Colin Jost and Michael Che are brave, brave men. After it was unceremoniously cut for time last year, Weekend Update’s annual joke swap is back on Saturday Night Live—but after this weekend, its participant’s jobs may not be. Okay, we’re kidding; this was clearly all in good fun.
Jost introduces the point of the bit—that he and his co-anchor will be reading jokes written by the other, sight unseen—right at the outset. Still, it takes real trust to leave your voice (and any particularly unflattering screenshots) up to someone else’s whims, and Jost and Che certainly didn’t hold back.
Before the jokes even start, Che had a surprise in store for his co-host in the form of a woman named Hattie Davis who he introduces as a “poet, author, and activist.” Hattie’s main job was to sit in the corner shaking her head in disapproval as Jost choked his way through jokes like “If you ask me, I can think of at least one dodo I’d like to reintroduce to Africa” (as a photo of Barack Obama flashed across the screen) and “If you ask me, you’re an even better black widow than Coretta Scott King,” in reference to his wife, Scarlett Johansson.
But this certainly wasn’t a one-sided affront from Che. Jost had some brutal lines in his arsenal for his co-anchor to read as well. “MJ: The Musical, about the life of Michael Jackson, has become one of the highest-grossing shows on Broadway, and my review of the acting is the same as my opinion of MJ’s trial: Michael is amazing, but the kids are not believable at all,” Che sputtered out, along with, “I want to say from the bottom of my heart, whether you’re Jewish or Muslim, y’all need Jesus.”
So if you’re fighting with your family at Christmas dinner this year, let this be a bit of a salve: at least you get to write your own comebacks.