Saturday Night Live: The three best sketches with host Matt Damon

Saturday Night Live had its annual Christmas episode hosted by Matt Damon and it featured some of the best sketches of the season.

As if you needed any more motivation to get into the holiday spirit, Saturday Night Live brought its annual Christmas episode to NBC this week. Matt Damon returned to host along with musical guests Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson. Whether you were looking for Christmas sketches or just a solid episode, you weren’t disappointed.

Some fans got the impression that last weeks episode with Jason Momoa would be considered the holiday episode meaning there would be no new Saturday Night Live this week. But the show delivered and whether it was having Damon back as host or inspiration from Christmas, it was one of the better episodes of season 44.

If you missed the episode and need to catch up or just want to relive the highlights then you’ve come to the right place. Here are the three best sketches from the show.

It’s a Wonderful Trump

Keeping up with tradition, this week’s cold open was focused on politics and the world of President Trump. Trump’s clash with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer earlier in the week felt like Saturday Night Live sketch happening in real life and would have made for a great cold open. But the show made the wise choice of going with the It’s a Wonderful Life spoof instead.

It allowed for virtually all of the show’s political impressions to make an appearance of course led by Alec Baldwin’s Trump. There was probably some debate over which impression Kate McKinnon would do before settling on Kellyanne Conway. It also allowed Matt Damon to reprise his take on Brett Kavanaugh that got the season off to such a great start.

The cameos of Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro were all but expected considering how many times they’ve popped up as Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller. These guest stars have lost their “surprise factor” by now, however. Last week’s performance by De Niro in the cold open did not translate well but that didn’t keep SNL from calling him back in.

Best Christmas Ever

In recent years, the highlight of the Christmas episode has been a pretaped sketch like this one. Past hits have included “Santa Baby” with Ryan Gosling and Vanessa Bayer and “Jingle Barack” with Chance the Rapper.

This sketch manages to pretty accurately showcase some of the less romantic holiday traditions like family members with no filters or toys with “some assembly required.” The sketch seems perfectly designed for parents to share on Facebook, evident by the fact the video already has over a million views on YouTube.

Weezer

This sketch probably alienated some viewers or got others to tune out if they weren’t familiar with Weezer. But if you are, or were, a fan of Weezer then you had to of enjoyed it. Clearly the writers behind the sketch have had this argument countless times based on how well-written Matt Damon and Leslie Jones’ characters were.

Weezer has been around for a long time but hasn’t had too much consistent mainstream play. That was until they released a cover of “Africa” by Toto on a whim and it ended up being one of their biggest hits. For his part, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo enjoyed the sketch.

The sketch is worthy of the top-three designation because it shows that Saturday Night Live can still take a very niche subject like Weezer’s discography and make it a quality bit. The reactions of Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, and Heidi Gardner add to it. And there are still other layers that play out towards the end as we find Matt Damon’s character wasn’t technically invited to his ex-wife’s dinner party.

Overall it was a strong episode of Saturday Night Live and one of the year’s best. The show ended 2018 on a high note and now will be off until January 2019 when it will return with all new episodes. Check back in with Last Night On to stay up to date on all things Saturday Night Live.