As the last show of 2021, it would’ve marked the end of a full year of uninterrupted programming, after the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 led to canceled episodes and remote sketches.
Only hours before the show was set to air, amid the rise of the coronavirus’s highly contagious Omicron variant, the show announced that, “out of an abundance of caution,” there would be no live audience and the episode would be handled by a limited cast and crew.
Tom Hanks—who’d been slated to appear as one of the guest stars in the Five-Timers Club sketch—introduced the show, confirming in his reliably reassuring tone that the cast and crew had been sent home, save for a handful of people.
Given the bare-bones camera crew and band, the show felt loose and intimate at times, like staying in the classroom too long after the final bell of the day.
Rudd, as game as he was to continue to “host,” sounded drained by the time he introduced an old sketch that featured him as an intense adult One Direction fan, which had nothing to do with the night’s Christmas theme.
As chipper as Rudd and the cast tried to be, the truth is that contending with a new threat in a pandemic that has lasted almost two years has dealt a psychological blow unlike what has come before.
SNL will be back before long, and the perfect storm of issues that led to a night in which no one uttered the words live from New York is unlikely to occur again.
Here was SNL putting forth its oddest episode in history and transparently stating its pandemic-induced reasons, while the commercials that aired during its time slot encouraged viewers to go back to theaters and celebrate the holidays with family and friends.