Kristen Wiig Joins Saturday Night Live's Five Timers Club With Paul Rudd, Matt Damon & More
It's always a thrill when a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member comes back to Studio 8H to host the late night sketch comedy show. That's especially true when it's a cast member as beloved as Kristen Wiig. That last time the "Bridesmaids" star hosted "SNL" was in December 2020, and it just so happens the best sketch of the night was a new holiday favorite where she plays a mother who gets a robe for Christmas while the rest of the family gets a plethora of better gifts. However, since Kristen Wiig was hosting "SNL" for a fifth time this past weekend, she got a different robe. And she wasn't the only one.
While it's become customary for newly inducted Five Timers Club hosts to get monologue bits that bring back some legendary hosts like Steve Martin and Tom Hanks, it's not always logistically possible to make it a star-studded affair. Paul Rudd famously got the shaft when he was going to join the Five Timers Club in December 2021, but a surge in the omicron variant of coronavirus cases resulted in a scaled back episode. Thankfully, when he hosted again in 2022, Rudd got the kind of Five Timers Club induction that he deserved. And this weekend, he essentially got a bonus Five Timers Club bit with Wiig's entrance into the exclusive club.
Kristen Wiig's Five Timers Club monologue brought in a bunch of fun guest stars, even though most of them aren't actually Five Timers Club members. Paul Rudd came back, and he was joined by Matt Damon and Jon Hamm, along with former "SNL" cast members Will Forte and Fred Armisen, not to mention writer and occasional guest star Paula Pell (of "Girls5Eva"). But there was yet another guest star who popped up to make this even more of an all-star affair. I won't give it away here, but they'll be back to host next week.
Let's dig into this superb episode of "Saturday Night Live" with Kristen Wiig!
Jumanji
Everyone is always talking about how stupid people are for going to Jurassic World after the previous public accounts of the disaster that was Jurassic Park. But no one ever mentions how people need to be a lot more cautious about playing board games after the tragedy of "Jumanji." Sure, it might be a movie based on a book that is entirely fictional, but that doesn't mean there's no danger from a board game coming to life and finding a bunch of people Jumanjied. That's exactly what happens in this hilarious sketch where Kristen Wiig's character simply won't play any video games, because she does not want to be Jumanjied.
What's great about this sketch is that there's an additional layer of absurdity that unfolds as there's some disagreement as to which Jumanji threat to be worried about. As Andrew Dismukes so passionately points out, in "Jumanji," the jungle comes out of the game, but only one person got sucked into the game. So is Wiig's character scared of being sucked into the game or having the game bringing the jungle to her? Either way, they're jungle emergencies, and she's not having it. You won't believe how many times Jumanji is said in this sketch, and that's half the fun right there.
How was the rest of the episode?
Retirement Party – Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how this sketch made it to air so early in the show. I'm betting it's because it features tons of cast members and nearly all of the guest stars who popped in during Kristen Wiig's Five Timers Club induction. But the premise lends itself to a traditional 10-to-1 vibe, with the endless train of peculiar characters attending this retirement party for Jerry (Kenan Thompson). Clocking in at seven minutes, this is a long sketch that's worth pretty much every second, especially when Matt Damon shows up as himself. Of course, the presence of all the guest stars made it so that the cast didn't really get to shine, which was actually a symptom throughout the entire evening. But when a show is this fun, and those guest stars are all wonderful, it's hard to complain.
Go-Karts – One of Kristen Wiig's many gifts is having the ability to play timid, awkward moments with just the right amount of uneasiness. This time, James Austin Johnson joins her, with the two playing a pair of parents who have taken their kids out for a fun day, but they're about to ruin it with some bad news. Well, maybe. They can't decide if they're going to do it before or after the go-karts. Maybe they'll wait until after the bumper boats. The cut to Chloe Troast as their daughter, who isn't seen until the middle of the sketch, brings a great surprise, especially since it's her birthday. The only thing holding this back from being truly great is a lack of escalation, especially since the bomb of the bad news never really goes off, and that would have been a great opportunity for another joke layer.
Secretaries – Well, this certainly wasn't a sketch that I was expecting to turn into a recurring bit when it debuted with Pete Davidson back in October 2023. But here we are with Heidi Gardner back as a 1950s secretary who acts like she's good at her job when she's actually just a walking stereotype of a sexualized secretary — even though that's not what her boss actually wants at all. Kristen Wiig joins in the fun this time. While the punchlines aren't always hits, this is one of those instances where a couple of flubs actually made the sketch funnier. Both Wiig and Gardner had trouble with breakaway pieces of the set that were supposed to easily bust apart with a pratfall, but the failure of the stunts may have actually gotten bigger laughs than if they were successful. Either way, it brought laughs, and that's what counts.
As for the rest of the episode, there wasn't a flat out terrible sketch among them. Pilates delivered a horror movie trailer that zeroes in on how terrifying that exercise routine can be. A riff on the TBS coverage of March Madness for the cold open made us grateful that we didn't have to endure any political satire this week, other than some punchlines from Weekend Update (which brought back a Kristen Wiig favorite and threw down a pro wrestling style face-off between the New York earthquake and the upcoming solar eclipse). If there was a bottom of the barrel, it was the strange PBS "Sonic Pioneers" retrospective on the obscure French variety show called "La Maison du Bang." While this sketch had an amusing assembly of characters, the punchlines felt weak and it had a whimper of an ending. But watching Wiig dance was still amusing.
How was Kristen Wiig as a host?
Do we really need to answer this question? As one of the most beloved former cast members of "Saturday Night Live," Kristen Wiig makes for an amazing host of the show. Every time she's come back, it's been wonderful, even when she hosted one of the "SNL at Home" episodes during the coronavirus lockdown. The fact that she had a whole bunch of guest stars with her this time only sweetened the deal. While it would have been nice to have Wiig reprise maybe one more recurring character from her past, it was actually refreshing to have an episode that was packed with original sketches, especially one without any topical political satire. Plus, the overall quality of the episode feels elevated when you have a host like Wiig on board.
We're hoping to have a similar outcome next week when Ryan Gosling comes back. If you've made it this far, then hopefully you saw him pop up during the Five Timers Club monologue, and that's enough to get us excited about his return to Studio 8H for the April 13 episode, even if he's not truly part of the Five Timers Club yet.
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