Saturday Night Live
Jalen Brunson & Katseye
September 26, 2026
The thing is, it’s not Jalen Brunson’s fault. The man is a star; a great NBA player who gave his city a championship three decades in the making. And so I’m not in the least bit surprised that the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live wanted to meet him work with him — so much so that they pushed up the season premiere to accommodate his schedule.
But the bottom line is, Jalen Brunson is a professional athlete. And if you’re a professional athlete, unless your last name is “Manning,” you’re not going to be great at reading lines, doing comedy, or acting. That’s not part of your job description, and no one expects it to be! And yet, every couple of years, Saturday Night Live has a bout of amnesia and thinks, “Yeah, but what if [Famous Athlete] could act and/or be funny?” And here we are again.
You gave it a shot, Jalen. But maybe stick to the court.
Rami Youssef is back to portray New York City’s beloved and yet somehow controversial mayor, Zohran Mamdani, faced with hosting a besotted President Schmuck once again. There’s nothing really new here: President Oleaginous improbably fawns over Mamdani, calling him “Mamdreamy,” while Mamdani does his best to get away. They did introduce new White House weirdo, Natalie Harp, the Creep-in-Chief’s pathologically obsessed aide as being literally the chick from Obsessed. While the Harp impersonation was inevitable, Jimmy Kimmel’s wife was considerably better.
Grade: B-
Jalen Brunson, the current King of New York City for bringing home the NBA championship for the Knicks, is clearly nervous and out of his element. As I noted earlier, he’s an athlete, not an actor or comedian, and his nerves are showing throughout this monologue. He stumbles over his lines and seems to be noticeably shaking until he takes questions “from the audience,” notably his teammates, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Josh Hart. When the other Knicks show up, they bring a goofier energy, and Brunson seems to relax a little. I don’t want to grade him too harshly — it’s not his fault he’s not a performer — but this was also Not Good.
Grade: C+
In his first sketch, Brunson is an office worker who can’t manage to throw a piece of trash into the trash can, no matter how many times he tries. See, it’s funny because it’s Jalen Brunson, who is a professional basketball player who recently won the NBA Championship.
On the one hand, Brunson clearly relaxes in the middle of this sketch; his nerves seem to settle as he becomes more comfortable. On the other hand, did SNL hire 10-year-olds to write this sketch? Did they use ChatGPT?
Grade: C+
The first digital sketch of the night introduces us to the newest cast members, Grace Reiter and Saidah Belo-Osagie, though really it serves as a showpiece for Reiter. Making use of musical guests KATSEYE, this pretape imagines the second season of the reality series where KATSEYE got their start, Dream Academy. However, amongst the pretty teenagers trying out for their shot at pop stardom are two weirdos, Reiter and Jane Wickline, who landed spots after witnessing a music executive commit a hit-and-run. Very funny, Reiter is a great pairing with Wickline. Let’s hope they find more for Belo-Osagie to do soon.
Grade: A-
It’s a men’s support group who commiserate about their wives and girlfriends going on stage during the Chris Brown/Usher concert. Come for the thinly-veiled misogyny, stay for the thinly-veiled misogyny.
Grade: C+
The second pretape piece also plays on Brunson’s basketball skills in what feels like an obvious way, but is much funnier and more successful than the first sketch. Here, Brunson is the new kid in a High School Musical -style school, where Jeremy Culhane’s team captain sings at him about being a team player, only to have a stone-faced Brunson slap him in the face repeatedly with the basketball. While it’s predictable, it is also far and away the best use of Brunson all night.
Grade: A-
Here, Mikey Day and Brunson are two dudes in airport massage chairs, moaning orgasmically to the discomfort of other passengers around them. It’s a one-joke bit — if you can even call it a joke — and mostly seems to be kept in the show because Brunson is struggling to not break while Day gets directly in his face.
Grade: C
“Weekend Update” is back to talk about President Embarrassment’s state visit with China’s Xi Jinping; Netanyahu’s disastrous speech at the UN, Pete Hegseth’s casual use of a slur, and Meta’s new AI tamagotchi. Paramount+ also manages to catch a stray in there. Also, it’s Jost’s 250th episode!
Grade: A-
Jane Wickline visits the “Weekend Update” desk as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, begging someone, anyone, to stop him from destroying humanity.
Grade: A
And Culhane is back with his note-perfect Tucker Carlson, here to discuss summer’s biggest blockbuster movies.
Grade: A+
And then it’s the back half of the episode, where the weakest sketches go to die. First up: Ashley Padilla is a mother at a parent-teacher conference where she introduces the menagerie of men she is currently sleeping with. See, it’s funny because she has multiple sexual partners and can’t shut up about it.
Grade: C
On this episode of Shark Tank, Culhane and Ben Marshall are inventors of “feminist” glasses armed with an alarm that goes off every time they look at a woman’s breasts. The joke is they can’t get through their pitch because the alarm keeps going off. Obvious and juvenile.
Grade: C-
The final sketch of the night features Brunson playing himself, dealing with a man claiming to be his childhood coach who is looking for some cash money. Not as offensive as some of the earlier bits, but not good, either.
Grade: C+
Cut for time: Brunson plays a rapper justifying his entourage’s salaries to his accountant. The entire cast, including the newbies, get a bit, and it’s easily the best live sketch of the night. Too bad it didn’t make the show.
Final Grade: B-. Once again, Weekend Update and the pretapes save the day.
Saturday Night Live airs at 10:30/11:30 p.m. Saturdays on NBC and streams on Peacock.