Yay, my weekly water torture sessions are back! Saturday Night Live returns for its 41st season tonight, and hey, I've seen much worse premieres from this show, so that's something. Even if I was dreading it pretty badly going in, thanks to Miley Cyrus shoehorning her way into "friend of the show" status so that she gets to sing and host the premiere- despite that, they decided not really feature her too heavily in the sketches, so it wasn't that painful.
COLD OPEN: This however, was, due to Taran Killam's surprisingly bad Donald Trump impression. SNL gets to basically be the last show to weigh in with the requisite Trump mockery, so of course it was going to be old hat by now, but their idea to bring Melania Trump into the mix in the form of Cecily's typical exotic accent character added nothing. Disappointing- this should have been easy. And since Darrell Hammond is like, right there off the side of the stage, why not just have him keep doing Trump? Good idea, right?
MONOLOGUE: Miley comes out in her first (but not most) ridiculous outfit of the night to sing "My Way" to a montage of characters the show missed getting to mock over the summer, including Kim Davis (first funny thing I've seen Aidy do in a while), Jared Fogle and Josh Duggar (both played by Bobby with and then without glasses) and Rachel Dolezal. It's a fairly clever way to recap the last four months.
ABILIFY: An ad for a pill in case you're suffering from delusions of running for president, made for eleven specific GOP candidates- it's pretty good, although I admit it may be more due to my agreeing with the premise rather than inadvertently laughing at the jokes.
HOMECOMING 1955: A greaser sketch giving everyone a chance to do a big musical number while Miley raps salacious lyrics in the middle of it- eh. Not funny at all, even though everyone obviously likes getting to sing and dance.
VAL: Hillary Clinton's first SNL appearance of the 2016 campaign gets her started similar to the way she did last time, when she faced her Amy Poehler doppelganger. This time she goes head to head with Kate's impression (which I much prefer) and is a good sport as Val the bartender, who chats with "Hillary" about her woes, gets in a dig at Donald Trump, and gets dinged a bit on her late support for gay marriage and rejecting the keystone pipeline. Darrell Hammond also cameos as Bill and then they sing "Lean on Me" before fake Hillary wakes up from her daydream. I don't know- I thought it worked. And I liked Kate's obvious excitement about getting to do the bit with Hillary throughout.
WEEKEND UPDATE: First of all, I can't believe we're stuck with these two stooges all season again- how can Lorne not see that Colin Jost and Michael Che are the worst Update anchors in history? Sigh. Some election jabs and Kim Davis zingers before Kyle comes on as a wannabe hip Pope Francis (it's really awkward and unfunny though), and Pete shows up as the resident young person to talk politics. He's okay I guess- better than Leslie's relationship expert that I've never warmed to. Sorry, but there's just too much screaming going on there.
THE MILLENNIALS: A promo for a Fox show about a workplace featuring annoying and entitled millennials obsessed with texting and social media- what's weird is that it seems to rip off the "Californians" of all skits with the voices used by the girl millennials. Why would anyone want to take a cue from that sketch? Shudder. Otherwise it's just okay.
KATZ'S: Leslie, Vanessa, Miley and Cecily go the famous When Harry Met Sally diner to mimic Meg Ryan's orgasm, but Leslie gets crazy with insane situations happening during hers. Unfortunately, this is mostly just a LOT of screaming from her, as per usual. Sorry, but her humor just isn't my thing much of the time.
THE SQUAD: A trailer for a movie where Vanessa and Aidy wake up after a car crash to find the world had been lost to Taylor Swift's squad. Gotta be honest, I pay zero attention and have close to zero knowledge of anything regarding Taylor Swift since the infamous Kanye incident, so I'm proud to say I don't understand the entire premise of this sketch and I don't care to one bit.
AMERICAN VOICES: A PBS look back at a 1950's talk show Leslie hosted where she can only make jokes about the segregated '50's- this is actually pretty on point and I did find Leslie funny in this one, so that's something. But it's pretty short and gets cut off abruptly.
KYLE & MILEY: A weird last minute Kyle video where he tapes a rapid runthrough of his entire life if he married Miley Cyrus- you know that I don't find his bits funny about 99% of the time, and this is no exception, so, yeah. That's done.
And there we have it- the 41st season of SNL commenced and all I can say is that it wasn't too painful, Miley wasn't too annoying, but I also didn't really laugh out loud at any point either. A couple of clever bits and a big moment involving Hillary Clinton bring it to "B-" status though, which is pretty generous from me, especially for an opener. We'll see what next week brings when Amy Schumer, she of the ubiquitous media presence, rises to the hosting occasion. See you guys then and welcome back to fall, everyone!
