<\/p>\n
For those who had grown used to the Saturday Night Live<\/em> opening credits over the last few years, the introductory video sure felt choppy when the show\u2019s 51st <\/sup>season debuted on Oct. 4.\u00a0 Perhaps a new intro will be shot in the coming weeks, but the premiere repurposed last season\u2019s with the departing members<\/a> edited out.<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Heidi Gardner\u2019s glam scene was gone, Michael Longfellow wasn\u2019t chastised for feeding an NYPD horse, Ego Nwodim wasn\u2019t flossing atop the double-decker tourist bus Sarah Sherman drives into Times Square, Devon Walker had drifted away with his balloons and Emil Wakim was gone, too.<\/p>\n The five new cast members<\/a> \u2014 Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall (of SNL<\/em>\u2019s Please Don\u2019t Destroy filmmaking trio), Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska \u2014 are all featured players, and so they were all sandwiched towards the end of the credits with Ashley Padilla and Jane Wickline.<\/p>\n With the exception of Patterson and, to a lesser extent, Slowikowska the featured hires weren\u2019t featured much, but, after so much speculation whether Lorne Michaels would retire after season 50,<\/a> the new school year needed to start strong. And that meant relying on the show\u2019s Murderers\u2019 Row of Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Sherman, Keenan Thompson and Bowen Yang,<\/a><\/p>\n Landing Bad Bunny<\/a> in the afterglow of his hugely successful Puerto Rico residency, the announcement that he would headline next year\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show \u2014 and the racist backlash that followed \u2014 was a timely move.\u00a0 And Bad Bunny closing his monologue<\/a> in Spanish (without English subtitles) was a deft message to his haters that his art transcends language and culture barriers \u2014 and that they\u2019d better catch up.\u00a0Certainly, SNL<\/em> has come a long way from the \u201870s \u2014 when Garrett Morris, a Black actor, used to play Dominican Met Chico Escuela, whose English was limited to \u201cBeisbol been berry, berry good to me<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the sketches, it\u2019s a new season, and the SNL <\/em>comedy accelerator is still revving up. Here\u2019s one critic\u2019s ranking, from worst to best.<\/p>\n <\/a> Billboard VIP Pass<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n A truly weird vignette<\/a>, with little payoff, in which Sherman and Fineman ask Dismukes to be the sperm donor for the baby they plan to have. Bad Bunny (in a Bob\u2019s Carpet hairpiece, and with an appreciation for the blackout ending of the Sopranos<\/em> finale) offers to contribute, which prompts Thompson \u2014 sporting what looks like a black DoorDash symbol painted on his forehead \u2014 to volunteer as well. Cue \u201cDon\u2019t Stop Believin\u2019\u201d and clear the set!<\/p>\n Wouldn\u2019t it be great to listen in to the initial meetings between the week\u2019s SNL<\/em> host and the show\u2019s writers, where the latter must gauge how much ego-stroking needs to be laced into the sketches for cooperation to ensue? This sketch<\/a> felt like that: Single DILF Bad Bunny is called to a conference with the principal (Dismukes) and a teacher (Padilla) over alarmingly violent drawings that his goth kid (Hernandez) has made depicting the latter. (\u201cThis is going to hapin to you,\u201d reads one showing a decapitation in the making.)<\/p>\n But teach takes one look at papi and her anger turns to lust. That\u2019s it. Really.<\/p>\n As\u00a0Billboard\u2019<\/em>s Jessica Roiz wrote the night the sketch aired, El Chavo del Ocho<\/a> <\/em>\u201cwas more of a tribute [to] than a mockery\u201d of one of the most popular Latin TV sitcoms of the 1970s. Mexican by origin and produced by Televisa, the show aired across Latin American and Spain. According to a 2012\u00a0Forbes<\/em>\u00a0article, it averaged 91 million daily viewers in syndication \u2014\u00a020 years after its last original episode aired \u2014 with reruns earning the media giant (now TelevisaUnivision) $1.7 billion at the time.<\/p>\n This sketch wasn\u2019t satire \u2014 there\u2019s none of the socio-political edge that made\u00a0Eddie Murphy\u2019s Mr. Robinson\u2019s Neighborhood<\/a> a classic \u2014 more just a loving recreation. But it\u2019s interesting to see Bad Bunny as\u00a0Quico, the spoiled, mischievous kid who had the best toys in the neighborhood \u2014 a character written into the original show as an annoying antagonist, who became one of the most popular characters in the series.