‘SNL’ asks the real Will Ferrell to please stand up

And with that, Season 51 of SNL has come to an end.

I had high hopes for this episode. When a returning cast member of Will Ferrell’s caliber returns to host the show, you can’t help but expect the best. But it was ... OK?

There’s no sane way for me to say this, but the episode started out incredibly strong when we got a post-monologue sketch featuring Ferrell as a doctor who — and here’s where I might lose you — accidentally removed Mikey Day’s penis. There’s also no sane way for me to say that this sketch was the highlight of the non-Weekend Update section of the show.

Look, Ferrell as a surgeon trying to justify removing Day’s penis was just very, very funny, especially when Day and Ashley Padilla were doing their best to play off Ferrell in the sketch.

The true highlight of the episode was the annual joke exchange between Colin Jost and Michale Che where the two Update anchors write jokes that the other person has never seen but now has to say live on air.

But the rest of the episode’s sketches kind of got overshadowed by these moments.

That’s it for Season 51. It was great to break free of the weight of SNL50, but besides Padilla becoming SNL’s breakout star, this season never lived up to the theory that Michaels was going to use it to drastically reshape the show. The Cold Open’s episode reviews will be back in the fall, and I’ll have a few more pieces over the next few weeks.

The fate of Lorne Michaels

The season finale ended with a healthy dose of intrigue. After Slate’s Sam Adams quickly remarked that SNL “held that ‘Executive Producer: Lorne Michaels’ on screen for quite a while,” I pulled up last week’s Matt Damon episode for comparison. My math isn’t precise, but Michaels’ name was on screen for somewhere between four and five seconds at the end of Damon’s episode.

But for Ferrell’s episode, Michaels’ name remained on screen for somewhere around ten seconds as Paul McCartney performed during goodnights. What’s it mean? Is Michaels retiring? Or did SNL just need to eat up some of the clock? The combo of Ferrell hosting and McCartney already had people speculating over Michaels’ fate. That producer card moment will only amp things up.

Unlike many season finales, we also didn’t get any kind of hint that it might’ve have been a veteran cast member’s last episode. No “Kristen Wiig dances with Lorne Michaels and the cast,” Stefon and Seth Meyers get married or everyone sings “Blue Christmas” to Cecily Strong. Not even a “wait, is this goodbye?” moment with an established cast member on Update.

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COLD OPEN

Jeffrey Epstein Ghost Cold Open

Going into this episode, I was very curious if SNL would finish the season with James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump or not. Skipping Trump — as the show had done for the past few weeks — would come off as a sign that it was moving away from him. Look, we’re all tired. Ditching the sitting president under these circumstances would be understandable.

But SNL jumped into its season finale with Johnson as Trump again. But there was a twist.

If I told you that Ferrell would appear in the cold open — making it back-to-back episodes where the host appeared in a political cold open — you’d guess that he was playing George W. Bush, right?

I would too!

But instead, we got Ferrell as Jeffrey Epstein.

• “Welcome back, Mr. President”: Johnson’s Trump wasn’t the only political impression we got to close out Season 51. The show also wrapped up with Jeremy Culhane as JD Vance, Padilla as Kristi Noem, Jost as Pete Hegseth and Aziz Ansari as Kash Patel.

THE MONOLOGUE

Wow, this monologue honestly broke my brain for a second. When Ferrell came out, I thought there was something off about his hair. Then his face didn’t look right. Was he doing some kind of Jim Carrey bit?

Right before SNL revealed what was happening, it clicked for me. This wasn’t Ferrell. It was Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. (This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this bit.)