John Mulaney Roasts RFK Jr. and Bowen Yang Steals the Cold Open as SNL Delivers Its Best Episode of the Season
(Illustration: USA Current Affaires)
Live from New York — and what a night it was. John Mulaney returned to Saturday Night Live on Saturday night for his seventh time as host, and the episode that followed is already being called the best of the season, with a headline-grabbing cold open, a monologue that took aim at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and an emotional return from musical guest Phoebe Bridgers.
The sixth episode of Season 52 aired live from Studio 8H on Saturday, November 14, and it delivered on every promise of the pairing. Mulaney, a writer on the show from 2008 to 2013, was joined by Bridgers, making her third appearance on the SNL stage and her second as a solo musical guest.
Critics were quick to praise it. Entertainment Weekly called it "easily the best episode of this season," while Showbiz411 declared it "A Perfect SNL."
A Cold Open Straight Out of the Headlines
The night opened at CIA headquarters, where Mulaney played a government official called in to brief the world's biggest tech billionaires — Jeremy Culhane as Elon Musk, Andrew Dismukes as Mark Zuckerberg, James Austin Johnson as Peter Thiel, Ben Marshall as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Jane Wickline as Anthropic's Dario Amodei — on national security, and on how to tell a woman who genuinely likes them from a spy.
"America needs you to learn the difference between a woman who would actually want to have sex with you and a woman who is clearly a spy," Mulaney's official told the room, according to The Wrap — before listing the week's tech disasters, from Friday's nationwide flight grounding to the Microsoft Outlook outage.
Then came the surprise that brought the house down: Bowen Yang, back at Studio 8H for the first time since leaving the show, as disgraced former Nvidia president Jensen Huang, who resigned on Thursday following reports of extramarital relationships, including one with a suspected spy for China. The A.V. Club called it the first funny cold open the show has managed all year.
The laughs kept coming. In "Plane Crash," Mulaney played a survivor of a flight mishap on a Turkey-to-Newark service, trying to pass off his hair-transplant bandages as crash injuries, with Kam Patterson appearing as former New York mayor Eric Adams. A fake ad for a home health aide called "Sister" followed, along with the return of Ashley Padilla's awkward office worker Kathy.
The Monologue: Dads, Boomers and RFK Jr.
Mulaney's monologue was pure stand-up. He joked that he likes hosting because "it's like he has no host," then moved into a routine about recently deciding that his father is on the autism spectrum — a diagnosis, he said, that suddenly explained his entire childhood. From there he turned to boomers' complaints about Gen Z before pivoting into a full RFK Jr. impression.
"You dumbass, your thing can't be the measles," Mulaney said in character as the health secretary, according to Deadline — a line that drew one of the biggest laughs of the night. Michael Che later offered his own RFK Jr. impression during Weekend Update, where Colin Jost also took on Friday's flight grounding.
And of course, there was the musical. Mulaney's eighth SNL musical took on New York's newly approved ban on horse-drawn carriages in Central Park, with the host playing a carriage driver giving what could be one of his last rides. The number paraded through the city's characters — including Veronika Slowikowska as a woman still finishing the New York City Marathon — before Bowen Yang returned as Mary Todd Lincoln from the Broadway hit Oh Mary!, belting a parody of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going."
Phoebe Bridgers' Emotional Return
Bridgers gave the night its emotional core. She opened with "Bobby," a sweet, moving ode to Bo Burnham, backed by a loud scream and a smoky stage — and closed the show with "Still Standing," a song about her complicated relationship with her late father. As she sang, the lighting shifted to reveal skull makeup on her face, a haunting visual that left the studio silent.
The episode was also the last before SNL's Thanksgiving break. The show returns on December 5 with Amanda Seyfried hosting and Don Toliver as musical guest — and Mulaney, one hosting gig away from Chevy Chase's record of eight, looks all but certain to break it.
We previewed the night before it aired: John Mulaney returned to host SNL for a seventh time tonight, with Phoebe Bridgers as musical guest — and Saturday was a huge night for music, as Phil Collins cried as he accepted his second Rock Hall induction.
What was your favourite moment from Mulaney's SNL return? Let us know in the comments.
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