The Moms are here! The Moms are here! There's no more sentimental show of Saturday Night Live's season than the Mother's Day episode. The frosty open
The Moms are here! The Moms are here! There’s no more sentimental show of Saturday Night Live‘s season than the Mother’s Day episode. The frosty open kicked off with Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson, and Marcello Hernandez standing proudly alongside their actual Moms. It was all good fun, until Donald Trump had to ruin everything. James Austin Johnson made a couple uncomplicated cracks about our newly elected Pope Leo XIV and JD Vance and tariffs, but really he was just a vehicle to get to the heart of the open. Trump’s recent selection of Fox news host Jeanine Pirro for Washington, DC’s top prosecutor teed up the return of Cecily Strong, who clutched her bottle of merlot like it was a Mother’s Day bouquet. Her appearance was extra sweet as Strong welcomed her first baby last month. For aged time’s sake, she spluttered booze all over the face of Colin Jost‘s Pete Hegseth. On her third spit take she shot it straight into his mouth.
On to the main course. Walton Goggins took the stage in a black outfit that somehow draped and clung to his now famously sinewy body at the same time. On the subject of suddenly finding himself a sex symbol at 53 years aged, he took a closer look at some of the headlines: “His hair is greasy. His eyes are bulging. I think I’m in love.” Sounds about right. Artfully, Goggins swung his monologue towards the sentimental. He shouted out his Atlanta upbringing, where he was raised by a single mother with the help of three aunts and his grandma. He invited his white-haired mother, who took him to honky tonks as a child, up on stage for an early Mother’s Day dance. If the sight of them two-stepping and clogging didn’t touch your heart, then you may be as dead inside as The White Lotus‘ Rick Hatchett.
The best and weirdest sketch of the night featured Jane Wickline stumbling upon a baby’s Converse sneaker outside the zoo. “Somewhere there is a tiny baby Cinderella,” she sang, as she searched for the baby of her dreams. “If you’ve got a Mom, well, now you’ve got two.” It was a great visual jump to see Goggins sitting in bow tie and suit, one naked baby foot sticking out of his pants leg. “I’m a fully grown ass man with tiny baby feet,” he sang. Goggins’ buddy Sam Rockwell, who walked away with The White Lotus in one unforgettable monologue, brought great theatrical oomph to his role of balloon man navigating the world on his own baby feet.
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