\u00a0Is this an analogy for\u00a0Bad Bunny\u2019s place in pop culture right now? Or just the most fun he could have in an on-the-nose love letter to Latinos that ties into his current album, Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos<\/em>, where he reflects on his past and encourages the preservation of cultural identity?<\/p>\n Game shows have long been a go-to format \u2014 as well a crutch \u2014 for SNL<\/em>, and Jeopardy!<\/em> is almost certainly the most used show. This sketch<\/a>, which featured Bad Bunny as a contestant who knew the answers but was incapable of phrasing them in the \u201cWho is,\u201d \u201cWhat is\u201d Jeopardy<\/em>-speak, milked a few\u00a0 laughs \u2014 but oh for the day when Will Ferrell played Alex Trebek, hosting Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds (a.k.a \u201cTurd Ferguson\u201d<\/a>), Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery and Jimmy Fallon as French Stewart from Third Rock From The Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n If pop-culture relevancy \u2014 and SNL\u2019s proficiency at capitalizing on it \u2014 was the bar here, this sketch <\/a>would be at the top. It\u2019s funny because of the Bad Bunny character\u2019s myopic obsession with Netflix\u2019s KPop Demon Hunters<\/a><\/em>, replete with anime-style internal dialogue. Doesn\u2019t matter that one of his Bunny\u2019s characters friends reveal in the skit that ended up on the flight manifest for a trip to Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s \u201cPedo Island\u201d or that another character wrote the ad campaign for Sydney Sweeney\u2019s American Eagle \u201cGood Genes\u201d ad.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all a setup to bring in Yang as Jinu, the demon leader of Saja Boys. (\u201cOh, my god. Do you have a gun?\u201d one of the women asks. \u201cEven worse, I have a voice,\u201d replies Jinu before singing a snippet of \u201cSoda Pop<\/a>.\u201d) That, of course, ushers in a performance <\/a>of \u201cGolden\u201d by the real-life artists (EJAE, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna) who provided the singing voices of HUNTR\/X, ahead of their live debut together on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon <\/em>this week. Lorne wins!<\/p>\n Hernandez\u2019s confidence is goddamn irresistible. He looks happy AF no matter which (usually loud) character he indulges. In this sketch<\/a>, he\u2019s the guyabera-wearing t\u00edo \u2014 uncle<\/em> \u2014 ready to dispense brutally honest advice without a side of chatbot word salad. (He\u2019s also \u201c40% louder,\u201d as the TV ad spoof says.) \u201cWhat!\u201d he roars when he\u2019s summoned by Slowiskowska in her kitchen to ask, \u201cHow do I make vegan banana bread?\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t!\u201d\u00a0is his reply. He\u2019s also good with the dating advice, once things get past the ice-breaking point. If you get her home, he counsels Culhane, who won the featured performer cameo contest in this episode, take a \u201cHalls cough drop\u201d for when \u201cyou\u2019re going downtown.\u201d Does that count as product placement?<\/p>\n The structure of this bit is similar to the brilliant \u201cWashington\u2019s Dream\u201d<\/span> sketch \u2014 written by Day, Streeter Seidell and Auguste White \u2014 that Nate Bargatze<\/a> knocked out of the park when he debuted on SNL<\/em> in October 2023. In that case, a momentous occasion \u2014 Washington addressing his troops at Valley Forge \u2014 became a discourse on weights and measures and avoidance of the slavery issue. (\u201cAnd the slaves, sir. What of them?\u201d \u201cYou asked about the temperature?\u201d \u201cI did not.\u201d)<\/p>\n Here,<\/a> Iberians gather in 900 A.D. to develop a common language \u2014 Spanish \u2014 to unite the country. \u201cWhat if we made it harder to learn?\u201d poses the leader, Bad Bunny, who tells the assembled he had \u201can amazing idea: every word is a boy or a girl\u201d \u2014\u00a0an IRL hurdle that makes learning Spanish as a second language almost as hard as learning the rules of English.<\/p>\n The ocean, \u201cel oceano\u201d is a boy, because, as Hernandez, playing translator-for-the-common-folk, explains, \u201cIt\u2019s fun but sometimes, for no reason, it kill you.