Paul Mescal SNL Sketches Ranked: Gladiator Musical, Trisha Paytas, and Church Lady Returns

With Gladiator II helping to add to massive hauls at the box office opposite Moana 2 and Wicked (and yes, Saturday Night Live addresses all three), Paul Mescal brought his varied talents to the SNL stage for an extremely uneven episode. Election 2024 is in the rearview mirror finally, and with it went the season's political players that have dominated the cold opens. Well, one of those players actually did stick around, but it was to dust off one of the 50-year-old series' most iconic characters of all time, Dana Carvey's Church Lady. A popular character through the early part of Carvey's SNL career, Church Lady has made a few appearances since, with the latest coming just ahead of Donald Trump's last election victory in 2016. While everyone seemed to remember Trump this year, the audience didn't seem to know q uite what to do with this character through much of her usual schtick. In fact, the audience appeared to take a bit of time to find its funny bone in this episode, leading to some awkwardly quiet sketches. Thankfully, Heidi Gardner was on hand to wake them up with an unhinged performance as a shocked mother when her son gets his ear pierced, while Weekend Update finished the job of reminding them this is a comedy show. This was a huge week for the season's new Featured Players, with all three of them getting three different sketch appearances, and at least one major role on the night. And to their credit, it was a strong showing for all of them. Jane Wickline showed off her awkward musical chops, Ashley Padilla was fully committed as an aspiring commercial actress, and Emil Wakim was able to keep up with Heidi's aforementioned affronted mother, which is no small task for anyone. As we shift from politics into the actual celebrating of 50 years of Saturday Night Live, this was more like the show dipping its toes in the waters of its legacy. We appreciated the look ahead with the Featured Players, but we're not quite feeling the celebration yet. 50 years is a big deal, SNL. It's okay to go crazy -- though maybe NBC is trying to hold back for that 50th anniversary special on February 16, 2025. Even Trisha Paytas' surprise appearance couldn't elevate the night, while alum David Spade's turn as Hunter Biden may have actually dragged it down a bit. He didn't even appear to bother learning his lines and couldn't have looked less interested in being part of the night. As usual, we're ranking all the sketches from worst to first, including the Monologue, Cold Open, "Weekend Update" and any sketches that were cut for time but made their way online. We'll skip the musical guests, because they're not usually funny -- unless Ashlee Simpson shows up. We wrap up with a look at the cast-member who had the strongest week. Paul had a nervous kind of awkward charm to him throughout this monologue where he never quite looked comfortable but was definitely happy to be here. He got a kick himself -- even though he knew it was coming -- when they followed up his "comedy" film scene montage of himself crying in various movies to his doing the same in Gladiator II with poorly doctored footage. The bit with Marcello Hernandez joining him in short shorts fell flat, with even Marcello seemingly acknowledging it with his awkward exit. This audience tonight has been giving nothing and it's definitely bringing down the energy. We could get behind Paul Mescal's top Spotify Wrap artist being some obscure new age artist played by Bowen Yang, but the Trisha Paytas cameo didn't bring anything new to the sketch, and the ending again felt like they didn't really know what to do. None of the characterizations made sense in said ending as they went from not knowing who Bowen's character is to suddenly loving him and singing along. Maybe had there been a line about how he seems to magically pull people into his fandom or something. All in all, the piece felt a little disjointed and unfinished as if someone said, "We should do something about Spotify Wrapped lists," but they couldn't come up with anything good. Andrew's Bruce Sprigsteen made zero effort to match his appearance save for a wig and his delivery wasn't much stronger. We did appreciate Chloe Fineman's Timothee Chalamet and James Austin Johnson's Bob Dylan -- particularly Bob's obsession with getting to the hors d'oeuvres at the end of the red carpet that BuzzFeed's Heidi Gardner was not letting him get to. Once again -- a running theme on the night -- the writers didn't seem to know how to get out of the sketch, so they went with some lame question to chase down a headline. At least it wasn't too long. A huge crowd pleaser during Dana Carvey's original run, we have a feeling SNL was hoping for a stronger response from this audience. There was literal dead silence to her first utterance of "Satan!" "Well isn't that special" didn't get much better, until a fairly obvious applause sign went off,