Though 2025 has already seen retrospective documentaries, a prime-time special, and a Lorne Michaels biography marking the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, the show itself actually premiered on October 11, 1975—and last night’s episode, in a neat coincidence, happened exactly 50 years later. Such a special occasion called for just the right host—an alumnus found on any list of greatest cast members, but one who’s also easily recognizable to the younger audiences that the show is always chasing. It would also help if they’re still really, really funny. Fortunately, Amy Poehler understood the assignment.
While Poehler can snark with the best of them, she always radiates a palpable compassion. Much of her comedic persona comes from exploring and satirizing the ways that idealistic people react to a changing and sometimes unfair world—an idea she returned to in her opening monologue. After mentioning that she didn’t have anything to promote other than her interview podcast, Good Hang, she joked, “That’s right, I am a podcaster now, and if that’s not a recession indicator, I don’t know what is.” Later, she riffed on her fears that one day she’ll be replaced by an AI actress who’s funnier than her and more willing to do nudity. (“I am willing to do full frontal, but nobody’s asked me, okay?”)
When she joined SNL in the early 2000s, Poehler came to represent an outspoken feminism that, for a while, seemed to be culturally ascendant. She was part of the first and only all-female “Weekend Update” duo, with Tina Fey, and often participated in sketches that pushed sexist stereotypes past the point of parody, such as “Annuale,” a bit about a birth-control pill that limited periods to one havoc-filled day. Later, on the sitcom Parks and Recreation, her signature character, Leslie Knope, possessed a deep well of empathy that sometimes let her down as she pursued a better world. Accordingly, one of last night’s best sketches found Poehler playing a middle-aged mom dealing with perimenopause by acting like a teenage emo fan. Although the jokes about a middle-aged woman getting her areolas pierced at Claire’s were funny, the sketch acknowledged the oft-ignored anxiety felt by mothers in the sandwich generation, and kindly suggested that it might be healthy for them to occasionally vent their feelings via angsty rock.
But Poehler is shrewd enough to cut against her persona, and she came in hot during the cold open, portraying United States Attorney General Pam Bondi as the sort of fussy woman who really wants to speak to the manager. As she sneered, squinted, and wagged her finger, Poehler’s Bondi rudely responded to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Before I don’t answer, I’d like to insult you personally.” In a welcome surprise, Fey cameoed as a glazed-over, machine-gun-toting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and dismissed a senator’s question as something that “makes me laugh more than the end of Old Yeller.” SNL has never been above the crowd-pleasing nostalgia of returning cast members, but the punchy reunion of Fey and Poehler—and, later that night, their appearance alongside Seth Meyers on “Weekend Update”—recalled the show’s creative high point in the late ’00s and the pair’s skill at turning impersonations into actual characters.
SNL is in a transitional moment, as it has been in the past. Key players such as Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim made unexpected departures over the summer, and the new cast members are just getting started (though the former Please Don’t Destroy member Ben Marshall came off as an old pro, and the newbie Veronika Slowikowska has already gotten an impressive amount of screen time). Poehler’s performance last night was a reminder that the show has always managed to reboot itself after a major shake-up. But it was also a timely showcase of certain, resonant values that recur in Poehler’s work—a disdain for corruption, an understanding of humanity’s unavoidable foibles, and an eye toward the everyday indignities that women face.
Or, as Poehler put it in her monologue: “I know it can feel like times are really tough right now, and in some ways, they always have been, and they always will be. So I’ll just say this: If there’s a place that feels like home that you can go back to and laugh with your friends, consider yourself lucky. And I do.” SNL tends to avoid this level of naked sincerity, but coming from someone like Poehler, it landed as wisdom from an old friend, a reminder of why she’s one of the best hangs in the business.
