Another season of SNL is here! After a good season last year, I’m so excited to see what this season has to offer. Last season ended with a great episode from host Anya Taylor-Joy and musical guest Lil Nas X. As mentioned in my last post, that episode was the first episode to have a full audience (one that was masked and vaccinated) since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the start of this season, Owen Wilson comes to Studio 8H to host with returning musical guest Kacey Musgraves. Here is my take on the season premiere.
Sketch Rundown:
Biden Unites Democrats Cold Open:
It wasn’t a surprise to me that the new season would start with some kind of political cold open. What I was surprised with was that they went with a new cast member portraying President Joe Biden. Last season, Alex Moffat took over from guest Jim Carrey. This season, new cast member James Austin Johnson took over the impression. I thought it was a strong impression and Johnson is very well known for his spot on impressions. I also loved the other impressions in the sketch. I loved the joke about the Child Tax Credit and how “children shouldn’t pay taxes, that’s a lot of math”. I also loved the joke where the president and the senators were trying to find common ground and all were finding common ground about roads until Senator Simena, portrayed by Cecily Strong, said she wanted no roads because of “chaos”. I also loved Pete Davidson’s portrayal of “Governorish” Andrew Cuomo and Alex Moffat portraying Senator Schumer. I also loved the book titles of “Whoops” and “Sandwiches I Have Liked and Tried”. Overall, I thought this was a great cold open with great writing and a great portrayal of the current situation.
Owen Wilson Monologue:
I thought this was a solid monologue. I thought it was cool that his brothers were there. I honestly didn’t know he had two brothers. I also loved the joke that his dad was a part of the 3790 club: “three sons, seven high schools, nine colleges, and zero degrees”. I also thought the Daniel Day-Lewis joke was funny where his retirement inspired Wilson to do “Cars 3”.
Women’s Talk Show:
When I saw this sketch, I wasn’t surprised that they were going to do a sketch about what happened on “The View” (I watched the actual episode and saw it happen in real time and I’m still shocked something like this happened). I did think that they were going to do an actual parody of the show, although they don’t have cast members able to portray all of the hosts. I also thought it was funny that they had bickering co-hosts, even though that doesn’t really happen on “The View” anymore. I did think it was funny that they had a doctor give the results instead of a producer. I loved that the doctor said that revealing the results “has to be on TV for HIPAA [and] we either can’t tell anybody or have to tell everybody, no middle ground”. I also thought it was funny that when one of the hosts tried to go to a commercial that they ran out of commercials. I loved this sketch and thought it was a great start to the show.
Billionaire Star Trek:
This was another sketch that I thought would happen because of the recent launches. I did like how they had Luke Wilson play Jeff Bezos’ brother Mark, also known as “Bezos’ brother whose name escapes me”. I also loved the Richard Branson impression as well as the spaceships racing. I also loved how they called it a “midlife crisis of cosmic proportions”. The Elon Musk impression was great and I kind of wish the impression of Musk hosted last season instead of the actual person. I also loved the line of “space is only big enough for one weird, white billionaire” and they called it “Star Trek: Ego Quest”. I loved the sketch and thought it was very funny.
Cars 4:
With Owen Wilson hosting, I wasn’t surprised they would do something “Cars” related. I thought it was cringey but also funny. I didn’t realize until later that this was partially inspired by the allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz. I also loved the Larry the Cable Guy impression, which was also a great utilization of Johnson.
School Board Meeting:
When I saw that they were doing this sketch, it reminded me a lot of the clips of school board meetings that I would see on the news. I liked how they started off with passing the motion of changing Robert E. Lee Middle School to Robert E. Lee Was Bad Middle School. The sketch had a memorable line “I am concerned and I am also crazy”. There were also mentions of a vaccine named “Mike’s Hard Vaccine” and also a child with a beard as a side effect to some kind of “treatment”. Bowen’s character was also great and Aidy’s character seemed like it was a past character. I’m not sure but the way she said her lines sounded like a past character of her’s. Pete coming on as Dog the Bounty Hunter was also really funny. Sarah’s character was random but also very funny. I also loved the singing group as well as Kenan’s character, especially when he came up behind Ego and Alex. I thought this sketch was great and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more of these sketches.
