Melissa McCarthy shows why she's a repeat 'SNL' host, and Pete Hegseth returns in cold open
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Along with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, Melissa McCarthy is one of those performers who’s been on “Saturday Night Live” so many times, as a host or making extremely memorable guest appearances, that it’s easy to forget she wasn’t an actual cast member.McCarthy sure could have been, as she demonstrated again in her sixth time as host, where she showed off her incredible commitment to comedic bits.She has a knack for heightening moments and introducing characters that range from sad, weird loners to shifty and overconfident schemers.
Even when McCarthy is simply portraying a heightened version of herself, as in this episode’s monologue, she’s apt to fling herself over a piano bench or introduce a new talent, namely “mouth horn” (more on that in a bit).As reliable a comic force as McCarthy can be, she can still be held back by weak writing, as has happened a few times in past appearances.In this episode, she benefited from coming off a strong cold open featuring Colin Jost as aggressive Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a funny monologue to launch into a trio of sketches that were as great as any she’s done on the show before, despite a few instances of her microphone sounding muffled.She played a clingy woman who latches on to a supermarket worker (Jeremy Culhane) handing out cheese samples, a seemingly friendly elderly neighbor who goes to extremes to show her friendship to a 12-year-old boy, and a terrible UPS employee caught misbehaving on someone’s doorbell camera.Things got a little bumpier after “Weekend Update” with sketches that pushed McCarthy back to supporting roles, like one that featured Andrew Dismukes as an overly sensitive Sunday supper host and one about moms who play truth or dare for the first time (it gets sexual very quickly).
These were fine, but didn’t take advantage of McCarthy’s skills as much and felt like they could have ...