Jake Gyllenhaal Makes A Case For Character Actors In His Best ‘SNL’ Sketch

The Big Picture

Jake Gyllenhaal brought the weird to
SNL
with hilarious sketches, including a bloody
Scooby-Doo
parody.
Gyllenhaal sang about beautiful boys and played the worst person on a bike trail in comedic sketches.
The episode had non-stop fun without any momentum-breaking moments, making it a standout night on
SNL
for the Season 49 finale.

Jake Gyllenhaal is back hosting Saturday Night Live! The actor, who hosted for the third time and closed out Season 49 of the show, did a really great job of bringing the right level of weirdness to his sketches. There was plenty to love, with one sketch even including musical guest Sabrina Carpenter in it. But for the first time in a while, the episode as a whole just felt like a lot of fun the entire time without any one sketch stopping the momentum. Whether it is Gyllenhaal singing a song about beautiful boys or a sketch where they spoof everyone’s favorite Mystery Gang with a gory and unexpected twist this episode was utterly bizarre in the best of ways. But even when there is a good episode, there are some sketches that stand out above the rest so here are the best sketches of the night!

‘SNL’ Gives ‘Scooby-Doo’ the ‘Scary Movie’ Treatment

What’s better than the Mystery Gang? One that includes Gyllenhaal as Fred, Carpenter as Daphne, and Scooby-Doo…with a gun? One of the best sketches in recent SNL history was a digital short that had the gang solving a classic haunted house mystery of a ghost. Things go haywire though when they think the villain they found has ANOTHER mask on, they realize he….just has one face and Fred rips his skin off. It’s bloody, gross, and hilarious and weirdly makes us miss Mystery Inc. Who knew we needed a Scary Movie version of Scooby-Doo?

Meet Jake Gyllenhaal’s Beautiful Boys on ‘SNL’

A husband (Kenan Thompson) and a wife (Heidi Gardner) go to a cabaret show and though they’re excited by the women who come out dressed up in burlesque-like outfits, they quickly realize that the emcee (Gyllenhaal) has a different show in mind for the evening. After the emcee sings about the beautiful girls, and they leave the stage, he introduces the next act: The beautiful boys! Singing a song that includes lyrics like “If you could have your pick, choose the one with the biggest heart,” Gyllenhaal continues to make jokes that should rhyme with male genitalia but then quickly changes to something else entirely.

Jake Gyllenhaal Is the Worst Person on the Bike Trail on ‘SNL’

When a couple is trying to break up on a hike together, Gyllenhaal decides that his very slow uphill bike ride is more important. When Mikey Day‘s character gets a new job, that means he needs to move spelling the end of his relationship with Chloe Fineman‘s character. They’re trying to have this conversation on a hill and every time they start to make moves in their relationship, a man on a bike comes through telling them to move to their left when he is not even close to them. As they one-up the bit, Bowen Yang comes in to make sure that he and Gyllenhaal are two of the worst people you ever run into on the trail.

Jake Gyllenhaal Makes a Case for Character Actors on ‘SNL’

Character actors are being targeted in New York City and the police department — at least the fictional one on SNL — is tired of it. Steve Buscemi was recently assaulted while in New York in Kips Bay and the internet was rightfully upset over another beloved actor getting hurt while just walking around. This was not the first time it happened, both Rick Moranis and Michael Stuhlbarg experienced the same. In this sketch, Gyllenhaal plays the NYPD Chief and he’s here to make sure character actors are protected. Poking fun at a number of character actors and our love for them, the press conference even has Jon Hamm wondering if he was safe from the attacks.

The full episode of Saturday Night Live is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.