Compared with final 12 months’s Saturday Night Live Christmas present, when the extraordinarily contagious Omicron coronavirus variant necessitated a decreased forged and crew, this 12 months’s managed to keep away from any main disruptions. But one piece of stories, launched mere hours earlier than final evening’s airing, delivered an surprising flip: The present could be Cecily Strong’s final.
Rumors about Strong’s exit started swirling when her fellow forged members Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant (each of whom began with Strong in 2012) departed SNL in May. Strong stayed, however her closing season on SNL didn’t precisely quantity to a full one. Beginning in October, she missed the primary three episodes whereas showing within the one-woman present The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life within the Universe; she returned on the finish of the month for the Halloween episode.
After 11 seasons on SNL and with out anybody else to share the farewell highlight with, Strong bought an emotional goodbye similar to Kristen Wiig’s in 2012. Last evening’s closing sketch unfolded in a Radio Shack—an apt analogy for the as soon as ubiquitous SNL. The retailer’s boss (performed by Kenan Thompson) delivered a shifting speech about Strong’s final day, saying, “Honestly, I don’t think Radio Shack could’ve survived this long without Cecily.” The surroundings finally pulled again to disclose SNL’s essential stage, and the host, Austin Butler, joined Strong to sing “Blue Christmas” (Butler performed the a part of Elvis, his main position in Baz Luhrmann’s current movie of the identical title). The second grew extra poignant because the forged slowly joined them onstage, standing collectively arm in arm.
Unlike it has with previous departures, SNL didn’t restrict Strong’s adieu to that closing scene; her skills had been unfold all through the episode. She appeared in various sketches, together with as considered one of her most well-known characters: the slurring miscreant Cathy Anne, who’s usually instructed wild tales to Michael Che on the “Weekend Update” desk. She stated goodbye final evening, sharing how the entire crimes to which she’d confessed to Che over time had lastly landed her in jail. Strong developed that story right into a metaphor about leaving the present. “I got friends on the inside,” she stated, whereas an image of McKinnon and Bryant in orange jumpsuits appeared. “They seem to be doing okay.”
Be they delinquent characters similar to Cathy Anne or her spot-on impressions of Judge Jeanine Pirro and the Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Strong at all times performed these personas with a bit of little bit of acid. Where different veterans similar to McKinnon and Thompson constructed a gleeful jest into their character work, Strong dug for deeper, grittier stuff. Her curiosity produced a lot: She was constantly glorious, a useful trait for a present that wavers a lot from one week to the subsequent. In current seasons, Strong additionally rose to the forefront as considered one of SNL’s loudest political voices as regards to abortion. Appearing first as Goober the Clown and extra not too long ago as Tammy the Trucker, she defended girls’s proper to decide on. On a present that usually tries to stroll the center of the political aisle, her clear, resounding criticism felt notable and welcome.
The Christmas present turned out to be a brilliant spot within the season’s ongoing seek for steadier footing. In one of many funnier moments of the evening, Butler helped spoof It’s a Wonderful Life in a pretaped bit. The sketch exploded the trope of traditional film protagonists who notice the error of their methods via witnessing heat scenes in folks’s houses. The premise flipped that perspective, zooming in on the household Butler stared at and tracing their horrified response to the “pervert lurking in our window.”
Strong’s absence leaves Thompson because the one of many few remaining members of the “old guard.” As the longest-running forged member, with 20 seasons underneath his belt, Thompson has expertise that, in contrast with the remainder of the forged’s, is staggering. Outside of the “Weekend Update” stalwarts Che and Colin Jost, most of the present forged members joined in 2018 or after. That’s a whole lot of still-developing expertise to helm such an iconic ship.
At the beginning of final season, SNL had the biggest forged it had ever seen. Now it has maybe the most recent. With this newest departure, the longer term continues to really feel unsteady. Strong wasn’t the one pinning every little thing into place this season, however alongside Thompson, she added a sure gravitas. As he stated within the Radio Shack scene, “Every time she came to work, she had a new character or a new accent or a new impression that would just blow you away. She had a power and a joy to her performance that made you remember why you loved working at Radio Shack in the first place.”