It still wasn’t as weird as that time Adam Pally and Ben Schwartz hosted The Late Late Show after a New York City blizzard (remember those?) would’ve otherwise shut down production.
The decision-makers behind Saturday Night Live decided on Saturday to pare things back in light of spiking COVID-19 cases and the arrival of the omicron variant. At first, that meant no studio guests. Then musical guest Charli XCX’s planned performance got shut down.
When the show finally aired at 11:30 p.m. ET, the house band consisted of only one tenor sax and one piano, and the celebrity guest who swooped onto the stage from the back of the set was Tom Hanks instead of Paul Rudd, the night’s host.
Hanks was probably meant to participate in the night’s festivities anyway, since Rudd was set to join SNL‘s illustrious “five-timers” club as one of the few to achieve a hosting five-peat. But Hanks also previously stepped up to help SNL with the show’s first at-home episode of 2020, so there was a sort of poetic justice to him starting things off as COVID once again loomed large over the production.
As opening monologue bits go, the celeb-filled stage made the most of their opportunity. Hanks was soon joined by fellow five-timer Tina Fey — with both wearing luxurious smoking jackets bearing a shield-shaped “5” patch — and together they welcomed a smiling, “extremely disappointed” Rudd to join them. Moments later, Kenan Thompson, SNL‘s longest-tenured comic, stepped out to welcome Rudd and hand him a five-timers smoking jacket of his own.
It’s a weird, awkward, sincere, wholesome, and — thanks to the antics of Steve Martin and Martin Short, who appeared in a video call — ever-so-slightly spicy kickoff to an outside-the-norm SNL. A little piece of TV history being made before your very eyes.
