My SNL Reviews are back, baby!!! I decided that my mental state has recovered enough for me to want to continue.
So, what are we waiting for? Let’s do the time warp again!!!
Today’s Retro Decimator Quote is...
"My favorite female cast member just continues to get better. I’m really eager to see what she does going forward." (from my Season 47 overview, 2022)
This was in regards to Ego Nwodim's stellar year she had in Season 47. Little did I know that the following season would go on to be her worst one...
Cold Open
Pete Hegseth’s address is interrupted by President Trump
• A text crawl…is it too late for me to retire my reviews again?
• On the plus side, I love how the first person we see is one of the new cast members!
• Sadly, he’s only there to introduce the real focus of this sketch, Pete Hegseth, played by Colin for some reason.
• For the record, this is Colin’s 13th season on the show. This is absolutely unbelievable. When I started watching regularly, he was only in his 5th. He outstayed his welcome long ago, and I don’t know why SNL hasn’t realized that yet.
• I don’t know how accurate Colin’s “impression” of Hegseth is, but knowing him, it’s probably not.
• *sigh* Another one of those routines where Trump interrupts a sketch to talk about himself. Why do they keep going back to this format????
• If you’re wondering whether or not he’s gotten any funnier since my last review…don’t worry, he hasn’t.
• I don’t see the point in discussing this any further when it’s exactly the same as every other time they’ve done this but. Moving on…
Note: We have several new cast members this season, most of whom I have never heard of. The newbies are Jeremy Culhane (who we just saw in the cold open), Kam Patterson, Tommy Brennan, Veronika Slowikowska (what a mouthful), and our old friend Ben Marshall from Please Don't Destroy, who have unfortunately broken up (although Martin Herlihy will still be contributing solo films).
The intro is also the same as last year, but obviously with the newbies added and Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker, and Emil Wakim removed.
Monologue
Bad Bunny talks about unimportant stuff before auditioning for characters he’d like to play.
• As I write this, Bad Bunny has just come off of the worst Super Bowl performance known to man, rivaling the already shitty Black Eyed Peas performance from like 15 years ago. With this added knowledge, I’m sure I’m going to hate his performance in this episode even more.
• Those videos of him dancing aren’t funny in the slightest and are only there to make his stans in the audience wet themselves.
• Pointless cameo from Jon Hamm in one of the videos.
• That line at the end where he tells us to learn his language so we can appreciate his Super Bowl performance is so Goddamn smug and arrogant that I can’t believe nobody in the audience booed him.
Sketch: Jeopardy!
A contestant fails to phrase his answers as questions.
• It feels like every year, the first sketch of the season is a game show.
• This is clearly the same set used for the Black Jeopardy sketches.
• It just feels so wrong to see a Jeopardy! sketch without Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek. Andrew is doing a fine job as Ken Jennings (despite not looking a thing like him) but Trebek is dearly missed.
• Why, oh why, is Keenan Thompson STILL on the show???? He’s approaching his 25th fucking season, and he was only funny for about nine of them.
• Nice to see Veronika with a big role right up front.
• Hoo boy, I am not a fan of this one-joke sketch so far. And, again, Bad Bunny is coming off like a smug douchebag.
• This had no reason to be the lead-off sketch. This is something that belongs after Update.
Fake Ad: ChatGPTio
A more “authentic” version of ChatGPT.
• And now we get our obligatory “let’s demonize AI” sketch.
• Seeing Chloe in this role just makes me miss Heidi even more.
• *sigh* Mikey is also still on the show for some reason, despite wearing out his welcome years ago.
• *double sigh* Another sketch where the only joke is Marcello babbling in a thick Spanish accent. Am I the only one who thinks these kinds of roles are kind of racist?
• Bad Bunny is adding nothing to this.
Sketch: The Donor
A couple asks their friend to be their sperm donor.
• Surprised it’s taken this long for Bowen to show up.
• The reveal of Bad Bunny’s character already sets a bad tone for the rest of this sketch.
• Yep, just as I feared, this guy is the main joke of the sketch.
• To make things even more cliche, Kenan also appears as a creepy character. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s done that.
Sketch: K-Pop Demon Hunters
SNL tries to piggyback off of the success of an overrated movie.
• Kinda weird how we have two sketches in a row where the leading ladies are Chloe and Sarah.
• Chloe says she’s excited to see the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I can’t help but wonder if this is an in-joke directed at Maya Rudolph, as Anderson is her husband.
• Ugh, now we get the main “joke” of this sketch, which is how Bad Bunny’s character is obsessed with K-Pop Demon Hunters, an extremely overrated animated film that came out that summer. I don’t think I need to tell you who wrote this sketch, do I?
• I hope the writers got paid by Sony every time they say the name of the movie in this sketch. I’m not going to count how many times they say it because I don’t want to get AIDS.
• Boy, Bad Bunny’s performance in this sketch is so awful. I don’t know what happened between his first hosting gig and this one, because this is clearly not the same guy!
• Somehow they were able to get Huntrix (the band that was in the movie) to appear in this awful sketch.
• I did kind of chuckle at Sarah randomly saying that she’s on the Epstein list.
• Figures that Bowen would be involved in this sketch in some way. I have no idea who he’s supposed to be playing, but he isn’t funny.
• Dear God, Bowen starts singing….I think I can move on to the next sketch now.
Musical Performance: “AAHH Men!!!!”
Weekend Update (featuring Kam Patterson and Dobby the House Elf)
• *triple sigh* These cretins are still here, for some reason. When I initially ended my blog last summer, I did it in hopes that SNL was about to make some huge changes to the show. While they certainly did that, apparently Weekend Update was thought to be perfectly fine, even though it is the part of the show that needs the most improvement.
• A really hacky joke where Trump’s plan for peace in Gaza has a drawing of a woman’s breasts on it.
• Ugh, I forgot about that awful part where they dub Chloe as Jennifer Coolidge over a clip of Trump speaking. What’s the point? Oh yeah, we need to keep pushing Chloe as a “star” even though everyone’s sick of her by now.
• Newbie Kam Patterson has a commentary where the “joke” is that he keeps skirting around the fact that he’s going to say the n-word. Not a good first impression.
• HUGE applause for some reason when Che says Zohran Mamdani’s name. I take it the audience is filled with Arab Communists?
• Though cheap, my biggest laugh of this entire Update came from Che’s joke about Andrew Cuomo’s new political ad being “*Honka-honka, shhhh!”
• Jesus Christ, another fucking “mascot” commentary. This time, it’s Bowen as Dobby the House Elf, who is here to talk about…ugh, J.K. Rowling’s transphobia. This can not end well.
• I thought nothing could top the hippo commentary from last season’s premiere, but this is definitely worse.
• There’s a blooper where the strap on his costume comes loose,
