As someone who focuses too much on Tom, I find it fascinating how Shiv and Greg contrast the type of love Tom gives. With Shiv, he’s clingy and desperate to be with her all the time. It’s kind of sweet but sets off some minor red flags.

As someone who loved Tom right from the pilot episode, and has always felt Matthew Macfadyen is remarkable as a very difficult character, I was really thrilled at his ascent up the ladder into Logan’s graces.

And incredibly enough, I can see a scenario in which Tom is 100% convinced (and tries to convince Shiv) that he was acting in their best interest. If Logan was going to cut them all out anyway, Tom has at least secured something for them by securing his own position.

Come on. We gotta shout out Alan Ruck. He is constantly benched on the show, and he plays that need for recognition so beautifully. It feels like we all undervalue his work on the show, and this episode gives him a great ending to his season arc.

Shiv wants her mommy so bad. That speech was painful. There was a wonderful parallel between Shiv’s toast and Roman coming to his father with love.

This is a solid list in my opinion based on my viewing this year. I’ve seen most of these (sorry, Squid Game, I just can’t), and the performances highlighted here have been among my favorites this year. Matthew MacFadyen should sweep the supporting categories. He might get some competition from Kieran Culkin, who was…

No one will doubt how, well, strong—Strong is in his painful moments and also against other family members (Cox and him together are most electric) but broody scene after broody scene doesn’t perk up my energy. Matthew Macfadyen on the other hand, to me, is dizzying in the ability to switch gears from high to low,…

You did a good recap job, with some valid minor criticisms. I do feel as much as I love Kate, when she was absent, I noticed a lot more sharing of roles between the main and featured cast. Thought Eilish seemed to enjoy the format and slid into the supporting player role pretty easily. Excited for Rudd next week, he…

Best line of the show: “Nothing has ever explained Fox News better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man ‘Scrooge.”

I actually liked the Santa song sketch. *shrug*

I get the feeling that, particularly with Billie and Taylor Swift, the audience was made up of mostly their fans, instead of people who just wanted to see SNL on a regular week.

I find Mikey, much like Aidy Bryant, is limited to playing more or less the same character in every sketch. He’s the straight man who explicitly states “I can’t believe this is really happening right now!”. 

I thought Kate was fine at first but the more exposure she got, and she got a lot of it, the more it underlined her limitations. I thought she was fine last night.

I enjoyed the Christmas card sketch, thought it was better than “fine”. Some nice specificity in all the pieces, e.g. mean-girl’s kid as blooming incel.

Is it me or has the audience been really excited and into it lately? I could feel the crowd’s excitement almost from the get go in last night’s episode but also previous episodes too. Since I always feel like the energy is the audience helps improve ths show, I think it’s part of the reason I’ve been enjoying this…

Best episode of the season so far. I’d say A-. Consistently good sketches throughout the night. Lonely Christmas was excellent and a great use of Kate (nice to see her return, but honestly she hasn’t been missed much). I also really liked the TikTok sketch. But my favorite piece of the night was Andrew Dismuke’s WU…

Years ago, I was moving from one crazy, dangerous neighborhood to another slightly less dangerous, yet equally crazy neighborhood, when a mentally ill homeless person randomly tried to cut me with a box cutter. Just one of those things. One second he was trudging by silently, the next he was coming at me, also silently…

Kate’s absence was refreshing.

the giggling was just a good reminder that she’s just a kid, and yes, so charming.

I absolutely adored this show and was completely won over by Eilish’s charm. It was somewhat astonishing that her giggling didn’t ruin the scenes, partially because the writers were really smart about the roles they had her do.