Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | April 6, 2026
I’ve met plenty of dads who are just absolute duds. It sucks. “Girl dads” are usually pretty chill and sweet (or, at least, very quiet). Boy dads are the opposite. More often than not, they end up explaining some form of hyper-masculine way that they raise their kids, and it usually involves not holding them when they cry because they want to toughen them up or some nonsense. Seriously! That has been said to me multiple times by different, terrible men!
But, now and then, you meet another parent or spouse that you just lock in with, and it rules. Your whole night changes. It’s not always the case, but the connection is usually a result of a shared interest, even if that interest is pretty common, and it makes the whole thing feel euphoric. “You also like baseball?! No way!” You might not even remain friends, but for those sweet 45 minutes to half an hour, you make an important connection, and everything feels right.
That was certainly the case in Husbands, a new sketch from an SNL this past weekend that was hosted by Jack Black. It was a rare night when I was able to watch the whole show live and had a pretty phenomenal time. I assumed it was going to be a pretty special episode, and while Dustin was a little bit higher on it than I was (I did not care for the sketch about self-defense), I laughed pretty much the whole time, and also thought that Melissa McCarthy helped tie it up with a hilarious little bow.
Husband plays out in a pretty straightforward manner. In one room, you have Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline, and Veronika Slowikowska, happy to catch up with each other. However, they are worried because their husbands, Jack Black, Kenan Thompson, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes, and Tommy Brennan are in the other room and meeting each other for the first time. What if it goes poorly?! Luckily for all of us, it does not.
Things start awkwardly enough. There is some starting and stopping in terms of conversation. Finally, Jack Black starts singing Carry On My Wayward Son (because of course he does, and then, slowly but surely, everyone starts to join in. By the end of the sketch, the men are twirling ribbons and tearing off the top layer of their clothes to reveal rock’n’roll outfits. They’re pairing off and hitting high notes and just having the kind of time I ache for at the playground.
Dustin made this point in the other piece, but this sketch is a perfect example of why you have Jack Black host the show. It almost feels like a live look at what it might have been like at Rockefeller Center this week. It would not surprise me if, at one point late on Tuesday night, Black walked into one of the writers’ rooms, started singing this song, they all joined in, and this sketch was born. He has that kind of energy to him, and it’s super infectious.
James Austin Johnson is the surprise winner of this one for me, though. Every line delivery, from “no,” to “I got excited, and I pulled too hard,” he’s just so friggin funny. There’s also a moment where he pops up in between Dismukes and Brennan with a big ole smile on his face in one of the funniest moments of the whole sketch. The man is so often caked in makeup and trying to be someone else that I sometimes take for granted just how funny a performer he is.
The next host is going to have a lot to live up to. It’s not just that Black brought the energy, but that his oomf was returned in kind. He’s a shot of adrenaline into any situation, whether that be his fifth time returning as host, or his ability to cure the male loneliness epidemic just by getting a bunch of dudes to sing a rad song. We need more Jack Blacks in the world.
