Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: March 16, 2019

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Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day weekend with a repeat of last year’s Saturday Night Live Christmas show hosted by Matt Damon!

SNL is back in reruns for a couple of weeks until it returns with live shows again on Saturday, March 30th. Tonight’s encore episode airing at 11:30pm on NBC, may seem a little out of place, especially on a weekend where the green beer is flowing and drunk women are running around wearing those springy shamrock antennas on their heads while screaming for green strands of beads. Just like in Ireland during the days of St. Patrick himself in the fifth century. But tonight, Saturday Night Live is re-airing its Christmas show from December 15, 2018 with host Matt Damon. This episode has been the highest rated individual Saturday Night Live  through SNL – Season 44 so far. And this installment of SNL is well known for another reason as well.

As you watch tonight, you may or may not notice that cast member Pete Davidson doesn’t show up in any of the live sketches. You will see him in a pre-recorded SNL – Digital Short and oddly enough, introduce the musical guests Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus for one their of numbers. The reason is that this was the show where early in the day, Pete had gotten a bad case of the blues and sent out a post on Instagram which was easily presumed by many as suicidal. Several big name celebrities responded to Pete’s cry for help, but anyone who was interested on social media had no idea what Pete was up to or where he was located at the time. This was a major false alarm from Pete Davidson who was apparently fine. It turned out that Pete was at SNL the whole time and had people around him. He was pulled from the entire live show that night except for one small duty, introducing Ronson & Cyrus, which seemed to be only because Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels, who is a really big Pete Davidson fan, wanted to show the world that Pete was indeed still alive and also that he didn’t need to be admitted to the hospital or any of the other fine mental health facilities around New York City.

Matt Damon was a natural choice to bring back to SNL to host after he killed it in the Saturday Night Live – Season 44 premiere episode. Damon appeared in the season opener as then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the SNL – Cold Open. In a sketch parodying Kavanaugh’s weirdly heated Senate confirmation hearings, Damon outrageously skewered President Trump’s nominee as a ridiculously emotional roller-coaster, going from screaming to crying in seconds. The cold open was such a hit on social media, Damon came back to host the Christmas show which you’ll see tonight.

In tonight’s cold open, SNL goes back to Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump (yes, again), but with at least a different twist added to it for the holiday. This evening’s cold open is in black & white and is a Trump White House version of the holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 film which starred Jimmy Stewart. It’s an opener that has plenty of laughs imagining what life would have been like for Trump and his gang if he had never become President. Turns out it would have been a wonderful life for just about all of us.

The monologue tonight starts on a stage covered in poinsettias and Christmas greens. Matt Damon’s remarks were short, but incredibly sweet and may even bring a tear to your eye. He talked about how he used to stay up late to watch Saturday Night Live with his dad (who had just passed away a year ago) and his brother and how he stayed awake all the way through the show for the first time when he was 8. His kids were there watching him host SNL including his youngest who is now 8 years old herself. His monologue ended with plenty of “awwws” from the audience and a holiday toast.

One of the few moments in tonight’s repeat Saturday Night Live that wasn’t Christmas themed was an SNL – Digital Short called “Oscar Host Auditions” which is a show highlight this evening. It took place no long after Kevin Hart and the Academy Awards parted ways and the show was searching for a new host. This gave this incredibly talented SNL cast a chance to show off its best celebrity impressions. Some got more than one chance to demonstrate their impersonation skills including cast member Aidy Bryant who appeared doing a remarkable Hannah Gadsby impression and as well as Roseanne Barr. Cast member Kate McKinnon was a screeching Michelle Wolf and the safe Oscars choice, Ellen. Newcomer featured player Ego Nwodim did her Tiffany Haddish impression including her catchphrases and signature gown. And we get to see cast member Melissa Villaseñor doing Sarah Silverman among several other impersonations from the SNL cast. The other SNL – Digital Short on tonight’s show features Matt Damon as a dad who finds out that his imperfect Christmas Day is the most perfect one after all.

Another non-Christmas sketch in tonight’s SNL repeat is called “Westminster Daddy Show” where Matt Damon and Cecily Strong call the action at a pedigree dog show where instead of dogs, eligible dads are on display and paraded around to be judged on their attributes.

If you’re in the mood for Christmas in March, the holiday themed SNL sketches tonight include what happens to the those broken and forgotten Christmas ornaments that have been relegated to the back of the tree each year, a sketch where a holiday meal is ruined when the topic of conversation turns to…nope, not politics or religion, but to the band Weezer and there’s a ball-busting sketch featuring some off duty cops from the NYPD having some holiday cheer at a local bar before heading home for the holiday. Alec Baldwin joins the cast for this bar sketch and not as President Trump.

Tonight’s rerun of Saturday Night Live is worth a second watch just for this episode’s edition of Weekend Update. Colin Jost and Michael Che are at their funniest in tonight’s news segment, even when something doesn’t work like Che’s impression of Donald Trump. The WU news duo make their way through jokes about Michael Cohen, Chris Christie, Beto O’Rourke (where they’re strangely prophetic 3 months ago), the dangers of eating raw cookie dough, the Boy Scouts facing bankruptcy, the secret location of “Sex Island”, a snake rescue and a study about frogs. The Weekend Update news desk is joined by featured cast member Heidi Gardner as “Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing Ever.” Angel is always an Update hit and tonight may be her best appearance yet when her boxer boyfriend shows up. Then in a hilarious segment to end 2018 for Jost & Che, the two write jokes for each other that the other person must perform out loud at the news desk even though they have never seen the jokes before. It may be the best thing Michael Che and Colin Jost have pulled out since becoming the Weekend Update co-anchors.

Our final pitch for checking out tonight’s repeat episode of Saturday Night Live is something we usually don’t comment on, the musical guest. Tonight’s guest performers are Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus who are tag teaming the musical guest spot on this evening’s show. On tonight’s repeat, Ronson and Cyrus perform a Christmas classic and are joined by a very special surprise guest who we highly recommend you tune in to see tonight on SNL.

In the promos which you can watch below for tonight’s repeat Saturday Night Live, Matt Damon is joined by cast members Beck Bennett and Cecily Strong along with musical guests Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus for his favorite part of Christmas, the Secret Santa gift exchange, which Matt may have put more into than the others. In the next set, Matt Damon, Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus talk about all of the great parties going on this holiday season, to the confusion of Kate McKinnon, who’s also a little concerned about Matt.

Tonight, it’s an encore presentation of the last Saturday Night Live of 2018 hosted by Matt Damon with musical guests Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus at 11:30pm et on NBC.

SNL returns with live shows on Saturday, March 30th with host Sandra Oh and musical guest Tame Impala followed by live episodes hosted by Kit Harington on Saturday, April 6th and Emma Stone on Saturday, April 13th!

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Ernie Tripper
Ernie Tripper