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Ana de Armas SNL Sketches Ranked: Non-Binary Cast Member Fights for Trans Kids Rights

Bowen Yang celebrates the world's longest fingernails, Funky Kong rails against Mario Bros., Sarah Sherman destroyes Colin Jost, and the season's funniest character is back, Ego Nwodim's Lisa from Temecula.

Ana de Armas is a world-class actress and really immersed herself into the crazy on “Saturday Night Live,” showing a lot of range and some surprising depth as an actress in one of the most unlikely sketches.

Musical guest Karol G joined in on the Spanish sketch you knew they wouldn’t be able to resist with her and de Armas on the same show. Karol also managed to sneak in a statement regarding her beef with GQ Mexico over Photoshopping her on their cover.

Ego Nwodim revived her most popular character — and one of the funniest in recent memory — in Lisa from Temecula. Meanwhile, Colin Jost took some more abuse from Sarah Sherman at the “Weekend Update” desk.

Newcomer Molly Kearney — the show’s first non-binary cast member — balanced sincerity with silliness quite well in what will likely be one of the night’s biggest (and most controversial) sketches as they pretty pointedly took aim at Republicans targeting trans kids’ access to health care.

To top it all off, we got the inevitable sketch about how gorgeous Ana de Armas is and a Cold Open that had nothing to do with politics, which was refreshing. While it wasn’t a perfect night of comedy, there were definitely more strong sketches than not and some real gut-busters along the way.

We’re still laughing at some of Sarah’s comments to Colin.

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.

Hype Women

Devon continues to struggle to carry a sketch, though he was better in his overall performance here than earlier in the season. The biggest problem is he has no real identity of his own in these sketches, and this wasn’t it. This is also becoming a bit of a tired retread for the show, with Kenan producing in a room while people on the mic completely miss the assignment over and over and over. Once it happened the first time, we knew where the whole sketch was going so there was really no point in continuing. The comments themselves weren’t outrageous enough, and Devon’s reactions weren’t even bringing any laughs. It’s time to retire this premise.

American Girl

It didn’t quite land the final punch, but this was otherwise a very dark and funny parody of the “Barbie” trailer swapping in the somber American Girl doll line. Who needs a Barbie Dream House when you can have cholera and despair? The American Dolls being based on real eras of history means their stories are rife with tragedy and then some more tragedy. Honestly, we’d have loved to see even one scene from after their wagon ride at the end — and based on the delayed applause, we think the audience was, as well.

Nail Salon

Appropriately in the 10-to-1 slot, this bonkers sketch took a left turn when Bowen Yang revealed his Guinness World Record longest fingernails at this nail salon. It was a clever reveal, and he was clearly having a blast with the craziness of the performance. It was balanced well by how committed Ana de Armas was with her performance. She was showing off those acting chops that nabbed her an Oscar in such a ridiculous place. The random “Twilight” aside with Chloe Bennett was more than a little odd, but the whole piece itself had a strange sweetness to it.

Please Don't Destroy: Hangxiety

A fantastic premise that left us wanting to see more of an “SNL” afterparty gone off the rails. There was some fun — albeit predictable — in the boys trying to recall what happened and then showing what really happened, none of that was anywhere as strong as the general craziness going on with the cast. Heidi Gardner, Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman stole their short scenes. Ana de Armas in the flashback was pretty funny but she didn’t offer much in the present day scenes, while the ending with Mikey Day didn’t really work at all.

Monologue: Ana de Armas

Ana gave an earnest and sincere short bio of her life and it was touching and so sweet we found ourselves tearing up a bit. There wasn’t a lot of humor in it, but she warped it all up with the perfect punchline. The stories she told about her experiences in America, and Robert De Niro visiting her father in Cuba, were so sweet — honestly, sweet is about the best word we can think of to describe this whole thing. She came across absolutely charming and so … well, you know what we were going to say.

Spanish Class

Mikey Day was the perfect foil for the inevitable Spanish sketch with Ana de Armas hosting. Marcello Hernandez, obviously, joined her for this one as two new students in a Spanish language class where it quickly became clear they could out-Spanish instructor Mikey on their worst days. His reactions were hilariously awkward as only he can deliver. The ending with Karol G joining them felt like we knew it was coming — and yes, we see your “No Photoshop” t-shirt — but it was fun nevertheless. It also works as satire of American arrogance in a multilingual world with an inept Mikey teaching a language he barely has any grasp of.

Dog Acting

The latest sketch that’s more about animals not playing by the rules than any actual content, Chloe Fineman and Ana de Armas were clearly having a blast with these dogs that basically wouldn’t cooperate with anything. Did dress rehearsal go better than this? The “Lady and the Tramp” bit was a particular disaster, but we have a feeling it was funnier because of how horribly wrong it all went than it would have otherwise been. We don’t know how to feel about these sketches as they rely so much on randomness, but we have to admit we find ourselves laughing.

