in the season so far, even including the host, Matt Damon.

Monologue

There was nothing necessarily special about Matt Damon’s monologue. It was another typical, “I’m so happy to be here,” song and dance. And for the holiday episode monologue, there was unfortunately no song and dance at all, which was quite disappointing. There were no celeb cameos, not even old cast members. Overall, the cold open was the main course, and the monologue was the mint you get served after your meal.

Weekend Update

Colin Jost starts off with one of their strongest jokes in a while: “This last week was a pretty bad year for Trump.” On Update this week, they didn’t go over-the-top on guests and segments, focusing more on their own jokes and playing up to the news of the week. Despite featuring the boxer’s girlfriend character and having a part where Jost and Michael Che read jokes they wrote for one another, their bread and butter news reading was the best part of Update. Even though this was arguably the best time to show off strong holiday segments or characters (hello, Drunk Uncle and Weekend Update Joke-Off), sometimes it’s nice to just keep things simple.

Three must-see sketches

Christmas Ornaments

I have to give the writers credit for coming up with some pretty creative sketches this year. This time, they quite impressed me with this sketch about the “back of the tree” Christmas ornaments. You know, the ones that were cool and quirky a few years ago, but just aren’t as fun as they were when you first bought them. Because of the green screen effect, this sketch was a little buggy, but that didn’t detract from anything too much.

Oscar Host Auditions

SNL has done this type of sketch before: a digital short where they hold celebrity auditions, as impersonated by their cast. This is always a pretty good sketch format, because it gives the cast the chance to show off their impersonation skills. My personal favorite was the Star Wars Audition sketch, but this one holds up almost as good as that one. A few noticeable celebrities include Tiffany Haddish, Chris Hemsworth and Rami Malek.

Happy Christmas, Britain

As one of the final sketches of the night, it’s a shame that this one was so short. In it, Prime Minister Theresa May hosts her own Christmas special, despite knowing she’s not the best person to be hosting this kind of thing. Former Prime Minister David Cameron (played by Matt Damon) shows up as a guest… and so does a certain fictional villain (I won’t give away who), who doesn’t even want to be associated with May. Perhaps this sketch was meant to run on longer, because it seems to end quite abruptly. (And that might be so, seeing as the show ended a tad bit late.)

Saturday Night Live is taking a break until the new year. A rerun with Seth Meyers as the host will play next Saturday night on Dec. 22. But don’t fret. SNL usually returns mid-January, so we’ll have a lot more hilarious sketches to look forward to in 2019.