Dueling Rallies, Y'all!
- Well, Andrew Dismukes as David Muir is a nice touch to start off with. At least they're only just referencing the debate instead of recreating it from two weeks ago.
- Nice to see Maya Rudolph but five years later I'm still left wishing the show could actually focus up its take on Kamala Harris and back off the "rebooting the funt" stuff because this vague mishmash of pop culture world salad isn't setting a great tone so far. What the hell even was that "va-Georgia" line anyway?
- Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz is...OK. They're both well aged mideastern white dads with glasses, so...whatever makes sense. Geez, I hate to think of Lorne ordering stunt cameos the way J.D. Vance orders donuts. Still, this reeks a bit too much of desperate stunt casting (seeing as he actually was gently suggested by some folks online somewhere. I mean, how far down WAS Gaffigan on Lornes' list of "white haired dudes with glasses" after Steve Martin said "nah brah I'm good?") to me, but good for Jim for finally getting a shot on SNL. Kudos to them for working in a Menards' reference in a national TV program (even if that was literally just an actual quote from the real Walz). I'm sure somewhere Mary Jo Pehl is smiling. Anyway, Gaffigan seems to actually have a hook for Walz, so that's nice. He made me feel slightly better about the inevitable Vance/Walz VP Debate we'll be seeing as next weeks' cold open (as long as a fly doesn't land in Vances' beard in the real debate or something). I giggled a bit more than I should have at "my nuts froze to the park bench," and that accidental cut back to Maya dancing in the live show.
- Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff is...a sensible choice. It's fun, and at least it's nice to see someone like Samberg make a genuine surprise cameo on the show years after we assumed he was done with it. I liked the goofy sauce Andy was putting on his line delivery. I guess Marty Short was busy, but it's still at least appropriate for an alumni sprinkled cold open, seeing as this is the 50th season premiere.
- I never thought I'd actually this but I'm actually relieved to see James Austin Johnson back as Trump considering they...y'know, rumors started swirling a couple of days ago that could've dog...er, DONE worse.
- Bowen Yang as JD Vance was...pretty much exactly what I was expecting from him when i heard the rumor his Vance impression was cut from the cold open of last seasons' finale (but I see both that and this one managed to cram in a surprise reference to Sabrina Carpenters' "Espresso". Ok). I don't have the huge problem with it that some of you guys seem to have. I mean, I can see why they would want to cast Bowen as a guy who wears that much inexplicably makeup and just expects us all to accept it unquestioningly. It's just not exactly the casting choice I would’ve made if I were Lorne.
- Dana Carveys' Joe Biden seemed...OK, if not terribly relevant at this point. Not sure we need to see "doddering old Joe" at this point again, but...hey, an unexpected alum cameo (even one who seems increasingly old and slightly doddering himself) isn't ALWAYS a bad thing necessarily.
- Carvey has shown he can do a strong Biden in the past but his impression seems to have becone less whispery and devolved into a cross between "Church Lady" "Garth" and "Massive Headwound Harry" with the cadence of "G.H.W. Bush." I guess that's just the natural result of changing his Biden to play to a live audience vs. playing to podcast listeners and cohosts in an enclosed studio. I hope it's more of that than it is just focusing more on the perceived senility than the voice.
- I just wished they shortened this and focused less on cramming every reference to "things that happened politically in the summer of 2024" that they could come up with. JAJs' Trump speech in particular felt the most like they were just running down a checklist of this whole thing.
- I'm not crazy about returning to season 45 length cold opens after they spent the last two seasons steadily moving away from that but hey...election year. Anniversary year, too. They're expecting a lot of eyes on the show. Lotta those eyes are gonna be older and wearier and be in the sockets of older viewers who may not have tuned in in decades and now only pop in for the political takes without caring how broad or character/hook based the sketches are or that they don't make many salient points. Give the people what they want to see, riiiiiiiiight?
- At least this didn't feel quite as DENSELY PACKED with either cameos or toothless slapdash also ran candidate characterizations as season 45 but when I said I wanted to see what else they could do for election cold open besides just recreating the debates that were too early forcthe show to cover, I was hoping for...not this. C-
Montage
- This may have been the highlight of the entire show...which is actually quite sad when you think about it. I like the return to a season 24/25 style theme (possibly intentionally matching the theme from a previous big anniversary season?) with visuals that seemingly mix the season 48/49 opening with the ones from seasons 3, 10/11 and 29-31 while keeping things 98% confined just to studio 8H (NBC budget cuts, amirite?) Why this leaves the season 44-49 theme stuck in my head, I don't know.
