Saturday Night Live: Jalen Brunson is a stiff host in disappointing season premiere | Saturday evening live

The 52nd season of Saturday Night Live opens in the New York City mayor’s office. Mayor Zohran Mamdani (Ramy Youssef, reprising the role from last season) receives a surprise visit from Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson). The president, who “for some reason no one can understand” loves Mamdani, braved the great El Niño storm to visit on his “first day.”

Trump talks about his busy week – banning members of the press from the White House pool, making apocalyptic threats against Iran at the UN, consulting with AI leaders including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg (“That made me think, wow, RFK Jr is probably right about these vaccines, I mean, the ‘tizz in this room…”) – before being interrupted by his aide Natalie Harp (Ashley Padilla). Acting like “Obsession’s daughter, but blonde”, Harp, dangerously jealous, threatens Mamdani. Trump eventually convinces the mayor to let him stay and hang out in New York in exchange for $20 billion for a housing project in Queens.

A rather weak cold open considering this is the first season. Padilla’s caricature of Harp as a deranged stalker resembling a Fatal Attraction is gold and should have been the center of attention here. Unfortunately, the show decided to lean on Mamdani, which might have worked if they had found someone else to portray him, preferably a cast member – you’d think they’d want to cast someone who could play that role given what a national figure he’s become – or, failing that, a guest with more star power than Youssef.

Jalen Brunson, basketball champion and conquering hero of the Big Apple, welcomes for the first time. The MVP point guard stumbles through his opening lines, which is appropriate given that he promises to approach the episode like he would a Knicks Finals game: “The first three quarters of the show are going to be horrible, but the last sketch is going to be amazing.” He teases a musical performance before abandoning the idea, briefly brings up his hater Stephen A Smith (Kenan Thompson) to apologize, and takes some questions and taunts from four of his teammates in the audience. Brunson’s stoicism can certainly be used for deadpan laughs, but looking at the charismatic and awkward Karl-Anthony Towns here, one can’t help but think he might have been the better choice to host.

A post-lunch work meeting is distracted by a game of trash hoops, as Brunson’s office drone Darius misses a few easy shots and keeps resetting the time on an imaginary clock to try to sink one. He brings laughter early in the evening, responding to the one co-worker (Sarah Sherman) who condescendingly tells him he’s out of food packaging with “Am I, bitch?” before taking out a full basket.

A new season of Dream Academy is looking for a new group of girls. However, the contestants find themselves saddled with two desperate problems: Duff (Jane Wickline) and Margle (Grace Reiter), who only got on the show because they witnessed the executive producer commit a hit-and-run. Despite being completely unsuited for pop stardom, they managed to win the competition with their bizarre single Newton’s Cradle. Season one winners (and tonight’s musical guests) Katseye show up to premiere their new music video. This provides a good showcase for Wickline, recently promoted to the main cast, and brand new star player Reiter. The latter, who has a ready-made fan base thanks to her fame on YouTube and TikTok, makes her debut to a remarkably loud round of applause.

What we first assume is that an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting turns out to be a support group for men whose wives and girlfriends have been brought on stage at an Usher-Chris Brown concert. The men all talk about the trauma of watching their wives get fucked and seduced on stage and on social media. The best line comes from Kam Patterson, who ruefully asks, “If God is real, why would He create talented light skin people?” »

High School Musical: The New Generation sees Brunson playing a transfer student who tries out for the North High basketball team, dominating and brutally humiliating the Zac Efron-like captain during his big musical number. The punishment doesn’t stop on the field, as he easily seduces the kid’s girlfriend. Short and mean, it makes good use of Brunson’s icy demeanor and Jeremy Culhane’s theater-kid energy.

During a long layover, two businessmen (Mikey Day and Brunson) relieve their stress using the business class air-massage chairs. They enjoy them a little too hard, making the other passengers deeply uncomfortable with their orgasmic moans and contortions. This is pretty much a one-man show for Day, who is always best when he breaks away from his usual straight-man roles.

On Weekend Update, returning anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che cover the week’s news, including Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to an empty hall at the UN following a walkout by delegates protesting his country’s war on Gaza. Per Che: “I assume that wherever Netanyahu shows up, there will be relocations. Che returns to this subject a little later, reporting that Macklemore, the rapper who was excluded from Ed Sheeran’s opening act because of his public support for Gaza, is considering organizing his own free Palestine tour. The live audience applauds, before Che asks: “But haven’t the Palestinian people endured enough?” »

Update’s first guest is Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (Wickline, sporting jaw-dropping prosthetics). Having recently sounded the alarm about the existential threat AI poses to humanity, Amodei exclaims: “If we can pressure lawmakers to create safeguards, we can stop me. » Mumbling and disassociating like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, he tries to reassure everyone that AI won’t kill us all, but completely fails by blurting out the truth: “AI is the devil, and I am its creator!

Later, Jost invites political pundit Tucker Carlson to discuss this summer’s blockbuster films, such as The Odyssey (“It’s so nice to see the Greeks doing something other than making women uncomfortable”), Spider-Man (“Whole new genre”), Obsession (“The left’s idea of a horror movie is that a woman is obligated to love a man”) and Minions and Monsters (“I’m not talking about the children’s movie, I’m talking about The Cabinet Trump”). Culhane’s impersonation of Carlson, which has been very successful on social media, is very convincing on the surface, but the caricature remains years out of date, although at least they finally acknowledged that Carlson had become critical of Trump. But that’s not enough, and as long as Culhane and his colleagues continue to present Carlson as an old-school Christian neoconservative, as opposed to the hard-line anti-interventionist (and particularly anti-Israel) and ultra-white nationalist he is today, it will remain blunted.

The following sketch sees a third grade teacher (Ben Marshall) meeting the mother of one of his gifted students, as well as her many lovers. This is a fragile setup seemingly developed around the fence line: “Let’s just say I’m always late for the bus, but I’m never late for the train.” »

Then, two self-proclaimed feminist inventors (Marshall and Culhane) present their creation – a pair of glasses that beep loudly when the wearer looks at a woman’s breasts – on Shark Tank. They can’t wait more than a few seconds before their invention is unleashed every time there’s a woman nearby.

In the final sketch, Brunson, playing himself, finds himself harassed by two scammers claiming to be his former third-year coach and his father, respectively. A risky joke involving someone giving Spider-Man oral sex gets a big laugh, but otherwise it’s a low note to end on.

Brunson was a normally stiff host, but he was by no means terrible. When it comes to professional athletes who have hosted in recent seasons, he ranks somewhere in the middle. The biggest problem was the general lack of enthusiasm. Aside from a few moments where the newly elevated or first-year cast got to shine, this felt more like a midseason episode than a season premiere — especially one that lands a little over a month before the midterm elections. Hopefully SNL has more exciting and politically relevant material in store for the coming weeks.