Lisa from Temecula: Wedding

Lisa from Temecula makes her triumphant return and this time instead of cooking her meat (though it did get a shout-out) it was “toss my salad!” She meant this literally and other than that visual variation from steak to a salad, the whole sketch was basically the same exact premise, setup, payoff and punchline as the first time around. Shift them to a wedding venue and all of the beats were there, including Bowen Yang being unable to keep it straight and Ego Nwodim never breaking character. As it was such a faithful retread, it wasn’t nearly as strong as the first time — one of the funniest sketches in recent memory — but it still had us laughing in places.

Cold Open: First Warm Day

What a quintessential New York cold open, and yet one that is also universal in many ways. Foregoing the usual political nonsense, this retread of the recent “red carpet” parodies turned out to be a lot of fun as Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang took turns interviewing the usual freaks and weirdos that show up at Central Park with the first warm day. We don’t even want to spoil all the fun characters we got to see in this one, or the fun way the “LFNY” was interrupted at the end. We love a break in protocol, creating a light-hearted playfulness we were hoping would carry through the night.

The Dome

This is the third time we’ve seen Mikey Day’s Matt Schatt character, baffling people with his smoking hot wife (Margot Robbie and J.Lo played his wife in prior sketches), but we’re not sure it’s ever been taken this far. Kenan Thompson was killing us as the game show host who could not figure it out. He even walked all the way up to the camera to talk to us, apologized because he must be having a stroke, and then the other team started buzzing in with their guesses. The fact that Ana de Armas and Mikey Day as a couple just completely derailed this sketch in the most delightful way had us cracking up from the details as to his job and physique, and the way it took over the whole game.

Weekend Update

Of course, Colin Jost and Michael Che went in pretty aggressively on the leak of classified documents on a Discord server. Che even went so far as to say that Thug Shaker Central is also what Jost calls Atlanta. We got a montage of Trump talking about how many people cry around him and we found out just who’s been stockpiling all those abortion pills in a very strong opening segment. The boys were lively and the audience was with them.

Kenan Thompson didn’t really find a new characterization for Funky Kong, it was just him doing his Kenan thing, just with extra filth. This was easily one of the raunchiest characters we’ve seen on “Update” in quite awhile, and he had Jost cracking up more than once. We’re pretty sure he ad-libbed the line about Monkey Kong based on Jost’s reaction. It was definitely a high-energy piece, and the supposed lines that saw him cut from the “Mario Bros.” film were pretty risqué — maybe we’ll get a Director’s Cut!

Props to Che for a great barb at California’s proposed alert system for Black women and children (as the one for white women and children is the news!). The segment also featured a great dig at the New York Jets and some really salty punchlines regarding the new New York “Rat Czar,” the NY Department of Sanitation’s new ad campaign, the 81-year-old world travelers and Australian police!

Yes, Sarah Sherman was way over the top as a wellness guru, but boy did she deliver the laughs. The funniest segment of the show to this point, she tore Jost apart even more than she does when she offers up “Sarah News.” His persona as a pampered, rich, racist, white blowhard always gets played to the hilt, but Sarah was ruthless in going after him. We particularly loved the lines regarding his driver, and her little ad-libbed insults along the way to the very satisfying (and brutal) punchline of the whole bit.

Molly was both completely sincere and direct in targeting states seeking to restrict or take away health care rights for trans kids by shifting focus from the “trans” part to the “kids” part. It was a nice combination of totally real commentary and then random silliness about the fact they came down on a harness from the ceiling and had a little bit of trouble up there (and with their code words).

PLAYER OF THE WEEK

A well-balanced episode makes for a touch decision here. The funniest performance of the night was Sarah Sherman’s over-the-top attack on Colin Jost, which had us cracking up. Ego Nwodim brought back one of our all-time favorite characters in Lisa from Temecula, but it wasn’t quite as funny the second time.

Bowen Yang is always good for laughs, and he was definitely milking those crazy fingernails in the closing sketch of the night, while Mikey Day was able to milk awkwardness for laughs twice — as an inept Spanish teacher and as Ana de Armas’ geeky husband in the game show sketch, but those were all performers who really got us just one time this week.

Once again, we found ourselves drawn to the most veteran member of the cast for the overall strongest night. Kenan Thompson may have had us laughing in shock as Funky Kong, he was the perfect ready-for-lunch producer and really had us laughing as the game show host trying to figure out Ana and Mikey as a couple.

“Saturday Night Live” returns May 6 with host Pete Davidson and musical guest Lil Uzi Vert.

NBC