Elon Musk Was the Highest-Rated ‘SNL’ Host for Three Years Before Last Weekend

Until Ariana Grande hosted this past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live, controversial Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk was the show’s highest-rated celebrity guest over the last three-plus years — but I’m sure he’ll change the algorithm to put himself back on top soon enough.

With her well-received performances as Celine Dion, a film noir femme fatale and a Renaissance-era castrato, the Wicked actress and pop superstar overcame technical difficulties this past Saturday night to deliver one of the most inspired and entertaining episodes of SNL in recent memory. However, and as every trashy reality TV show continues to prove, getting great Nielsen ratings isn’t necessarily about quality, and the 5.6 million viewers Grande attracted could be replicated with as many rubberneckers gawking at what they hoped would be the comedy equivalent of a 93-minute car accident — which is exactly how Lorne Michaels achieved the previous high water mark when Musk hosted the show on May 8, 2021.

While fans and critics have praised the multi-hyphenate Grande’s ratings-boosting performance this past Saturday night, the previous high score holder’s SNL episode is cited as one of the most embarrassing nights in the show’s recent history, achieving its popularity largely through negative attention. Basically, Musk might as well be Grande’s Wario:

Beyond the sheer novelty of the world-famous, terminally online billionaire hosting the most popular sketch comedy show on television, some of the massive attention paid to Musk’s SNL episode came because it was the first-ever show that SNL live-streamed, with viewers in over 100 countries watching the performance via YouTube. However, any Musk stans hoping to see their favorite epic bacon billionaire bring the house down with his incredible wit were disappointed to find that Musk’s comedic talents are somewhat limited when he can’t get laughs just by stealing other people's memes. 

As the show’s cast and writers spent all night fawning over the tech giant, his electric cars and his love of Dogecoin, both critics and SNL fans were disappointed to find that the show on May 8, 2021 was worse than bad — it was boring. Musk’s bland delivery and limited range wasn’t even in so-bad-it’s-good territory, as the many hate-watchers hoped it would be, and most of the other sketches featuring the controversial technocrat besides the infamous “Wario” scene basically played like bad infomercials rather than glorious, inadvertent cringe comedy of the above skit.

But, ultimately, Michaels’ stunt-casting worked, and it took four seasons for another host to match Musk’s numbers. Considering that annoying, uncharismatic but inexplicably popular hosts do better in the ratings than all but the most talented and in-demand A-list performers, don’t be surprised when Michaels one-ups last weekend’s show by booking the Costco Guys to host alongside their musical guest, the Hawk Tuah Girl.