Cast members leave SNL at the end of every season, but this year was a doozy. On the Season 47 finale, four people bid farewell to their longtime home. Kate McKinnon peaced out by returning to serial alien abductee Ms. Rafferty (though she appeared in other sketches throughout the night). Pete Davidson did his final Weekend Update monologue (until he inevitably hosts the show further down the line).
Aidy Bryant also used Weekend Update to say goodbye, and like McKinnon she did it cryptically, in character, as one-half of the trend forecasters, recurring characters played by her and Bowen Yang. The two weighed in on what’s hot this summer: “grapes with seeds, tying cherry stems with tongue to impress for sex, ‘Watermelon Sugar’ song.” What’s out? Why, “navel orange: why do you have belly button, you’re fruit!”
By the end, Bryant slightly broke character to weigh in on future trends. She said, “10 nice years.” Yang then turned to her and added, “A friend I couldn’t have done this without.”
Kyle Mooney, alas, did not receive a big farewell, as many on social media noticed.
Elsewhere on the segment, co-host Colin Jost lamented the final Weekend Update of last year, which he predicted would be the “horniest summer ever.” Cut to 2022, and “now summer’s hottest STD is monkeypox,” yet another sign of how “weird and bad things have gotten.”
Michael Che, meanwhile, slammed Tucker Carlson for spending over 400 episodes since 2016 pushing the white supremacist theory that white people are being “replaced” by minorities. “But that doesn’t even make sense,” Che said, “because white people still exist. It’s not like they suddenly turn into minorities — unless it’s Halloween.” The screen then showed a collage of white people dressing up as other ethnicities. Che added, “If he thinks the government has a secret plot to help minorities, he must be smoking that crack the CIA secretly put in Black neighborhoods.”
Che also discussed allegations that Elon Musk exposed himself to a flight attendant on his private jet, namely his longwinded defense. But Che wasn’t buying it, saying, “Sorry, we were looking for a simple ‘I did not do it.’”
Jost also mentioned Taylor Swift’s recent commencement address at New York University, saying, “college is a lot like breaking up with Taylor Swift: You’re still going to be paying for it decades later.”
You can watch Aidy Bryant’s segment above and the rest of Weekend Update below.
