There’s a lot to be done in the show’s 50th season Saturday evening Live: a series of retrospectives, a major anniversary special in February, and some beloved cast members and former hosts returning for new appearances, both as hosts and in cameos. The latter, of course, happens pretty much every season, increasingly so as the show accumulates a larger index of both, and so far it seems like season 50 will be pretty typical in that regard. Although the host lineup includes just one alumni, with John Mulaney scheduled to appear in a few weeks, the political cold open of the season premiere crammed in no fewer than three former cast members, plus a bonus Jim Gaffigan.

The season also looks typical in other respects. A few years ago, there were rumors that Lorne Michaels wanted the then-cast to stick around at least through season 50 and/or hoped to parlay that fame into some sort of quasi-all-star season. Instead, performers continued to cycle in and out as usual — including Chloe Troast, who was unceremoniously (and foolishly!) fired this summer after a promising freshman season — and the only real ongoing cast-related legacy for this season is already known: the ongoing record-setting series by Kenan Thompson as the leading actor and the duo Colin Jost and Michael Che, who overstayed their welcome at the Weekend Update desk. (Jost is yet another contributor who semi-recently made noise about his departure; he casually speculated in his 2020 memoir that he probably has another season or so left in him. This is his fifth season since that publication.) It’s not once likely that it will be the last season for Michaels, who once said he would hang it up after season 50 and recently walked back that idea. He is now free to bask in the glow of his factual biopic Saturday eveningis now playing in select cities before expanding in the coming weeks, without feeling like he’s watching his own retirement party.

None of this should be particularly surprising. There were no major format shifts or cast overhauls to celebrate the 15th, 25th, or 40th seasons (the other rounds that warranted anniversary specials). But there will always be viewers hungry for a less disciplined, less formula SNL. People who, in other words, are always waiting for the second episode of that unpredictable free-for-all promised by the first episode, so imaginatively dramatized in the new film: a show with multiple musical guests, stand-up segments, short films, super short skits, puppetry, unannounced cast changes and no less than three or four commercial parodies in one episode. The season 50 premiere emphatically wasn’t, never would be and doesn’t need to be. Within the show’s history, however, it was arguably semi-retrospective in that it lacked many recent features (music videos, Please Don’t Destroy/Digital Short pieces, other pre-tapes), including only one traditional spoof. advertisement filmed piece. The rest of the skits consisted of familiar stuff, like game show parodies, talk show parodies, and low-hanging fruit political pieces.


And look, folks, there was a small class reunion comeuppance attached to that 15-minute barely satirical political cold open, even though it took up almost a quarter of the episode’s actual airtime. No, Gaffigan doesn’t have any special relationship with the show to warrant his presence, but he undeniably has the right energy to play VP candidate Tim Walz. And Maya Rudoloh’s Kamala Harris was a foregone conclusion, and she controls the voice. Andy Samberg as Harris’ lovable dorky husband Doug Emhoff was more of a gimmick, but it’s not like he took away a plum role from a regular. And Joe Biden seems to have become such a burden of an impression (not to mention a lame duck) that it’s hard to imagine anyone who would mind Dana Carvey stepping in to get a little of his old to work “find a few vocal hooks to jerk time and time again” magic.

Even I, someone who held Carvey in considerably higher regard as a 12-year-old viewer than as a (redacted) viewer, laughed out loud the first time he delivered his own “guess who?” interrupted perfectly. with “and by the way.” (It’s actually the “and” that sells it.) It’s not biting or insightful at all, it’s simply selling the “Biden is old” joke with a little more finesse than the various comics who have attempted it in the past . (Has Biden passed George W. Bush to become the president whose impressionist has been changed the most times?) But I guess this now counts as retro charm, which in turn felt really surprising in the context of the cold open. . So often, this is a dreary parade of guest stars trudging through a week, a month, or, in this case, a summer of impossible catch-up. Is this how people who love endless cameos feel all the time?!

Anyway, the rest of the episode had less charm or surprise. This wasn’t a pleasantly unceremonious 50th season opener that only viewers bitter about the show’s established format wouldn’t enjoy. It was a really disappointing episode. You can’t blame host Jean Smart, even if her timing and map reading fell off the pace a few times; it’s not like there’s a huge reputation or apparent ego looming over the proceedings. In fact, she was a refreshing choice for a kickoff presenter: an accomplished, well-known actor whose career stretches back almost as far as Saturday evening live himself who has found new recognition as the star of Hackinga show about comedy, no less!

