Kristen Wiig joins SNL’s Five-Timers Club with the help of a wave of cameos

I had a hunch we’d see a guest star or two when Kristen Wiig returned to host Saturday Night Live this weekend — but I had no idea the show was going to unleash what was possibly its biggest cameofest yet.

With this being Wiig’s fifth time hosting SNL, some kind of Five-Timers bit was always on the table for her monologue. As the Five-Timers Club has grown, SNL has turned it into a bigger and bigger thing. A host entering the club either gets a monologue filled with guest stars or a running joke about how their induction into the Five-Timers Club is missing that extravagance.

SNL found a way to do both for Wiig, poking fun at the weight people now give the Five-Timers Club while also eight celebrity cameos in the process.

As someone who is usually adverse to cameos taking over an episode, I’m surprisingly OK with how Wiig’s monologue went. The cameos had a point. They had a purpose. It wasn’t like Wiig and Maya Rudolph hijacking Kate McKinnon’s episode less than four months ago. (It was weird to have Wiig back so soon after she had just played a major role in a recent episode.)

It’s hard to go wrong with Wiig hosting. She’s an SNL legend for a reason, able to effortlessly slip back into the show. I expected to see more of her recurring characters, but we wound up getting only Aunt Linda during Weekend Update. (There was a Target commercial featuring Wiig’s Target Lady right before the episode started. Does that count as getting a recurring character?)

COLD OPEN

TBS March Madness

Before the episode could let loose the cameos of Wiig, the cold open tackled March Madness, specifically the women’s tournament. Reprising their roles as basketball analysts, James Austin Johnson, Devon Walker and Kenan Thompson admitted to not watching the men’s tournament and instead being obsessed with what was going on the women’s side.

• Mulkey madness: One cameo SNL “fans” didn’t get? Amy Poehler as LSU coach Kim Mulkey. I’ll never understand the desire to see non-SNL cast members in buzzy SNL roles. (Just say you like seeing people you recognize from TV and movies play other people you recognize!) Thankfully we got Heidi Gardner in this role.

THE MONOLOGUE

This is the part of this week’s SNL that everyone is talking about. As Wiig entered the Five-Timers Club, she was welcomed in by eight guest stars — with the joke being that none of them, except Paul Rudd, were actually members of the show’s prestigious Five-Timers Club.

“Lorne said the first time I hosted was so good, it counted for three,” Matt Damon told Wiig as he justified his admission into the club.