Olivia Rodrigo hosts 'SNL' and debuts new song, while Aziz Ansari takes on Kash Patel

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If you were to go by “Saturday Night Live” hosting performance alone, you might think that the best way to ensure a memorable, well rounded and surprisingly funny show is to book a female pop star — preferably one with some child-acting experience.With apologies to Harry Styles, it’s been pop stars including Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa and now Olivia Rodrigo who’ve shown themselves to be naturals at adapting their on-stage talents to the Studio 8H stage for “SNL.”And while she might not have crushed it to the degree of Grande (something about the Bowen Yang era of the show and Grande seemed in perfect lockstep with each other), Rodrigo was a very good host.Whatever she lacked in sketch comedy chops, she more than made up for as musical guest, world-premiering a new song called “begged,” and singing in several sketches, including a memorable one about a girl in a zoo on a planet of bug people (we’ll get to that).After a charming monologue in which she also sang, Rodrigo played a scheming woman in a “Dynasty”-like nighttime soap opera from the 1980s, “Edge of Destiny,” where people kept falling down the stairs.

The mix of physical comedy, distant cue cards and having to keep from breaking character as cast members flopped down a set of fake stairs seemed almost too much for the guest host.But she recovered nicely in another solid (and hilariously gross) “Shop TV” sketch about a baker (Rodrigo) who makes lava cakes that look a lot like anuses.She also played a woman competing with her ex-boyfriend (Ben Marshall) at a birthday party by pretending to have a date (he does the same with a wacky Ashley Padilla).

She also played a cheating romantic partner in a musical sketch about getting busted, a rideshare passenger whose driver (Andrew Dismukes) discovers he has a talent for Jamaican dancehall rapping, and a TikToker employed by a home s...