Given all that, the premiere had all the hallmarks of a relatively quiet, uneven but largely solid, no-frills episode, except for the actual laughs. In that sense, season 50 is at a high point SNL start.

So let’s dig into it further.

What was going on

Of the five actual sketches and one pre-tape, only the Spirit Halloween ad really deserves a spot here. It’s not exactly packed with revelations, but the framing of Spirit Halloween, which boasts about bringing economically devastated communities together, was good.



I’ll also give a pity shout out to that last sketch of the night about the Real Housewives of Santa Fe, even (or especially?!) if the whole joke was just Andrew Dismukes getting increasingly upset at the lack of a place to place several trays of piping hot fajitas. It probably needed more physical comedy to work, or at least a raw reaction from the audience that they may have expected but didn’t get, but I will say this: I liked it more than the audience did. Any sketch where Dismukes yells at Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, and Chloe Fineman will work at least moderately well for me.

What was out

Yes. Let’s move past the post-summer “Pyramid of $100,000” jokes (was the chimpanzee puppet funny at least?) and talk about Smart’s two big showcase sketches, which shared a strange problem. In one, she played a novelist charged with writing a math book, whose word problems were therefore inappropriate and ultimately nonsensical. In another, she played a more serious dramatic actor who was originally misrepresented I love Lucy. The premise is more or less the same: someone who approaches a well-known job ‘wrong’. And in both cases, the explanation feels more sweaty and wobbly than it needs to be. I’m not a comedy writer, so I certainly won’t try to figure out how these premise could have been explained more quickly, more concisely, or more convincingly. But it seems especially important to get there faster and easier if your central performer has lately been more of a character actor than a skilled sketched comedian. It was difficult for both sketches to recover with escalation, although “Textbook Writer” made a decent effort by making the author’s romantic prose crazier and its mathematical content even more questionable as it progressed. But in the end, it’s still just a draft where people read word problems, and the subsequent draft is done Lucy sketch looks worse because it doesn’t even reach those heights.



Most Valuable Player (who may or may not be ready for prime time)

This may sound lazy, but I think it has to be Kenan this week, if only for the number of laughs he got in sketches that mostly didn’t work, namely the $100,000 pyramid and the novelist bits. I will say that Devon Walker showed more energy in the game show sketch and in his Weekend Update appearance than he did during much of last season. He made an endearingly dim Eric Adams, but as a New Yorker it’s hard not to remember that Chris Redd captured the essence of the man more accurately when he impersonated him in 2022.

Next time

Nate Bargatze attempts a Mulaney-speed turnaround by hosting twice in less than 12 months!

Stray observations

• • Hello, I’m Jesse, and I’ll be your SNL summary of this season. I usually write about movies here The AV club. But I looked SNL I often enjoy it more than anything on TV for over three decades at this point, and I have experience loving so-called popular thingYet many people think they are very stupid. I hope to honorably take up the mantle of the great Dennis Perkins!
• • Where the hell was…? Here’s the part of the recap where I ask where the heck a certain cast member was. Where the hell was Sarah Sherman?
• • Actually, here’s an answer: She played Troye Sivan after she was famously(?) chased by the Troye Sivan Sleep Demon last year. She may be the first SNL cast member to play both the regular version of a celebrity and the victim of that celebrity’s sleep demon.
• • Former and future Sarah Squirm was also spotted driving a bus in the new opening credits? No joke, that might have been my favorite part of the episode. Chloe Fineman may not have had much to do in the episode other than play Hawk Tuah, but I saw it Megapolis tonight and then saw her dancing on the subway in the new opening credits, so it felt like a real Chloe Fineman night anyway.
• • Between baby hippo Moo Deng’s merger with Chappell Roan’s fate and hosting a talk show as Charli XCX, this has been a big week for Bowen’s pop fandom. The Moo Deng/Chappell mash-up made me laugh in an otherwise routine Weekend Update. I’m not completely sold on his Charli XCX, though. Yang is hilarious, but his impressions are especially funny because you can hear his own voice commentary about whoever he’s nominally imitating, and I think in this case I’d rather see someone actually imitate Charli..
• • As far as Jelly Roll’s music goes, I really like Charli XCX. (Actually, he was fine. He’s just not really my thing.)