Saturday Night Live
Bad Bunny & Doja Cat
October 4, 2025
It’s been a rough summer for comedy. First, Stephen Colbert gets cancelled, then the FCC guns for Jimmy Kimmel, all the while President Cankles is screaming that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are next. So you can understand why SNL might be a little concerned that FCC Weasel Brendan Carr might set his sights on them. They might be concerned, but they are apparently taking the threat head-on: they mocked President Nuerosyphillis and Pete Kegseth in the cold open, they came gunning for the administration in “Weekend Update,” and, perhaps most importantly, they brought back Puerto Rican megastar, upcoming Super Bowl Halftime performer, and MAGA trigger, Bad Bunny, to host the season premiere. It’s just unfortunate that Bad Bunny is not particularly funny, or a good actor.
But listen! I’m not putting this all on Bad Bunny, not by a long shot. The first time he hosted, the episode was a lot stronger than this. And God knows I wouldn’t be able to bring the laughs if I had to headline a live comedy show entirely in Spanish. Adding to the language barrier, and the fact that he’s a singer, not an actor, was an unevenly written episode consisting almost entirely of sketches that were one-note. Now, the thing that drew the most headlines about SNL last month was the cast departures and new additions. But the biggest change that happened was behind the scenes, in the writers’ room. Four long-time writers left the show, and seven new writers were brought on, in addition to a returning writer. Let’s hope that between everyone shaking the summer cobwebs off and the newbies learning the ropes, they get into a better groove by the time Amy Poehler hosts next week.
The cold open begins with last week’s Pete Hegseth goofy address to every general in the military, where he declared he didn’t want any more women or fatties in the military, and waited around for thunderous applause that never came. Colin Jost is Hegseth here, and he manages to capture Hegseth’s rapey frat-bro vibe, while yelling that the military is currently “gay as Hell” and is going to replace it with “just hot, shredded, hairless men who are definitely not gay.” The audience reaction is oddly tepid, though I personally thought Jost did an on-point job here.
Hegseth is then interrupted by James Austin Johnson’s Trump, who can’t stand for the attention to be on anyone else, ever. He promises to keep an eye on what SNL is up to, including especially that Marcello, and a rat-like Brendan Carr makes an appearance because we are living in totally normal, cool times where everyone knows the name of the Chairman of the FCC.
Grade: A-
Bad Bunny’s monologue was fine. The monologue is supported by a cameo by Jon Hamm — I mean, Juan Jamon; he teases his haters at Fox News; and addresses the Super Bowl Halftime show controversy, before slipping into Spanish, which, to their immense credit, SNL does not caption.
For those of you wondering, he said in English, “I’m very excited to be doing the Super Bowl, and I know that people all around the world who love my music are also happy.” He then switched to Spanish, saying, “Especially all the Latinos and Latinas across the world, and here, in the United States, all those who have worked to open doors.
“It’s more than an achievement for myself, it’s an achievement for all of us. It shows our footprint, and our contribution to this country, that no one will ever be able to take away or erase.” He then returned to English to say, “And if you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn.”
¡Qué maravilloso!
Grade: A-
And then things go … sideways. A Jeopardy! parody is usually a safe bet on this show. It’s a good way to make fun of celebrities or cultural issues — some all-time classics have relied on the Jeopardy! model. This will not go down in history as one of those classic sketches. Here, the entire joke appears to be that Bad Bunny’s character does not understand that he must phrase his answers in the form of a question. That’s it. That’s the entire joke.
Grade: C
The commercial spoof of the night is for “Chat GPTio” — an A.I. that has the personality of a middle-aged Latino uncle. It’s the first of four Marcello/Bad Bunny collaborations of the night, and possibly my favorite. When he’s paired with Marcello, Bad Bunny is visibly more comfortable and enjoying himself. (It also helps that this was a taped piece, and not a live one.)
Grade: A-
Here, Chloe Fineman and Sarah Sherman are a lesbian couple who are asking their friend, Andrew Dismukes, to be a sperm donor, only to have a stranger — Bad Bunny in a wacky wig — enthusiastically volunteer his services. Again, that’s it. That is the whole joke.
Grade: D
Bad Bunny meets some friends for brunch, and he obsesses over the Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters. He begins imagining the actual women who sing the songs in KPop Demon Hunters singing to him, and eventually they materialize in the restaurant despite Bad Bunny’s friends insisting they aren’t real.
