Saturday Night Live: Bad Bunny is game but the season opener...

Season 51 of Saturday Night Live comes during a pivotal moment for late-night television, with the Trump administration expressly going after comedians who criticize and mock the president. There was never any doubt SNL would jump headfirst into the fray upon its return, the only question is which of the many current ongoing disasters – the government shutdown, military incursions into major cities, an impeding attack on Venezuela, the Epstein files – it would tackle first.

The answer is: all of them. We jump back to earlier this week at Quantico, where secretary of war Pete Hegseth’s hatches the “brilliant idea to gather all of our nation’s top generals in one place at a one time”. New cast member Jeremy Culhane introduces the Fox News host turned leader of the world’s largest military (Colin Jost, making a rare sketch appearance), who launches into an angry tirade over how “our army has never been gayer and yet it also has never been fatter!” He demands all soldiers adhere to the highest physical standard, as set by Trump: “Six-foot-six, buck 75, A-cups – perky – with a dump truck you wouldn’t believe!”

After announcing that they will soon be deployed into Portland, he’s interrupted by Trump (James Austin Johnson), who barges on stage to declare the deadliest enemy of all: late-night television.

He’s keeping a close watch on SNL, which is off to a rough start: “Seventeen new cast members and they got the Update guy doing the open.” A couple more digs at Jost – including a howler about him not getting invited to the Riyadh comedy festival (“We love the Saudis because they like to saw these journalists in half”) – before he boots him off stage, although not before telling him “May every day be another wonderful secret – that was a quote from a poem I wrote to a horrible man I never met before.”

Trump rambles about his summer (“Took a little vacation time for golf, and travel, and STROKE”), ending all the wars (“Except the two main ones that are still happening and more vicious than ever”), and starting a new war in Venezuela despite the government being shut down. He signs off by making the crew promise to keep an eye on cast member Marcello Hernández.

A scattershot cold open, which is understandable given how much ground there was to cover. Jost was perfect as Hegseth and it’s a wonder they hadn’t tapped him for the role prior to now. Johnson’s Trump remains a winner, and hopefully the material about him will get even more vicious as the season continues.

As referenced in the cold open, this season sees a big turnover in cast, with several members having left the show and five new featured players coming aboard. You would think Lorne Michaels and co would turn to a tried-and-true comic performer to anchor this episode, but no, tonight’s hosting duties are given over Bad Bunny. Granted, the musician has hosted once before and appeared in sketches across four other episodes (including last season’s big 50th anniversary special), but that hardly makes him Steve Martin.

Still, he’s a game performer, poking fun at himself for his goofy dancing and partying with a drug fueled Jon Hamm (or, Juan Jamon), who pops up in the front row of the studio audience. He talks about how excited everyone – including reactionary Fox News personalities – has been about his upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, transitioning from English to his native tongue during a heartfelt message of perseverance to his fellow Latinos and Latinas in the United States. Rather than translating his message into English, he ends by encouraging anyone who didn’t understand what he said to spend the next four months ahead of the big game learning Spanish.

On a new episode of Jeopardy, Bad Bunny’s last-place contestant Duke continues to get deeper in the hole by either not phrasing his answers in the form of a question or asking a question without giving the answer, although he eventually ends up winning the game by asking “what is the who” to a question about British rock group The Who. This was a clever premise, but it fails to get as comically convoluted as it should.

Chat GP Tio is “the first AI that feels like talking to a Latino uncle”. Hernández and Bad Bunny provide their unfiltered, loud and usually unhelpful and sexually explicit opinions on everything, from fashion, to the nature of God, and spicy cunnilingus techniques. The first of several sketches that will pair Hernández and Bad Bunny together (I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Lorne-produced feature film for the two of them down the line.)

Next, Bad Bunny plays a sleazy restaurant patron who eavesdrops on a lesbian couple asking their close friend to be their sperm donor. He excitedly offers his services (“I could just give you some of my stuff … you could put it in the front, you could put it in the back, whatever you want”). This one is forgotten as soon as it ends.

A catch-up brunch between long-time friends turns tense over the Netflix phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters, which Bad Bunny’s member takes way too seriously. This leads to a musical battle between Bowen Yang and the film’s voice actors Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami. Fans of the film will likely enjoy this, everyone else will be left completely cold.

Musical guest Doja Cat performs her first song of the night, then its on to Weekend Update, with returning anchors Jost and Michael Che. After the first run down of current events, they bring on new cast member Kam Patterson. Patterson gets straight to business: “I’ve been here for like 4 or 5 minutes now. When ya’ll gonna let me say the N-word?” His entire act – both stand up and character work (which includes the likes of Michael Richards, Paula Deen and Hulk Hogan) – requires him to say it, although Jost convinces him to wait at least a few episodes. A short, but effective introduction to the young comic.

Later, to discuss JK Rowling’s criticisms of Harry Potter star Emma Watson and her public campaign of transphobia, is Dobby the House Elf (Yang). Sent by his “master” Rowling, Dobby tries to defend Rowling for all she’s done for inclusion: “Remember when Dumbledore was gay (after the books came out) and when Hermoine was black (only on Broadway).” A long-overdue and well-deserved shot at the self-pitying, bigoted children’s author.

In 900 AD, Bad Bunny’s Spanish king decides to make the language harder to learn by decreeing that “every word is a boy or a girl.” He rolls through a few of these new rules, some of which make sense, but several of which don’t (dress, for example, is a boy word). A new member of the court, played by Benicio del Toro, joins in with a few more unrelated new rules, such as “I think we should take a nap in the middle of the day”. It’s clear the writers were attempting to put a Latin spin on the popular Nate Bargatze George Washington sketches, but they don’t take the premise far enough. Still, it’s awesome to see Del Toro pop in, fresh off career best work in the new Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson movies, respectively.

Then, Bad Bunny plays the father to Hernández’s troubled teen, called into the principal’s office to discuss disturbing pictures his son has been drawing of his teacher (Ashley Padilla). Although she’s initially upset by the drawings – including ones in which she’s beheaded and beaten with a baseball – she’s so smitten with the single dad that she dismisses the problem and spends the rest of the meeting awkward swooning over him. There’s a lot of dead air in this one.

The episode wraps up with a parody of classic Mexican comedy series El Chavo. Hernández, Bad Bunny and Sarah Sherman play goofy children causing trouble inside an apartment complex. Everyone involved mugs things up to an embarrassing degree, which to be fair is in keeping with the style of the actual show, but the audience is completely cold to it, at least until Hamm pops in for a last second cameo. Brutal stuff.

This was mostly a mediocre episode, which is par for the course for SNL season openers in recent years. The cold open was the closest thing to a highlight, and it’s a pity more of the episode wasn’t dedicated to political material (especially since Bad Bunny has of late become a target of the racist right). Meanwhile, only one new face got a chance to introduce themselves, while a lot of the regular cast was lost in the shuffle. Saturday Night Live has felt overstuffed for a long time now, and it doesn’t seem like this season will be any different.