Saturday Night Live took its Weekend Update bench-slapper routine and kept pushing it until it got funnier. As Season 51 was about to wrap on the 2026 TV schedule, Colin Jost and Michael Che kept trolling each other with the same goofy joke built around a classic summertime game.
Jost opened by making a joke about Secretary of State Marco Rubio going to visit the pope, and Che answered the way someone would in a game of Marco Polo. Later in the segment, Jost cut into the middle of the intro to one of Che’s jokes, then kicked off a joke about Jeffrey Epstein. Che did not take the bait.
The bit worked because it kept escalating in small, sideways steps instead of landing in one clean punch line. That kind of back-and-forth has long been part of the chemistry between Che and Jost, with Jost often cast as the one taking the hit. It was also not clear whether the exchange was scripted or something the two were building on the fly, which only added to the looseness of it.
The episode also featured Jeremy Culhane appearing on Weekend Update to reprise his role as Tucker Carlson, with the segment veering into thoughts on the Met Gala. Matt Damon hosted the episode, which gave the show a familiar late-season feel even as the anchors kept turning the desk into a running prank.
What the exchange made plain is that Weekend Update still has room for a joke to grow in real time when the timing is right. In a stretch built around one-upmanship, Che’s refusal to take Jost’s Jeffrey Epstein setup was the sharpest move of all.
