Saturday Night Live
Jean Smart and Jelly Roll
September 28, 2024
Welcome to the historic 50th season of Saturday Night Live — historic not because it’s the longest-running show of all time or anything, but mostly because 50 is a nice round number.
And in keeping with the historic nature of the season, our premiere episode maintained the honored tradition of being underwhelming and failing to live up to expectations following a long summer hiatus. For the most part, the premiere’s sketches were lazy, obvious, and overly long, but what else is new? The show’s been on the air for 50 years, they’re not going to change the formula now.
But you can’t blame the host, all-around acting phenomenon Jean Smart, who elevates everything she is in. When Smart was given material that was clearly written with her in mind, she lived up to the task, and even made dumb conceits entertaining. However, when plopped down in the middle of a bit that has her playing a generic Real Housewife or some party promoter neither she nor the audience has ever heard of, not even Smart can save the day. Smart deserved better and more consistent writing — let’s hope the writers shake the cobwebs off in time for Nate Bargatze’s episode on Saturday.
It’s also an election year — an exceptionally weird election year — so obviously the season’s first cold open is going to be a political one, and obviously Maya Rudolph is back to play Kamala Harris. Her Kamala isn’t much different from her previous version from the 2020 election season, though as the actual candidate, she has a lot more to say this time.
Less obvious was who would play her running mate, Tim Walz, but SNL landed on the perfect comedian: Jim Gaffigan. Gaffigan captures that gee-shucks, Midwest dad vibe because he literally is that gee-shucks Midwest dad.
Unexpectedly, SNL also brought back some SNL alums to play a couple of other roles: Andy Samberg to play Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff, and Dana Carvey to play Joe Biden. And honestly, Carvey’s Biden is so good, the question is why hasn’t he played him before this? (And the answer, I suspect, is that as soon as Biden was elected President, they wanted to give the role to one of the cast members, someone who could play him regularly. Now that Biden is out of the election, it’s easy enough to bring Carvey in once or twice before November to play the role, without it feeling like a slight to the current cast.)
The sketch also pokes fun of the Republicans, with James Austin Johnson returning with his excellent Former Sundowner-in-Chief and Bowen Yang as that weirdo, JD Vance. Yang is a surprising choice, but he holds his own. And you just know that Vance is seething at being portrayed by a gay Asian man.
The entire sketch goes on too long and there’s nothing exactly new revealed here (though the bit where they take the protective glass away when Vance takes the stage is pretty good), but that’s just another way to say that it’s an SNL political sketch.
Grade: B+
Jean Smart’s monologue is an inoffensive but unfunny bit where she talks about her relationship to New York and makes a few soft jokes. It’s unmemorable.
Grade: B-
The game show spoof of the night is $100,000 Pyramid, Celebrity Edition, which could have been funny, but instead just feels like a lazy way of cramming a few of-the-moment “celebrities” onto the stage at once: The Hawk Tuah girl; the Chimp Crazy lady; Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina; and, for some reason, Bad Bunny. The bit is full of obvious jokes at Robinson’s expense in particular, and the whole thing feels like it might have been written by AI and edited by a first-year SNL writer.
Grade: B-
The commercial spoof of the night feels like an ad that might have run during the height of the pandemic, with the advertiser expressing solidarity with the audience who is going through economic hardship … before being revealed it’s an ad for Spirit Halloween, preying on vulnerable communities with shut-down K-Marts and offering six-week jobs to some of “America’s hardest hit perverts.” Spirit Halloween has been the easy butt of many an internet joke but this is an excellent take.
Grade: A+
Here, a textbook publisher sits down with the author they hired to write a math textbook to go over some edits — except she’s a romance writer, so the textbook is math porn. But hey! The scores are through the roof! I didn’t hate this: it was clearly written for Jean Smart, she pulled it off. Was it great? Absolutely not, but Smart’s having a good time, and she makes it work.
Grade: B
“Weekend Update” isn’t too worried about the political news they missed over the summer, because there’s plenty of time for insane shit to happen between now and November — for instance, Former President Mental Acuity out there just that afternoon calling Kamala Harris “mentally disabled.” WHEW, IT IS GOING TO BE A LONG 5 WEEKS OR HOWEVER LONG.
Grade: A
Devon Walker is New York Mayor Eric Adams, here at the “Weekend Update” desk to tell his side of the story and insist that he and Che are tight. They are not.
Grade: B-
Bowen Yang is back with another of his unexpected impersonations: this time, Moo Deng, the adorable pygmy hippo that has taken over the internet. Moo Deng spends her time at the Weekend Update desk demanding that people respect her boundaries, defending Chappell Roan (and, yes, that was Yang’s intention) and being hosed down.
Bring on Pesto the giant baby penguin next.
Grade: A-
OK, so what if the star of I Love Lucy wasn’t comedic genius Lucille Ball, but instead a mean, drunk, dramatic actress who spent all of her time raging at Desi Arnez and accused him of being gay?
Again, this was clearly written specifically for Jean Smart — which I genuinely appreciate — and she does not leave a crumb.
Grade: A+
In what has clearly become the Bowen Yang Show, here, he portrays pop star of the summer Charli XCX as she hosts her own talk show with guests like Kaitlin Collins, Susanne Bartsch, and Jasmine Crockett. Charli XCX explains what “brat” is with examples, but the best bit of the sketch is Texas’ own Crockett going full “mean girl” on JD Vance, Matt Gaetz, and gerrymandering. It’s not good — poor Jean Smart looks decidedly uncomfortable in her role as Bartsch. Frankly, they should have just had Jasmine Crockett come to the “Weekend Update” desk and deliver her insults in a longer bit.
Grade: B-
The final bit of the night is baffling to me. It’s a spoof of the Real Housewives series, this time set in Santa Fe. For those of you unversed in the Real Housewife universe, there is no Real Housewives of Santa Fe, so this sketch is not actually referencing anything specific. Instead, it’s making fun of the Real Housewives generically. Here, the women are at a Mexican restaurant arguing about perceived slights, and the entire joke is that while they are yelling at one another, waiter Andrew Dismukes is attempting to deliver fizzling fajitas to the table. That’s it. That’s the entire sketch and the entirety of the joke itself.
And here’s what is especially baffling: this sketch runs 3 minutes and 41 seconds. Below you will find two sketches cut for time, the first of which also features Andrew Dismukes, runs 3 minutes and 38 seconds and is actually kinda funny — much funnier than this. Who made the decision here? Because I assure you it’s the wrong one.
Grade: C
CUT FOR TIME:
Andrew Dismukes plays a father who, as promised, shows up to his son’s baseball game, but he has some news.
Finally, also cut for time is “Blonde Dragon People,” a spoof of House of the Dragon and all of its identical names, confusing plot lines, and lack of resolution. It’s not wrong, it’s just that it doesn’t take 6+ minutes to get the point across.
I don’t have anything to say about Jelly Roll’s performances — I’m just glad that Jean Smart’s Hacks‘ co-star, Hannah Einbinder, was there to introduce him with Smart. And SNL 50th season bonus: Einbinder is the daughter of original cast member, Lorraine Newman:
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Final Grade: B.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.