\u201d\u00a0 On the other hand, the Bible, \u201cla Biblia,\u201d is a girl, partly because (as Hernandez says), \u201cEverything you want to do, it say, \u2018No!<\/em>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n After the sibilant dialect of Barcelonan in attendance (Day) is corrected \u2014 permanently \u2014 Hernandez introduces his \u201ccousin,\u201d a walk-on by Benicio Del Toro, to introduce a few more rules \u201cthat you will only need to remember for school but will be totally useless in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n There is the formal and informal use of \u201cyou and you,\u201d Del Toro says, without getting into the t\u00fa vs. usted conundrum. Then, \u201cWhat if the letter \u2018r\u2019 lasted a long time,\u201d Del Toro says, resulting in a lot of extended \u2018r\u2019 rolling among the participants. Then, \u201cOne last thing,\u201d Del Toro says. \u201cNot related to anything. I think we should take a nap in the middle of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s enough progress for today,\u201d says Hernandez. \u201cWhoever\u00a0 doesn\u2019t die of disease in the night, I will see you in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortlly after SNL<\/em> announced the addition of Patterson to the cast, his comedy alma mater, Tony Hinchcliffe<\/a>\u2019s Kill Tony<\/em> podcast, began speculating on whether the 26-year-old comic would become the NBC show\u2019s next Shane Gillis<\/a>.\u00a0On the podcast, another KT<\/em> regular, William Montgomery said, \u201cLike is he going to get fired the first episode or the second episode, when he screams the N-word for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n Patterson was clearly addressing that chatter when he appeared on Weekend Update<\/em> and begged Jost to let him just get it over with. \u201cIt\u2019s been said a few times on this show. Roll the clip!\u201d Patterson said, eliciting Jost\u2019s trademark panicked laugh and a response that said footage was not going to be shown.<\/p>\n Patterson subsequently pointed out that Che dropped the word during a 2016 Weekend Update<\/em> discussion of Colin Kaepernick refusing to kneel for the National Anthem in 2016.\u00a0 (\u201cYeah, but I\u2019m grown,\u201d Che, who\u2019s been with the show since 2013 replied, suggesting that the greenhorn on his set had yet to make his bones.)<\/p>\n After Jost told Patterson, \u201cI just think you bring more to the table than that,\u201d the SNL <\/em>plebe said his act did include some \u201ccharacters\u201d: \u201cThe guy who played Kramer, Paula Deen and the ghost of Hulk Hogan\u201d \u2014 white celebrities caught using the N-word. His impression of Hogan\u2019s specter: \u201cBoo, brother! Except, I would say \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n Jost stopped him again with that laugh, and Patterson relented, but not before comparing the situation to Jurassic Park. <\/em>\u201cYou can put up all the fences you want,\u201d he said. \u201cbut the dinosaurs are still gonna get out.\u201d<\/p>\n For those who aren\u2019t SNL<\/em> historians, one of the clips Patterson could have rolled was the 1975 \u201cWord Association\u201d sketch \u2014 considered one of the most iconic moments of the show\u2019s history \u2014 in which Chevy Chase plays an employer, Richard Pryor a job applicant, and the job interview consists of word association that becomes progressively more racially charged. Chase runs through a string of epithets which prompt Pryor to reply \u201chonky,\u201d but when he gets to the N-word itself, Pryor, his face twitching with rage, replies: \u201cdead<\/em> honky.\u201d<\/p>\n If what\u2019s actually happening in our government weren\u2019t so heartbreaking, it would be a laugh riot, and SNL\u2019<\/em>s writers regularly clear the fences with Johnson \u2014 the best Donald Trump impersonator in the show\u2019s history \u2014 satirizing the week in Washington. There was a lot to cover in this sketch,<\/a> which made it more of a triple than a home run, but it was still a win.<\/p>\n Jost left the Weekend Update<\/em> desk for a rare sketch performance as bro-hugging \u201cSecretary of War\u201d Pete Hegseth. And while his punchable face is too friendly and aware to do a dead-on impersonation, he delivered on the former Fox News host\u2019s weird-ass speech about the military\u2019s fitness, before hundreds of generals called to a last-minute meeting at Quantico.