Deep SNL Thoughts: Ana de Armas delivers with an ‘American Girls’ trailer and the return of Lisa from Temecula

No hanxiety here. The first-time host continued a stellar run of ‘SNL’ episodes.

Ana de Armas and Ego Nwodim during this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live. / NBC

This season of Saturday Night Live is unstoppable. Bolstered by a handful of freshman castmembers and an impressive string of hosts, the show has found new life. Ana de Armas gave us the latest fantastic episode in a string of great episodes that now stretches back into 2022.

What’s been most impressive about this season is how effortless the cast has made it seem. They’re all clicking. There are relatively few dud sketches. And the show may have found its first real recurring character in a long time.

This is what SNL can be when the pressure to deliver celebrity cameos and the weight of Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump is gone.

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First Warm Day of the Year Red Carpet

Speaking of Trump, SNL skipped politics this week (with the usual exception of Weekend Update). James Austin Johnson didn’t portray Trump or Joe Biden. The show continues to opt out of the Ron DeSantis pudding fingers saga.

Instead, this episode kicked off with a very New York City-centric sketch, rolling out a series of bizarre characters taking to Central Park on the first warm day of the year. An older man doing an aggressive power walk, a rich woman who lost her son, several varieties of perverts.

This one was pretty similar to the Halloween red carpet sketch SNL did last October.