Sabrina Carpenter Does It All
The first-time host feels right at home in the Saturday Night Live universe.
Photo: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
For the eagle-eyed Saturday Night Live observer, the news that Sabrina Carpenter would be pulling double duty as host and musical guest this season was unsurprising. Although last night’s episode was Carpenter’s first outing as host, the singer has been popping up with Jon Hamm-level frequency in one form or another throughout the SNL universe for the past year. Most notably, she appeared in the sequel to the insanely viral “Domingo” sketch (the original, starring fellow triple threat Ariana Grande, used Carpenter’s smash hit Espresso) alongside Pedro Pascal for SNL‘s 50th anniversary special. And okay, sure, there were a million and one cameos during SNL50and Carpenter was already there sing a duet with Paul Simonso we won’t count that one.
But then there she is doing a bit with Marcello Hernández (as Domingo) at her concert in Los Angeles! And there she is randomly cameoing as a fellow short queen in Quinta Brunson’s monologue last May! And there’s Kyle Mooney appearing in her Netflix Christmas special! And Jane Wickline then did a Weekend Update desk bit about said Netflix special! This is all to say that Carpenter’s been primed for this gig for at least a year, so perhaps it’s no surprise that she availed herself incredibly well on Saturday.
It would be easy to call Carpenter a natural, but it’s important to remember that she is a Disney kid through and through, and I mean that as a compliment. The star of Girl Meets World at 14, Carpenter received the kind of grueling comedic acting training reserved for Disney’s suite of industrious child actors. Her charisma and stage confidence were on full display in this solid episode, along with her finely-tuned sense of timing and genuinely unexpected line reads. Put this girl in a Goldie Hawn-style rom-com caper now!
Clearly the show’s writers and producers were confident in Carpenter’s abilities as a performer as well, because she was in every single sketch of the night — including the cold openwhich was nothing other than an installment of the ever-expanding Domingo canon. This is notable for a couple of reasons. Usually, the cold open covers some sort of political and/or topical current event (which is certainly not what this was), and, unless they’re an old-timer, the host does not normally appear. The sketch itself was … serviceable! Domingo, as a character and sketch concept, has diminishing returns for this reviewer, but Carpenter’s off-kilter line-reading of the word “together” at the top of the sketch was a fun moment.
The evening’s monologue was short and sweet, possibly because of the overtime college football game that cut into the show’s runtime. Right off the bat, Carpenter addressed the nothingburger scandal surrounding her latest album release, panning up to reveal that it was, of course, Bowen Yang who was “helping her up by the hair” on the controversial cover of Man’s Best Friend. The biggest throughline of the monologue was that Carpenter’s whole thing is being horny, but you wouldn’t know it from her work in last night’s episode. In fact, the show was at its best when it allowed the singer to showcase her comedic chops outside of her sexy baby stage person.
Here are the highlights:
This sketch, which opened the night following Carpenter’s monologue, sees Carpenter, Chloe Fineman, Jane Wickline, and Veronika Slowikowska playing a group of tween boys hosting a podcast called “Snack Homiez.” What I find particularly impressive about this sketch is that it so easily could have veered into Gen Z Hospital territory, but the characters are so well-observed and, as many online commenters have pointed out, frighteningly accurate, that it avoids the cringe of that infamous sketch. This is not so far from how tweens and teens actually talk in 2025! The Snack Homiez’ back-and-forth, soothing in its stupidity, reminded me of this Kate McKinnon-Aidy Bryant two-hander from 2021. The sketch is fully realized when James Austin Johnson joins as his signature dopey Trump, and there are so many excellent lines here that it’s impossible to list them, but “Am I going to heaven, chat?” was the winner for me. It occurred to me that I really prefer Johnson’s Trump when placed in nonsensical, unexpected settings like this, as opposed to, say, alongside Colin Jost or Pete Hegseth.
Although Bowen Yang unfortunately missed last night’s episode (he was busy accepting an honor from the Academy Museum in LA) he thankfully had time to prerecord this digital short with Carpenter about the joys of grinding at the middle school dance. “Grind Song” feels like a late 2000s throwback to the best of Lonely Island’s viral sketch songs (see: “Like A Boss” or “I Just Had Sex”). The key, I think, is that the song is genuinely well-crafted and catchy! The sketch is also full of fun little character moments, like Kenan Thompson’s long-suffering principal taking the bridge. I could see the hook of this song having a second life on TikTok like “Big Boys.”
Carpenter shines here as the loopy (and, to be fair, probably concussed) Queenlisha, leader of a seminar on how to be a girl boss. In the same vein as past sketches like “Male Confidence Seminar,” “Girlboss Seminar” is mostly a showcase for its central character to say insane stuff, and Carpenter pulls off the assignment extremely well. “Girl, there’s a special place in hell for women who are women,” Queenlisha preaches after being launched out of a window by her backup dancers. “But when you’re in the car of success, the only thing Susan B, is Anthony. And I’m on my period!” This sketch had a couple of technical mishaps, like the audio briefly cutting out at the top and Kenan Thompson throwing a mannequin that missed its mark offstage, but this only added to the general sense of comedy-horror mayhem.
“Plans” is a digital sketch that covers well-trodden territory — Ben Marshall and Carpenter play a couple who forgot about their plans to hang out with an annoying family member for the weekend — but it’s elevated by hyperspecific character details. Shot like a horror movie, the sketch includes frightening cutaways to the annoying family member in question, played by Sarah Sherman, who really likes to run marathons, as well as her husband (Mikey Day), aka “the guy who always shows me YouTube videos.” It’s a universally relatable sketch premise and a solid example of Carpenter’s commitment to the bit this episode—her delivery of the line “They don’t believe in that” is a definite highlight.
I should say that I’m not usually one for fart jokes, but “Surprise” really got me. Ashley Padilla stars in this one as a woman who basically can’t stop farting in front of her coworkers. This 10-to-1 sketch is carried completely by Padilla, who seems like she’s really in pain when she’s farting. It’s uncomfortable — almost upsetting — to watch, and ultimately very funny. Several cast members appear to break here, including Ben Marshall and Chloe Fineman, which is a good sign of a well-written and executed sketch. It’s important to note that the version of the sketch that the show posted on YouTube is actually from the episode’s dress rehearsal, not the live sketch that aired last night. Padilla flubs a line in this version, but the sketch is somehow the better for it.
• “My nana always says short folks will be tall in heaven.”
• At the very end of the episode, Martin Herlihy (who is officially a writer, not a cast member) starred in a digital short that felt, tonally, very much like a Please Don’t Destroy sketch. Not sure what to make of this, but the short was fun!
• “You know what you should get stuck in your head? Our anniversary. It’s today.” “Once you cheated, I chose to forget.”
• Loved the staging of both of Carpenter’s musical performances.
• Weekend Update returned with a bunch of solid, if expected, jokes about George Santos and Trump’s TIME cover. But my favorite bit of the segment had nothing to do with either trending topic. It was instead Colin Jost’s reaction to a report of a shorter fall foliage season: “Cool, guess I’ll just kill myself then!”
• New cast member Tommy Brennan made his Debut update last night with an all-timer introductory line: “I look like a guy who was really good at football pre-integration.”
• Heidi and Ego are dearly missed, especially in an episode that felt very much like a girls’ night.