Saturday Night Live
Kristen Wiig & Raye
April 6, 2023
Kristen Wiig is arguably one of Saturday Night Live‘s greatest former cast members — which is why it is no surprise that she is one of only five cast members who has hosted enough times to be inducted into the Five-Timers Club. (Can you name the other four?)
But despite her greatness as a cast member and her success off the show, Wiig has not had the most successful run with hosting the show. In 2016, I said the episode “was the equivalent of putting on an old sweatshirt: comfortable, familiar and warm, but not something you’ll remember even two days from now”; in May 2020 — which was in the middle of the pandemic and one of those difficult at-home episodes — Wiig only appeared in two bits, one of which was a “weird-and-not-weird-in-a-funny-way-just-weird monologue”; and in December 2020, I found the material to be “mediocre” and gave it a B-. (I don’t have her first episode from 2013 here in the Foolish archives, unfortunately.)
So I am happy to report that for this momentous occasion, the writers gave Wiig some good material to work with and supported her with a bevy of superstars, and as a result, Wiig finally hosted the Saturday Night Live episode that her talents deserved.