Monologue
- Normally, I like the host's monologue to keep the energy level up and a season premiere shouldn't feel this borderline sleepy (let alone the 50th), but I can let it slide this time. Jean Smart was charming and I liked the low-key Candace Bergen/Dyan Cannon season one vibes I got from this. This felt like a mashup of three different types of quiet, solo monologues you don't really get on SNL anymore.
- Overall, I found Jean to be a fine host but I felt she should've had a bigger presence throughout the show. She almost felt underused to the point of a Dick Ebersol host (and part of me wishes her first musical guest intro was not the only time we got to see her "Hacks" costar Hannah Einbinder on the show). Still, I understand Jean was feeling ill the night of the show so I could see them having had to cut down her parts a bit. B+
The $100,000 Pyramid
- Oh, look at that. A game show sketch post monologue. How novel. At least we get Devons Walkers' Michael Strahan right out the gate as the one stringing this together.
- I'd be less annoyed at SNLs' obligatory Hawk Tuah reference if it were Sarah playing Haley Welch instead of Chloe. C'mon, Sarah actually resembles Hawk Tuah Hailey more than Chloe and has proven she can do a convincing southern accent.
- Kenans' Mark Robinson was...pretty much what I expected. Can't complain much there. Marcello as Bad Bunny works but it shouldn't really be the main focal point of a sketch.
- I somehow missed the "Chimp Crazy" documentary so I had no idea who the hell that monkey wife lady Jean was playing was but it was nice to see a semi realistic monkey puppet on SNL. Somewhere, Tim Kazurinsky must be seething.
- Kudos to Emil Wakim for making his onscreen debut. Thank God this was shorter than it felt like it was about to be.
- After this I enjoyed the small, merciful break the show gave us from "catching up on all the most obvious low hanging fruit pop culture references from the beginning of summer up until last week" the show gave us. D+
Spirit Halloween
- This was fine for one of those "evergreen" sketches that probably should've been done 12 years ago. I guess they just thought "boy, Spirit Halloweens are to autumn what Starbucks was to...everywhere in America in 1998?" and decided to drag and dropped some new spooky stuff into last seasons "Penne Ala Vodka" script template.
- Nice use of all three new featured players here, even if this seemed to sadly be Jane Wicklines' only appearance all night. Good for her though for getting a role in a live sketch that was cut for time and put up on YouTube (and really ended up being funnier than most of what made it to air). C+
Scholastic Textbook Meeting
- Speaking of old sketch templates being recycled, "inappropriately horny textbook that one or two cast members get slightly too into" feels like it's been done before. I did like what Jean Smart added to this though. Just when I thought she was being underused as a host, she makes this sketch...watchable.
- Kudos to Ashley Padilla for getting some live airtime. I liked the goofily unserious ending with Jean and Kenan but if I suddenly start to think "hmm, Mikey does remind me a bit of one of my real life coworkers" something may be missing. C+
Weekend Update w/Colin Jost & Michael Che
- Update is...still at the same level it has been for the past eight years, which...isn't great. Not much stood out joke wise. Ches' still just baiting the crowd like it's all he has. That's great.
- Colin did a decent job of working in jokes about secret service emails the Trump rally hours earlier...that made me very, very sad that this is the depths that American political discourse has sunk to in 2024.
- Ches' Eric Adams jokes were fun but I feel like that Cuomo joke only got on because it was only deemed airable after Che had been sitting on it for three years.
- As for that Hitler joke...well, who didn't see that punchline coming from two towns over?
- Those Kamala/migrant, Chinese "software" and Meryl Streep at the U.N. jokes felt like they could've been written by A.I. (or whoever actually "wrote" that pilot for that "New Norm" show that had been circulating on Twitter...yeah, I refuse to call it X. Suck it, Elon). Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah....
- Thankfully, Devon Walker as Eric Adams was the true highlight. He didn't exactly make me forget about Chris Redd but it's nice to see Devon pop up every once in a while that actually suits him (even if it's a political one).
- Bowens' baby hippo seems to tick off every box on the "tired ass Bowen Update Vanity" piece checklist, so...yep, this show is officially back on it's bullshit just in time for its 50th season. I have to say though, the premise of "what if the internets' current favorite wet baby hippo was suddenly...Chappel Roan?" would've been more tolerable if they hadn't spelled out that they were doing that exact thing by the end. Maybe this was the shows way of showing Ms. Roan that they're on her side while Desparately begging her not to cancel her planned appearance on their show this November?
- Boy, it's really not great when the funniest part of a Weekend Update commentary is a hose operator purposely trying to squirt Colin Jost after he shouted at someone offscreen louder than I've ever heard him vocalize anything in his public life. I know how he feels because this entire episode sure made me feel like I just got hosed. C-
History Of The Sitcom
- Ah, a dramatic "Virginia Woolfe/Far From Heaven" like take on I Love Lucy had some promise. This may have been Jean's strongest sketch performance of the night.
