Saturday Night Live is back for its 51st season and if you have not yet tuned in, this is the season to watch.
After the announcement of several key cast members leaving after SNL’s 50th season — including Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim and featured players Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker and Emil Wakim — people were concerned. The 50th season ended with a bang, celebrating the monumental occasion. Still, many thought this was the beginning of the end for the late night television show. Then, SNL announced their hosts and musical guests for the first three weeks of the show, confirming that they were still going strong.
I was very excited to see that among the five new cast members and featured players was Veronika Slowikowska who is most famously known for her online persona veronika_iscool. I have been following her for a long time and her skits never fail to make me laugh. She is known for acting out bizarre scenarios with her friend Kyle Chase, who she also has a podcast with. Seeing that SNL picked her up made me so excited for her and made me anticipate this season even more.
The premiere on Oct. 4 featured host Bad Bunny with musical guest Doja Cat. This marked Bad Bunny’s fourth appearance on the show, and was his second time hosting since October 2023. In his monologue, he joked that he was competing with cast member Marcello Hernandez to be producer Lorne Micheals’ “favorite Latino.” After watching his work on this episode, I can see why the show keeps having him.
For a lot of celebrities, it can be a little bit awkward watching them try to act and get laughs from the audience but for Bad Bunny, it comes very naturally. My favorite skit of the night was definitely the bit about KPop Demon Hunters. It featured Bad Bunny telling his friends at dinner that he was using the demon hunters characters as his support system, following their life lessons as if they were real. He played the character so well it had me thinking that he actually was a super fan of the movie.
My favorite episode of the three that have premiered this month was from October 11, which featured former cast member Amy Poehler as host and Role Model as musical guest. It seemed like Poehler picked up right where she left off in 2008. She spent four seasons as co-anchor of the segment Weekend Update with Tina Fey and Seth Meyers after four seasons appearing in skits.
Her opening monologue showed just how familiar she was with the show and made her look like a natural. My favorite part was when she was introducing the new cast members who tried to have a moment with an SNL great, but she quickly shooed them away. It was great to see her back on the show.
A stand out moment from the episode was the Weekend Update joke-off which had Poehler and her two former co-anchors competing with current anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che about the birth of a 13-pound baby. It was great to see former cast members come back together and with two of my favorite current cast members.
Role Model also was a highlight from this episode and probably my favorite musical guest from the season so far. Watching his growth as an artist over the past two years has been amazing, and his album Kansas Anymore has been in my rotation for over a year now. He definitely surprised fans by bringing out Charli XCX for his song “Sally When the Wine Runs Out” when many predicted it would be a SNL cast member or other smaller influencer.
The last episode of the month featured Sabrina Carpenter doing “double duty” as both the host and musical guest. She joins the esteemed list of previous singers who have done this like Harry Styles, Elton John, Dua Lipa and more. She did an impressive job singing “Manchild” and “Nobody’s Son,” however the true feat was her acting ability.
Her acting experience showed in my favorite skit of the night where several of the female cast members acted as teen boys on “Boys Podcast.” Hearing them using Gen Alpha slang was hilarious and put into perspective how out of context, their language is genuinely hilarious. These are definitely some of my favorite genre of skits SNL does: bringing social media and turning it into situations that you don’t usually see on television.
The next few weeks will see some even more promising actors and musical guests like Olivia Dean, Miles Teller, and Sombr. SNL makes light out of all sorts of current events and is always fun to watch. I would highly recommend tuning in this season.