Martin Short spends his five-timer celebration rehearsing for Saturday Night Live's 50th

A year and change ago, the culture writer Dan Kois caused a stir (online; much easier to stir there) by writing an essay for Slate pre-supposing that for some people, Martin Short represents less of a comic legend than a high-energy, grandfathered-in comedian pushing our collective tolerance within inches of its breaking point for reasons that needed exploring. Many people then registered their understandable disagreement (if predictably disproportionate outrage). The more interesting point within one writer's mystification about the muchness of Short's performing style, though, was the valid notion that Short, beloved as he is, had never really sustained a broadly popular showcase hit until Only Murders in the Building, many decades into his career. You can read many more words about this on some dullard's Substack, but the point is, there's something kind of wonderfully ephemeral about Short's comic-legend status, a comic purity to the fleeting nature of his best work—guest shots, talk show appearances, Jiminy Glick segments—that reflects the spirit of improv and sketch comedy.

And yet even within this show-bizzy sketch-comedy realm, Short's Saturday Night Live history has happened dribs and drabs. Yes, he was a cast member during the famously one-off tenth season, but as he's discussed in his memoir and in interviews, he and Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest came to the show as known quantities, and had enough juice to get away with doing a few showcase pieces for each of the season's 17 episodes, often finishing up their obligations around halfway through the episode. (I haven't seen a lot of these episodes in their full 90-minute glory; after Weekend Update, would it just be Mary Gross riffing for 40 minutes?) Yes, he's made plenty of subsequent appearances, including hosting full episode of the shows, but he's also just now, nearly 40 years later, hitting the five-timers' club, and two of those episodes that got him there were co-hosted with other stars. This is the first time he's taken less than a decade in between hosting and, most delightfully, he has only ever hosted in December. As much as Short tends to play characters who fight their way into the spotlight and glory in its heat, his actual appearances are scarce enough to leave us wanting more, and that wound up happening even tonight, on an episode seemingly made to honor him, and which kicked off with a solid 17 minutes of Short-centric comedy.

Yet after the obligatory Five-Timers Club opening sketch and lavish-song monologue, which did feel like the show stretching out, forgetting its spotty track record of political cold opens, and allowing Short's persona to dominate, it became increasingly clear that this week's episode wouldn't be a bunch of wacky Martin Short characters supported by the current SNL ensemble, or even Short doing a ton of ensemble work alongside the younger but less extravagantly beloved cast. Rather, it would be a bunch of semi-recurring SNL bits supported by a passel of guest stars that sometimes included Martin Short.

It makes sense: When you have nearly half of the currently-living Five-Timer Club members assembled for the cold open (not counting hybrid members whose appearances are partially for music, there are 25 living five-timers, and 10 of them were on stage by the end of that sketch), in the middle of the show's 50th season no less, it would be a little weird not to make further use at least some of the beloved figures on hand: Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Melissa McCarthy, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Emma Stone, John Mulaney, and Scarlett Johansson. In other words, a mix of actual alumni, honorary cast members, friends of the show, and a handful of global superstars! What an ensemble! Plus also Jimmy Fallon! Surely they should do some comedy bits more substantial than in-joke walk-ons, to reward the audience at home for having to sit through a lot of live-audience screaming at their various introductions.

And lo, they did! Fallon and Stone turned up backstage during Short's monologue. Then Melissa McCarthy delivered a hilarious topper for the first "normal" sketch of the night, helping to differentiate it from its first incarnation. A few minutes later, multiple five-timers popped up alongside Short in the recurring airport-parade sketch, the perfect vehicle for that kind of cameo, with Hanks providing another solid topper by reprising his role as Sully from the movie Sully. Then it was back to core cast members for a pre-tape bit and Weekend Update; fair enough, that's not so unusual for hosts and guests to sit those out, plus there was a ScarJo cameo of sorts during the annual Update joke swap. Then, back to sketches, and the main guest star in the inexplicable Sábado Gigante bit was... Paul Rudd? But surely there's a wacky character who could be played by... oh, Dana Carvey, apparently? OK, a bit weird. Then some more Hozier, a smidge more Martin Short during a Peanuts sketch, and the show ended. Huh.

Broadly speaking, this isn't as unusual as it seems. The idea that the sketch is front and center for most of any given SNL is largely a 21st-century expectation. As recently as the mid-90s, it wasn't that uncommon for hosts to dip for several actual sketches per episode. Now they mostly just skip the cold open and Update, and Short was obviously right there at the opener, which gave him more screentime upfront. There's also something charming about the idea of a Christmas homecoming episode, where sure, Short is the nominal host, but tons of funny people are there hanging out and having a good time, a lot like when Betty White hosted back in 2010. White appeared throughout (probably more than Short did tonight!) but it still felt like sort of an all-star edition, where multiple sketches, sometimes from years earlier, were unexpectedly reprised by multiple returning cast members. Business as usual for whatever the show happened to look like in May 2010 was on pause, for better or worse. It almost played more like a prime-time special than a proper SNL.

