‘Saturday Night Live’ Recap: Reese Witherspoon Hosts; Florence & The Machine Performs

Saturday Night Live this weekend featured Reese Witherspoon as the host and Florence and the Machine as the musical guest.

Saturday Night Live Recap

Cold Open: Cecily Strong in DJ mode hosted the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Saturday’s cold open. Bobby Moynihan reprised his Ted Cruz, while Beck Bennett played Mike Huckabee, Kenan Thompson played Ben Carson, and Taran Killam played Marco Rubio. While the presidential hopefuls danced, the DJ gleefully recapped their gaffes thus far.

Monologue: With Mother’s Day on Sunday, Saturday Night Live decided to celebrate the holiday last night, taking the focus off host Witherspoon and sharing it with the featured players, who brought their mothers to the show. One by one, they brought their mothers out to apologize for things they did as children. The mothers then apologized for sharing with the world snippets from their home videos.

The LA Scene: Witherspoon and Strong play co-hosts in a local LA talk show, where they interview young scenesters. Trying to be cool for the 20something sensations, they both end up embarrassing themselves. Thompson and Jay Pharoah stole the sketch as their under-qualified production assistants.

Picture Perfect: Saturday Night Live‘s latest game show sketch featured Taran Killam as its host. The show, which was similar to Pictionary, had a player on each team tasked with drawing what was on the card given to them. Unfortunately, what’s on the card is “The Prophet Muhammad,” which neither Thompson nor Moynihan are willing to draw.

Mr. Westerberg: In the pre-produced office skit, Moynihan played a boss, whose requests and reprimands are the topic of mockery among his employees. When Bennett speaks, however, his imitation of the boss is cause for concern. No one else can quite relate to what Mr. Westerberg asks of him.

Weekend Update: After Colin Jost and Michael Che ran through the week’s hot topics Leslie Jones‘ relationship expert stopped by, as did Two Girls You Wish You Hadn’t Gotten Into A Conversation With At A Party, which featured Strong and Witherspoon, and Thompson’s Willie.

High School Theater: High School Theater made a comeback this week and was dedicated to both John Lennon and Shonda Rhimes.

Waterslide: The latest sketch from Bennett and Kyle Mooney brought them to a water park. While working the waterslide, the two can’t help but ogle the lifeguard, played by Witherspoon.

Whiskers R’ We: Kate McKinnon’s recurring sketch made a comeback Saturday night with Witherspoon as her partner. Pitching one of the shelter cats, McKinnon says, ““His greatest discovery? His own butthole!” Of course, there was also the sexual innuendo between her and Witherspoon’s character.