Look. I haven’t watched KPop Demon Hunters, but I do know that it is the most-watched film on Netflix. And maybe I’m just being a grumpus, but this whole thing just feels like pandering to both KPop Demon Hunters fans, and maybe the cast and writers who wanted to meet the members of HUNTR/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami. Either way, it falls flat and goes on entirely too long. Can we get Marcello back out here, please?
Grade: C-
“Weekend Update” is back and despite my — and everyone else’s — prediction that Che and Jost wouldn’t be back … here they are. I’m not mad about it.
It’s a solid outing in an uneven episode: they take on the government shutdown, a generic abortion pill being approved by the FDA, Eric Adams dropping out of the NYC mayor race, and whatever ridiculousness that Trump did this week (praise the way Obama could walk down stairs — not even kidding).
Grade: A
New cast member Kam Patterson joins the “Weekend Update” desk, ostensibly to talk about the Sean Combs case, but once he is on camera, he demands to know when he can start using the “N-word.” This is likely in response to criticism the show received when it was announced he was joining the cast, pointing out that he uses the word and other profanity rather liberally in his stand-up. “I’m a stand-up comedian from Florida. This is what I do. Saying that word is what Jimmy Kimmel fought for.” It’s a strong first outing.
Grade: A-
Bowen is unrecognizable as Dobby the House Elf, sent to the “Weekend Update” desk by his master, J.K. Rowling, to discuss the trans issues. It’s fine, but the most notable part of it is Dobby’s wardrobe malfunction.
Grade: B
Good news: Marcello is back, and he remains through the remainder of the episode. First up, he serves as Bad Bunny’s right-hand man as a council invents Spanish and all of its quirks that make it difficult to learn, like gendering nouns, rolling one’s Rs, and rules like the formal and informal tu. As someone who took entirely too many years of Español to be this illiterate in the language, I feel this very hard. Especially the R-rolling thing. That said, this feels like a bit that would have benefited from a little more workshopping. Oh, and Benicio Del Toro makes an appearance? For some reason?
Grade: B
A student, played by Marcello, has been drawing disturbing images of his teacher. However, the teacher, played by Ashley Padilla, suddenly doesn’t find the pictures as upsetting when his hot father, Bad Bunny, arrives. How many times can I write, “That’s it. That’s the entire joke,” in one review?
Grade: C
Finally, the most interesting and unexpected bit of the night: a lovingly accurate spoof of the Mexican sitcom El Chavo del Ocho, but entirely in English.
For those of you who don’t know (read: my fellow English-speakers, specifically those of you who did not grow up in a border state), El Chavo del Ocho was a popular sitcom in the 1970s about an orphan boy, El Chavo, who lives in a low-income apartment complex. He and his friends hang out in the courtyard of the building where they interact with various adults and the slumlord, who occasionally arrives to collect the rent. All of the children are played by adults — and not SNL-aged adults. When the show began in 1973, El Chavo, an 8-year-old boy, was played by a 44-year-old man, who was well over 50 by the time the show ended.
This sketch is a beat-for-beat recreation of the show, and I have a lot of thoughts about it. First, I’m seeing a lot of Latinos on social media thrilled about this bit, being nostalgic, and feeling seen. And I think that’s a huge part of why it was included. It’s not unlike the first Sabado Gigante sketch last season, featuring Nate Bargatze, which, with the exception of Bargatze’s lines, was entirely in Spanish, and not inaccurate AT ALL regarding the Sabado Gigante‘s wackiness. As someone who grew up with Spanish TV sort of low-key in the background, I immediately got all the references and loved it. They brought the sketch back a couple of months later when Martin Short hosted (but with Paul Rudd in the Bargatze role), and they ruined it by having Marcello’s host speak some English to him, breaking the whole white-fish-out-of-water concept.
Here, they seem to be trying to thread the needle of making a bit that only some portion of the audience will immediately understand, while not alienating the rest of the audience by having it all be spoken in Spanish. And I guess the joke is, “the original series is so weird and funny, let’s highlight how weird and funny it was by doing it all in English.” I’m not sure that makes it successful as a “funny” sketch, as there is no real comedic frisson happening. It’s just El Chavo del Ocho, but in English. And maybe that’s enough? You tell me.
Oh, and Jon Hamm makes a cameo.
Grade: B
Here’s the original for comparison. As I said, it’s a note-perfect recreation.
Final Grade: B-.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.