That was more the mood tonight, and though lots of hardcore SNL fans roll their eyes at cameo excess, I'm inclined to give them a pass on that during this season especially. I also have to assume that on some level, this is how Short prefers to work on the show. Last time he hosted, he shared duties with Steve Martin (and, as with tonight, did his spin on several bits that seemed like one-offs at the time). When he worked there full-time, he apparently took some pride in being able to clock out of work a bit early after killing it early on. He's got a variety-show vibe, and that's part of the SNL DNA, too. It's only natural, though, that when Short so fully embodies the spirit of old-fashioned put-on-a-network-show liveness, he won't always be summoning an equal amount of magic, or working that magic on material that can be instantly improved by it. Sometimes, he's just doing some comfort TV and not overstaying his welcome.

What was on

For much of the parking-lot altercation sketch, it was hard not to think back to the Quinta Brunson version, and how a funny sketch suddenly seems like so much more of a Mikey Day vehicle when it's brought back, even several years later, despite Short's obvious facility with physical comedy. But Melissa McCarthy really brought it home at the end. I simply laughed too hard at her part of the sketch to not include it here. Similarly, the airport sketch was more pleasantly familiar and amusing then LOL-level funny, until Hanks appeared as Sully, which got a huge laugh from me.

The pre-tape with Heidi Gardner and Kenan Thompson was also pretty funny, even if it basically duplicated the set-up from this Christmas short years ago, and with a less surprising comic turn at the three-quarters mark. And the Peanuts sketch worked OK; I have a soft spot for real humans trying to dance like the Peanuts gang, and, uh, it was nice to see Martin Short again!

What was off

Unlike its fellow English-speaking-guest-flummoxed-by-another-culture sketch La Rivisita Della Televisione con Vinny Vedecci, Sábado Gigante failed to deepen its premise on a second go-round. This was the only truly bad sketch of the night, which seems like it should be an overall win for a typically hit-and-miss show. But it was also one of just four traditional live sketches in general, and really, there was hardly a segment in the entire episode that didn't feel like some kind of a revival in spirit. (This was at least the third Peanuts-related sketch they've done, and probably the least funny offhand.) Even one of the musical segments was a cover! (Albeit a very welcome one. I didn't know you had it in you, Hozier!) The sketches weren't off so much as they didn't feel like they had much space amidst a lot of self-referential pageantry. Again, the TV-special vibes won out, without much at the center.

Most valuable player (who may not be ready for prime time)

In the spirit of holiday giving (and also the main cast getting repeatedly elbowed aside), maybe it's Colin Jost and Michael Che this week. I don't know that I ever need to see CEO of Comedy Colin Jost tut-tut anyone about hilariously over-the-top reactions to the United Healthcare assassin, but Che did restrain himself from saying "it's the '90s" (was that my Christmas present? I'll take it!) and, most importantly, the joke-swap routine, even as it becomes increasingly rococo and sort of self-regarding, also takes full advantage of live TV in a way that SNL can't always fit into its tight schedule, especially on Update. Like a lot of tonight's segments, it was familiar and took up a fair amount of airtime; unlike most of the sketches, it didn't feel like a complete rehash, simply by exposing the genuine human reactions underneath the nasty jokes.

Next time

They won't tell us! Any guesses? They gonna get Gerry Butler back on deck for Den Of Thieves 2? Nicholas Hoult because he's in everything? The CG /ape from Better Man? (What, you thought they'd book Robbie Williams? This is America, goddammit!) Actually, it seems like with the 50th anniversary special running on February 16th, and the show itself presumably not airing a new episode the weekend before or after that, we'll likely get two episodes on the later side of January/very early February, meaning the show will probably be off for about a month.

Stray observations

• • I must admit: I went from mostly fixating on why Hozier kept looking like he was about to play his guitar, and then not playing his guitar, in the first song, to feeling much warmer about him as he dove into a cover of "Fairytale of New York," even though giving the Kirsty MacColl part to a trio of backup singers messes with the song's dynamic a bit. (Sure, MacColl is irreplaceable, but then, so is Shane MacGowan, isn't he? And they didn't get three Hoziers to do that part!)
• • It may be well past time for Bowen to give Wicked a rest.
• • Not so sure Marcello has a great handle on his Linus, guys.
• •Part of me thinks they should have just gone all-out and done some more greatest-hits stuff with the guest stars who didn't actually do any sketches (Stone, Fey, Baldwin, Mulaney). Will there be a trove of cut-for-time sketches in the days ahead, or was this pretty much always going to be an episode dominated by a five-timers club roll call?
• • Last SNL of 2024, everyone! Season 50 is already half over! Here's wishing you all as happy and safe a new year as possible. Thanks for reading these reviews; I truly love doing them and I'll be back in January for more!