7 Best 'SNL' Skits Last Night, Including Ryan Gosling's 'All Too Well' Monologue
Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling returned to the Saturday Night Live stage for a third time to deliver laughs upon laughs—including many of his own during each skit. The star of The Fall Guy led a night of contagious laughter, causing many of the variety comedy show's cast to break at least once.
The rest of the evening featured musical guest Chris Stapleton, who crooned to "White Horse" and "Mountains of My Mind," as well as a cameo from WNBA star Caitlin Clark, who roasted Michael Che during Weekend Update. Read on for our pick of the night's six best sketches.
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7 Best 'SNL' Skits Last Night
1. Monologue ft. 'All Too Well'
Fresh off his last on-stage appearance—his beloved performance of "I'm Just Ken" at the 2024 Oscars—his monologue included a eulogy to the character in Greta Gerwig's Barbie, set to Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" and complete with the signature fur coat. As he sings "Farewell," co-star Emily Blunt makes a cameo, admonishing him for not promoting their upcoming movie. Soon enough, though, she joins him in dedicating a verse or two to her character in Oppenheimer, as the two duet to move on from their roles last summer.
2. Beavis and Butt-Head
The laughs come early with this standout entry, in which Heidi Gardner spends most of it uncontrollably laughing. Gosling, donning preposterous prosthetics, plays a Beavis lookalike from the famed Mike Judge adult cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head, derailing an on-air segment about the nuances of artificial intelligence. In the hilarious sketch, Kenan Thompson's expert is the sole person who has seen the cartoon and can make the connection, making the situation that much more outrageous when Mikey Day's Butt-Head shows up. That leads to a fit of laughter from Gardner, which infects everyone including Thompson, the sketch's background actors and certainly the audience.
3. Close Encounter Cold Open
SNL kicked off the night with a banger: a skit that had everyone taking turns breaking. In this repeat sketch (which first premiered with Gosling—wearing the same clothes—eight years ago), three people recount their bizarre interactions aboard an alien spacecraft. Kate McKinnon shines in a triumphant return to form, unwittingly letting loose a chain reaction of near gut-busting laughter, with Gosling cackling and even Bowen Yang letting out a small chuckle. Come for the extraterrestrial penis jokes and physical comedy, stay for the contagious giggling.
Related: 5 Best SNL Skits Last Night With Kristen Wiig
4. Doctor
Sometimes, that's the way the cookie crumbles ... when your doctors are '80s action-flick-level comically evil. In this ingenious sketch, Yang and Gosling fantastically (and fanatically) play off one another as the main surgeon and his unhinged medical assistant who most definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, purposefully killed a patient on their operating table. From the way Gosling utters "It's not our fault" with blood splattered on his clothes to the duo's increasingly incriminating behavior, this skit is sure to go down in SNL history. The wigs alone deserve an award.
5. Get That Boy Back ft. Chris Stapleton
In this Carrie Underwood-like tribute to the country ex-girlfriend revenge ballad, one woman stands out with her psychologically torturous vengeance plots. Gosling makes an appearance as Chloe Troast's ex-CIA brother, who adds a metal/rap element to the song. While Chloe Fineman and Ego Nwodim's characters discuss keying their exes' cars, Troast decides to hide in his walls (marking an appearance by Stapleton) and change his shoes to half-sizes bigger each week.
6. Can't Tonight
This is Marcello Hernandez's sketch first and foremost, featuring a cameo by the one and only original dog from Beethoven. In "Can't Tonight," Gosling joins Thompson and Hernandez on a guy's night out, speaking in an accent that he says is due to the fact that he's dating a woman who has transformed him into a "Cuban papi." As Hernandez and Gosling's characters try to convince Thompson's to continue the night, their accents become alternatively more and less intelligible, leading to boisterous fun.
7. The Engagement
In this slow-burner, Gosling plays a husband-not-to-be, who willfully traps Andrew Dismukes' Brad into an continually more dire and absurd scheme to abandon his fiancé. As Fineman and Nwodim's characters habitually retreat into the kitchen to discuss bridesmaid duties and wedding details, Gosling takes each opportunity to spill his guts to Brad, going on about how he can't stop going to the airport and fantasizing about starting a new life. With desperate plea after desperate plea, poor Brad is soon on the ropes for 12,000 – owed to a random Groupon guy who can coordinate facial reconstruction surgery.