<\/p>\n Jost-as-Hegseth\u2019s mandate for our armed forces was to meet the standard set by President Trump: \u201cSix-foot-six, a buck 75, A-cup \u2014 perky, with a dump truck in the back you wouldn\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n That meant, he concluded: \u201cNo fat chicks. And if you\u2019re a fat dude, goddammit, you better be funny as hell,\u201d adding, \u201cIn summary, just hot, shredded, hairless men who are definitely not gay.\u201d<\/p>\n Enter Johnson, who brought major cringe, comparing Trump Rx to the hims hair-loss and \u201cboner pills\u201d prescription home delivery service and getting some rumbles of disapproval when he said, \u201cWe love the Saudis because they love to saw-deeze journalists in half.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview with People,<\/em> Yang said Michaels asked him to stay with the show, telling him, \u201cThere\u2019s more for you to do. I need you.\u201d\u00a0Yang\u2019s appearance<\/a> on Weekend Update<\/em> as Dobby, the abused house elf from the Harry Potter <\/em>saga, was one more example of him fulfilling that promise.<\/p>\n Appearing at the end of the segment, Yang sent up the week\u2019s news that Potter <\/em>creator J.K. Rowling<\/a> refused to forgive Emma Watson<\/a>, who played Hermione Granger in the saga, for dragging her over her oft-expressed opposition to the trans community. When co-anchor Che asked the elf why he seemed frightened, Yang replied \u201cWhy would Dobby be scared, sir? Dobby\u2019s just about to publicly weigh in on trans people, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n After accidentally admitting that Rowling was his \u201cmaster,\u201d Dobby began to \u201cself-punish\u201d by banging his head \u2014 quite realistically \u2014 on the Update desk, which resulted in one side of his tunic accidentally falling off. \u201cDobby\u2019s come undone!\u201d Yang cried without breaking character. The case for the defense: \u201cMaster Rowling has done so much for Dobby and inclusion in general,\u201d Yang said, adding \u201cRemember when Dumbledore was gay after the books came out? And when Hermione was Black, only on Broadway? And when [Hogwarts witch] Cho Chang was \u2014 was Cho Chang Asian?\u00a0Dobby can\u2019t remember if the character named Cho Chang was Asian or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Yang said he also came with a message from Rowling: \u201cMaster sent Dobby to go on the telly and define once and for all what a woman is sir.\u201d\u00a0 The answer: \u201cWomen have vaginas and women\u2019s bathrooms are for women only and girls and ghosts of girls.\u201d In keeping with the Seinfeld<\/em> ethos, there were no lessons and no hugs, just more self-punishment: Dobby banging his head against a camera lens and calling himself \u201cmillennial cringe.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For those who had grown used to the Saturday Night Live opening credits over the last few years, the introductory video sure felt choppy when the show\u2019s 51st season debuted on Oct. 4.\u00a0 Perhaps a new intro will be shot in the coming weeks, but the premiere repurposed last season\u2019s with the departing members edited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2021507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[352946,365999,357902,319952,348454,352943,387841,353933,360671,23571,361606,376133,305353,359954,352941,352944,352945,352940,360670],"class_list":["post-2073090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-andrew-dismukes","tag-ashley-padilla","tag-benicio-del-toro","tag-bowen-yang","tag-chloe-fineman","tag-colin-jost","tag-el-chavo-del-ocho","tag-james-austin-johnson","tag-jeremy-culhane","tag-jimmy-fallon","tag-kam-patterson","tag-keenan-thompson","tag-lorne-michaels","tag-marcello-hernandez","tag-michael-che","tag-michael-longfellow","tag-mikey-day","tag-sarah-sherman","tag-veronika-slowikowska"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Charli-XCX-and-George-Daniel-marry-for-second-time-in.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2073091,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073090\/revisions\/2073091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2021507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}10. The Donor<\/h2>\n
9. Parent-Teacher Conference<\/h2>\n
8. El Chavo Del Ocho<\/h2>\n
7. Jeopardy! With Bad Bunny<\/h2>\n
6. KPop Demon Hunters<\/h2>\n
5. ChatGPT\u00edo<\/h2>\n
4. Inventing Spanish<\/h2>\n
3. Kam Patterson on Weekend Update<\/h2>\n
2. Pete Hegseth Cold Open<\/h2>\n
1. Dobby the House Elf on J.K. Rowling<\/h2>\n