Kacey Musgraves “justified” Performance:
I love Kacey Musgraves and I was so excited to see that she was going to appear as the musical guest again. I thought this was a beautiful performance. I also can’t believe she performed wearing only cowboy boots and with her guitar in front of her. I also didn’t know that this was inspired by a scene in “Forrest Gump”. Even with precautions in place, I’m still surprised she was able to get away with performing naked.
Weekend Update:
I liked how Colin opened up Update with how last year started with no COVID-19 vaccine and a really intense presidential election and now the biggest story is infrastructure. I also loved the joke about how some Catholics are claiming religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine. The punch line was especially funny: “nothing more Catholic than letting someone else die for your sins”. I also loved Ego’s character “A Black Woman Who’s Been Missing for Ten Years”. I thought it was a great way to blend comedy with social commentary. I loved the joke about the fifteen dollar gift card to Chili’s Too as a reward. Pete’s segment about the Met Gala and his outfit to the Met Gala was great. I haven’t laughed super hard during one of his segments in a long time. I also loved his joke about Colin in the movie “Tom & Jerry” as well as Pete saying at the end of his segment, “I can’t believe I’m back!”. There was also a great tribute to former cast member and former Weekend Update anchor Norm Macdonald, with a video montage of some of Norm’s best jokes as well as Pete’s shirt that he wore during his segment. I figured they would do a proper tribute instead of just a bumper during a planned rerun.
Funeral Song:
This was another cringey but funny sketch. I should’ve known that with the recent conviction of R. Kelly. I did think it was funny that Lorne was walking off set at the beginning of the sketch and I’m pretty sure that was not planned. I also loved Kenan’s character of LeVar B. Burton as well as the slide show. I also thought it was funny for the second song that Kenan was keeping time by hitting the casket.
Kacey Musgraves “camera roll” Performance:
I thought this was another great performance. I could really feel the emotion as she was singing. I also bought Kacey’s album recently and seeing her performances during the show, it makes me really want to listen to the album as soon as possible.
NFL on Fox:
This sketch, I felt, was the typical parody of a typical broadcast of an NFL game on Fox. I thought the impressions were great, especially the ones of Joe Buck and Erin Andrews. The graphics for the show that was being promoted were great as well as the monster puppet. The lines “Did I just see Stacey Abrams with a monster puppet?” and “Wait, McKayla is the monster puppet?”.
Mail-in Testing Service:
I thought this was a typical final sketch of the night but also a great way to utilize new cast members. I thought Andrew and Sarah were great and had great chemistry. I would love to see them appear in more sketches together. I loved Chris’ character and thought it was funny and creepy at the same time. Overall, I thought it was a solid sketch.
Also that comes with a new season is welcoming new cast members and saying goodbye to those outgoing. Prior to the start of the season, it was announced that Beck Bennett was leaving the show after eight seasons. Lauren Holt, who joined the cast at the beginning of last season, was also let go. Three new cast members were also hired prior to the start of the season. Those new cast members are Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson, and Sarah Sherman. Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman were also promoted to repertory players at the beginning of the season. SNL also hired ten new writers. It was also announced that Liz Patrick will become the new SNL director at some point this season after long time director Don Roy King announced he will retire at some point this season.
This has been my take on the season 47 premiere episode with host Owen Wilson and musical guest Kacey Musgraves. I’ll be back with another post about the upcoming episode with host Kim Kardashian West and musical guest Halsey. Be sure to connect with me and follow me on Twitter at @SNLBlogger for up to date SNL news and live tweeting every new episode. See you soon during the next episode!
Thanks for reading!
Lauren
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