There was no uncertainty as to whether “Saturday Night Live” would offer its own satirical take on the news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had disclosed attack plans for a U.S. strike on Houthi militia fighters in Yemen during a text chat that mistakenly included the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. It was only a question of how “S.N.L.” would do it.
This weekend’s opening sketch featured the cast members Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman, as well as the guest host, Mikey Madison, as teenage girls whose group chat was interrupted by an unexpected message, read aloud by Andrew Dismukes: “FYI: Green light on Yemen raid!” he exclaimed.
Dismukes, as Hegseth, continued to recite the texts he was sending (“Tomahawks airborne 15 minutes ago”) along with the emojis he was using for punctuation (“Flag emoji, fire emoji, eggplant”).
“Do we know you, bro?” Madison asked. “This is Jennabelle.”
“Oh, nice,” Dismukes replied. “Jennabelle from Defense, right?”
Warned by Nwodim that he was in the wrong group text, Dismukes answered, “LOLOLOL could you imagine if that actually happened? Homer disappear into bush GIF.” He added that he was “sending a PDF with updated locations of all our nuclear submarines.”
But instead of dropping out of the chat, Dismukes added Bowen Yang, joining from Greenland, in his recurring role as Vice President JD Vance.
“Nice job on the strike, fam,” Yang said. “Female skier emoji.”
Dismukes asked him, “How’s Greenland, by the way? Bet you’re killing it.”
Yang answered, “No, I’m not. Nobody knows why I’m here. Especially me. But praise Trump, our work here is mysterious and important.” He added that “Egypt owes us big time for this Yemen shiz” and that “POTUS was saying we should make them give us the pyramids.”
When Madison wondered aloud how the pyramids would be brought to America, Yang replied, “Same way they built them. Either aliens or slaves.”
Dismukes said he would celebrate the successful strike with a Jack and Coke (“just the one,” though) despite his promise to stop drinking if he was confirmed, and Yang chimed in. “Like they say in A.A., just the one is OK.”
Marcello Hernández was a latecomer to the chat as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who reported that he was sharing “the real J.F.K. files — not those fake ones we released.”
Informed that he had circulated this material to high schoolers, Hernández said that it could have been worse: “We could have added the editor of The Atlantic again.”
That prompted an appearance from Mikey Day, who was playing Goldberg. “You did,” he said. “I am also here.”
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on Signalgate, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s visit to a massive prison in El Salvador and the F.B.I. director Kash Patel’s efforts to investigate attacks targeting Tesla dealerships.
Weekend Update desk appearance of the week
A more fortunate beneficiary of the viral lottery that is social media this week was Ashton Hall, an entrepreneur and fitness coach who gained attention for a series of posts detailing his morning routine, which starts just before 4 a.m. and involves him occasionally dunking his face in Saratoga water and ice baths (and smearing it with the peel of a banana he’s just eaten).
That was all the inspiration that Devon Walker needed to create his own parody-slash-tribute, in which he acted out his own version of Hall’s videos (including one ride in an ambulance after handling a broken Saratoga bottle) and taunted Che for his supposed lack of ambition. “I’ve never seen you do anything like that,” Che remarked at one point. Walker replied, “Che, you don’t be coming to work. For those of y’all at home, this is the first time I’ve seen this man all week.”
Unexpected impersonations of the week
The arrest in December of Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, prompted comparisons from “S.N.L.” viewers who pointed out a broad resemblance between Mangione and Emil Wakim, a featured cast member.
In the immediate aftermath of the arrest, Wakim went on to play a character in an opening sketch identified as “a guy who happens to look like Luigi Mangione.” But this weekend, Wakim appeared as Mangione himself, in a sketch about various people trying to talk their way out of jury duty. (After Heidi Gardner played a potential juror who asked a judge, “Has Luigi been receiving my nudes?,” Wakim appeared in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs to answer, “I have been receiving that woman’s nudes, and ma’am, you’ve got to stop.”)
On the lighter side, the same sketch also included Chloe Fineman as herself, offering just the briefest hint of her impersonation of Parker Posey on “The White Lotus.” And if you made it to the tail end of the episode, you got a filmed segment about an HBO live-action adaptation of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” featuring Madison as Squidward.
