Over the course of his long career, and particularly during his recent resurgence on Only Murders in the Building, Martin Short has perfected the Martin Short thing, which is to say very mean and petty things in a way that is both hilarious and funny is also kind of endearing. It’s his thing and perhaps no one but Don Rickles has gotten away with it for so long.

It’s a perfect fit for “Saturday Night Live,” which Short hosted as a guest for the fifth time (keyword: Five-Timers’ Cold Open). The comic actor’s manic energy, perfect execution of cutting lines and ability to still dance and sing at 74 ensured that his monologue and sketch performances were almost flawless, even if he had a small one on the show role played.

That was partly because a number of celebrities (though not his co-stars Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, although they were mentioned, or alleged romantic partner Meryl Streep) filled in parts in many sketches and dominated the cold open. They included Tom Hanks, Paul Rudd, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson, who responded live to jokes about them particularly brutal “Weekend Update” joke exchange between Michael Che and her husband Colin Jost.

Short scored as an aggressive Delta lounge employee in a skit about a Christmas parade takes place at an airport gatean angry one Parking lot driver in the shopping centerand a demanding director of the “Charlie Brown Christmas” competition. But he was missing from the pre-recorded portion of the episode: “An act of kindness“about a homeless man (Kenan Thompson) who is helped by a gullible woman (Heidi Gardner), and a sequel for the Nate Bargatze sketch “Sábado Gigante”. – with Marcello Hernández as host Don Francisco – with Rudd and an appearance by Dana Carvey.

The overstuffed episode didn’t give Short much opportunity to bring back classic characters or break new ground, but that didn’t matter much since the show had strong sketches overall and if Short Was He mastered every moment in action.

Musical guest Hozier performed “Too sweet” and a cover of The Pogues’ “Fairy tales of New York.”

If you’re an “SNL” completist and loyal fan, perhaps the best part of the entire show for you was the cold open, which features a large number of previous guest hosts who have completed the task five or more times. Hanks, who will appear as a narrator on the NBC documentary series “The Americas” in February, kicked off the skit with Rudd greeting Short at the Five-Timers Club, who replied, “What a surprise I’ve been hearing about all week.” Fey, Baldwin, Stone, Melissa McCarthy, Johansson, Kristen Wiig, John Mulaney and even Jimmy Fallon were each allowed to tell a joke or two, perhaps the best of which was when everyone made a confession. “Ant-Man’s powers are not good,” Rudd admitted. “It is I who fly these drones. “Everyone,” Fey revealed. “I never had Covid,” Hanks shared. When Short received his Five Timer jacket in women’s size small, he made a physical gesture that made it impossible for him to put the garment on properly before saying, “From the bottom of my heart: I love most of you so much.”

Short began his monologue with a few one-liners in which he hinted that he would play an elf in 10 skits and joked that his Uber driver Matt Gaetz was waiting outside before talking about his long friendship with “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels spoke. “We’re a little like (President-elect) Trump and Elon Musk, without the sexual tension.” When cast member Sarah Sherman appeared on stage and asked for some holiday cheer to jolt her out of her mood, Short began a song that sent him on a trip around the studio, threw a child off Santa’s lap and shot actor Armie Hammer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before meeting Michaels and Fallon. “I didn’t know Jack Daniels made cologne,” Short joked before giving Fallon a big kiss. With Short gone, Fallon told a stunned Michaels, “You’ll never kiss me like that again.” It was a high-energy performance, not unlike Maya Rudolph’s “Mother” monologue from the beginning of this year.

Best sketch of the evening: Want celebrity cameos? Here’s more

return from Sketch of last year’s Thanksgiving parade At Newark Liberty International, two TSA agents, Umberto and Chartreuse Hamilton (Bowen Yang and Ego Nwodim), this time host a TV Christmas special with a cast of characters. These include Rudd as himself trying to get into the Delta Lounge (Short spits water in his face), McCarthy as a gate attendant who mispronounces names like Gina Sowdry, Wiig as a passenger on a motorized suitcase, and Hanks, his Role as captain repeated. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the famous US Airways pilot who was the subject of a film. The sketch is largely a collection of jokes, but the enthusiasm and star power goes way over the top in this one.

Also good: Melissa McCarthy did something to your car?

Like the airport sketch, this was a remake of an earlier sketch from last year, the Traffic dispute with Quinta Brunson. As in the previous installment, Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman play a father and daughter who get into an argument with a driver in another car that involves lots of hand signals and body language to convey what they want to say. In this situation, Short is a driver competing for the same parking spot as her at a mall on Christmas Eve. All three comics do a good job of physically expressing phrases like “Bull Crap” and “Super Christian,” but the sketch goes to a whole other level when McCarthy shows up as Short’s wife, banging on the family’s car window and threatening to shut it eating daddy’s face with their own face. That would be a nice climax to a sketch, but then McCarthy spits coffee onto the window and does something to the window with her body that may never have been seen on television before. Leave it to McCarthy to give the series its most GIF-worthy and potentially viral moment in an episode full of big stars.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Two men owe Scarlett Johansson a huge apology

In any other week, Bowen Yang’s depiction of a drone from New Jersey would have easily come off as the best in “Update,” a comedy full of great jokes that ended with a “Wicked” song parody. But this wasn’t just any week: It was time for Che and Jost’s annual joke swap, in which each writes terrible, offensive jokes for the other to read out loud. Jost’s jokes for Che included jokes about terrible sex, suggestions that Che supports Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a really gross joke about Disney’s Moana. But it was Jost who was even more thoroughly roasted when he was forced to deliver jokes in a “black voice,” starting with one about white reparations and Kamala Harris, and ending with a series of jokes about Johansson, which were shown backstage was watching “Update” appear on a monitor. The jokes included one about Jost leaving Johansson because she had just turned 40 and a truly terrible joke about her genitals. “Oh my God!” she shouted backstage, clearly unable to believe what was coming out of her husband’s mouth. The tightrope act of keeping the segment going with the subject’s live reactions heightened what has become a truly unsavory yet compelling annual tradition to see how far and how deep “Update” will go. The answer? There seems to be no bottom.