Saturday Night Live Season-Premiere Recap: Jean Smart Leads a Cavalcade of Cameos

Saturday Night Live
Jean Smart
Season 50 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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We are so back! Well, maybe not quite that back just yet, but back nonetheless. 

Saturday Night Live’s hiatus this year fell during a rather eventful summer, which is probably for the best. It’s hard to imagine what kind of show the cast would’ve put on had they gone live just hours after Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, other than “an uncomfortable one.” Watershed political moments aside, this season premiere felt in part like a clearinghouse for Brat Summer ephemera. The emergence of Hawk Tuah Girl, the reluctant ascension of Chappell Roan, Representative Jasmine Crockett’s “bleach-blonde bad-built butch body” moment, Chimp Crazy — they’re all accounted for. Even the summer-launched second season of House of the Dragon made an appearance, albeit in a piece that was cut for time.

The first episode after a four-month sketch-comedy sabbatical is almost always a mixed bag, with SNL’s writers and performers each needing time to warm up. Just because this one happened to mark the start of season 50 — considered, in wedding anniversary terms, the “golden jubilee” — does not inherently exempt it from that fate. Still, while falling short of barn-burner status, last night’s season premiere was definitely cooking.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, SNL overlord Lorne Michaels said of his golden jubilee, “I want to celebrate this season with people coming back who’ve been part of the show and who love the show — not so much as hosts but just making appearances.” That attitude was evident right out of the gate, with a tone-setting cavalcade of cameos in the cold open, many of them familiar faces from the show’s past. (More on that later.)

But season 50 isn’t just about the show’s storied history. (What does it look like? The upcoming Jason Reitman film Saturday Night?) No, season 50 is also about walking, erection-last, into the future. It’s about new opening title cards, a new show font, and three new cast members, who one presumes we will eventually meet. And speaking of newness, this season kicks off with a first-timer host, Jean Smart, who, at age 73, is enjoying the hottest moment of her career with her two-time Emmy-winning role on the reigning TV comedy, Hacks.

Smart mainly operates in one gear — golden-throated deadpan — but it’s the champagne of gears, and SNL uses it wisely. Between giving proper due to a legendary performer and giving an extended preview of this season’s marquee guests, it’s a promising start for a historic season.

Here are the highlights: 

Harris and Trump Rallies Cold Open

Although the triumphant return of Maya Rudolph was a forgone conclusion from the moment Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris, several other players in the political circus remained a matter of speculation all summer. Now, it can be told. Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s majestically Midwestern running mate, will be played this season by majestically Midwestern comedian Jim Gaffigan — a vast upgrade in verisimilitude over fan choice Steve Martin, whose essence is about as coastal as they come. Apart from Gaffigan, though, this is an SNL family affair, with former cast members Andy Samberg and Dana Carvey playing Doug Emhoff and Joe Biden, respectively. The only major new role the show is handling in-house is that of Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, who Bowen Yang plays this season, further cementing his position as the linchpin of the current cast.

This supersized sketch has a lot of introducing to do, so everyone gets only scant time to make an impression. The standout so far is inarguably Carvey. His Biden is a late-stage Biden — the guy everyone watched self-immolate in a debate against Trump over the summer. Playing the 81-year-old president as aghast, confused, and inarticulate could easily amount to an unkind impersonation, but in Carvey’s masterful hands, there is zero heightening — only dead-on accuracy. In a career marked by decades’ worth of remarkable impressions, Carvey’s Biden instantly joins the pantheon.

Spirit Halloween Ad

This fake ad serves as both a takedown of one of the weirdest and most weirdly popular business models operating today and a critique of the hollowing out of the American middle class. And yet, Chloe Fineman booping a little girl on the nose after telling her she’ll never be Taylor Swift still gets the biggest laugh. 

Textbook Writer

A textbook example of how to build a sketch around a host’s persona, Smart here plays a romance novelist inexplicably tapped to write a book of math problems. (“Clarissa stared into the eyes of the Italian, losing herself completely in his musk,” begins one of them.) The host plays the reality of not understanding why a publisher wouldn’t want math problems built around 69-ing, with just the right amount of exasperation. What this sketch might become known for, however, is launching the adjective “erection-last” into common vernacular. 

Weekend Update: Baby Hippo Moo Deng on Fame

It would have gone over well enough if Yang played his latest nonhuman Weekend Update character, viral baby hippo Moo Deng, as just a generic diva. Infusing her with the spirit of Chappell Roan — who is having an understandably difficult time adjusting to instant, staggering fame — is a brilliant twist and a slyly meta one, considering Yang himself has struggled with the transition to stardom. (A recent New Yorker profile has the headline, “Bowen Yang Is Sorry He’s Not Your Clown Today.”) What gives this desk piece probable future space in best-of-season roundups, though, is that it balances Yang’s delicate portrayal of an overtaxed chanteuse with the broad physical comedy of getting sprayed fully in the face with a hose.

A Father’s Promise

Usually, sketches that are “cut for time” play like they were cut for being the most expendable of the bunch. (See: that House of Dragons sketch.) This one, though, feels more like it was intended to air and then something went temporally wrong — a glitch in the time matrix, or some kind of quickening. It’s criminal that this Andrew Dismukes showcase, a demented take on the harried-Business-Dad-shows-up-for-his-kids climax of every family movie ever, wasn’t seen by the widest audience possible. If there’s any comedy justice, it will have a long afterlife online.

Cut for Time

• Jean Smart singing Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York” between monologue jokes is a nice way to reclaim her roots on Broadway, where she debuted in 1981, playing Marlene Dietrich in Piaf.

• Seems like a miscalculation to put a topical impression-heavy sketch like The $100,000 Pyramid right after that guest-filled opener in the batting lineup. However, this sketch gave us an incredible fake chimp making threatening gestures, so all’s forgiven.

• Hacks co-star Hannah Einbinder, who will probably be hosting herself one of these days, stopped by to help Smart introduce musical guest Jelly Roll, in an objectively adorable moment. SNL blood runs through Einbinder’s veins, by the way, as she is the daughter of original cast member Laraine Newman.

• In any episode other than the season premiere in this particular election year, the cold open would’ve centered on the biggest news bomb of the week: Mayor Eric Adams getting indicted on federal charges. Instead, that story got pushed to an Update desk piece, with Devon Walker debuting his swaggy version of the character. (Previously, that role belonged to former cast member Chris Redd, whose take on it was reportedly beloved by Adams.)

• Although going back to the Hitler well for commentary about Donald Trump has long been considered partisan Paint By Numbers, the joke that arrives around the two-minute mark in this Weekend Update segment deserves special dispensation because holy crap.

• Not at all the point of the I Love Lucy sketch, but Chloe Fineman sure looks right at home in a 1950s sitcom setting.

• Much like Mayor Eric Adams, Troye Sivan has become someone who has been portrayed by two different performers on SNL, now that Sarah Sherman played him in the Charli xcx Talk Show. (Last season, Timothee Chalamet turned the pop star into a sleep demon.)

• Although the new cast members pop up sporadically, Ashley Padilla is the only one who gets anything approaching a moment in the episode, defending her business lady credentials amid so many steaming plates of fajitas in the Real Housewives sketch. It’s only a small moment, but probably enough to spike viewer interest in what else she’s got in the hopper.