- This was a nice use of Marcello (even if he played Desi Arnaz more as "himself" than Desi or Ricky) and JAJ (even if Chloe felt a little miscast as Ethel Mertz).
- Bowen didn't add a whole lot as host but I did like his 1992 communism. Still, I'd be lying if I said something didn't feel missing from this. B-
The Talk Talk Show w/Charli XCX
- Well, breaks' over. Ok, I would be far FAR less disappointed by the idea of a Charli XCX Talk Show if anyone else but BOWEN were in the lead role. Seriously, why couldn't he have switched roles with Chole? This would've worked better as a Chloe vanity piece than a Bowen one.
- Sarah as Troye Sivan was the highlight of this and might have gotten my first genuine laugh from the show so far with her first "naur"...which isn't saying much.
- I had no idea who the hell Jean was playing here but...she did an accent?
- I did like the idea of Ego as Jasmine Crockett but at that point it became clear that this sketch was not for me. That bit probably should've been cut and pasted into Update in place of Bowens' hippo commentary where it MIGHT have worked better.
- I understand Bowen, Charli, Sarah and Troye are all good friends with each other so I can buy the idea of this sketch existing as a mere inside joke that all four of them are in on (even if a large swath of the audience wasn't...and hell, that's really the only way I can even COMPREHEND this sketch existing) but all else I can say is that this sketch is "nat"...and the thought of Bowen and Sarah being at the point that Kate/Aidy, Farley/Sandler and Fallon/Sanz were in their runs where they almost exclusively did nothing but self indulgent ill advised vanity two handers together is quite depressing.
- Then again, I can't really call Bowen "self indulgent" with how exceedingly long I am making this review (not QUITE as long as my Gosling review from April, I don't think...but at this point it just FEELS pretty damn close) so I'll just close out wity this; Did I enjoy this sketch? NAUR! D-
Real Housewives Of Santa Fe
- Yeah, I wanted to like the awkward physical comedy that Dismukes (and Jean in a way) bought to this but this sketch was too busy shouting over itself to figure our what it wanted to be. Hey, at least Sarah and Ashley got some airtime.
- I did like Chloes "for profit prisons" line and Jeans' line to Heidi "that's because he thought you were a horse, bitch!"
- Speaking of Heidi, I was surprised at how this felt like her first major sketch appearance of the night. Could this be her last season? Is she secretly planning an "Irish goodbye" like Cecily? Could she end up having a final season like Chris Kattan where she is barely used?
- I guess this sketch didn't land with me because...I am not a business woman. Hell, I'm not even a woman (obviously) and "Reviews by Casey" is not a business as you're clearly not reading this behind a paywall. Don't worry, guys. I haven't seriously considered changing THAT part. C-
Overall Thoughts
- I honestly haven't felt this let down by a season premiere since season 43. I knew I should've tampered my expectations a bit more for this episode considering it's a season premiere and we're entering a big election season and all but considering the fact that this was the premiere of season 50...that was much more easier said than done.
- Yes, there was the inevitable "shaking off the rust and the cobwebs" feeling to this one as well as the less acceptable but still inevitable feeling of "we have to play catch up and sneak in a reference to everything from politics and pop culture we missed out of over the summer" but that plagued this episode even worse than usual. The highlights were there but they were small and few and far in-between.
- You would think that since the show had more things on it's big summer hit checklist this year than just "Tayvis Kelswift" and "Barbenheimer" they'd have an advantage but no...this just made the show feel to unfocused and overcrowded with scattered references for seemingly no one.
- Speaking of scattered and unfocused, cast airtime was heavily unbalanced tonight. It saddens me to see what should be an ensemble show return to its "star system" and just have Bowen Yang dominate the show with slight assists from Kenan Thompson, Chloe Troast and Marcello Hernandez leaving crumbs for everyone else. Still, Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson and Devon Walker made the most of what they got.
- The three newest hires were practically invisible, but hey, I guess that's to be expected. It's rare that a featured player makes their first big splash in their very first episode on the show. Give them time.
Closing Thoughts
- Well, for better or for worse, we have officially entered season 50 of Saturday Night Live. Still, the premiere of any television shows' 50th season should not feel like this much of a stark non-event.
- Next week, Nate Bargatze hosts for his second time. This is one I am cautiously optimistic for because Nate hosted perhaps last season's most successful episode. He has also proven that he is the type of stand up host the show could who would foster a writing environment where more unique sketch ideas could be thrown out there. See you next week!
