Saturday Night Live season 49 premiere: Pete Davidson returns with the same old jokes
From Staten Island to BDE, the comedian hits all of his familiar beats. (Oh, and the world's biggest pop star also drops by.)
The prodigal son has returned: Pete Davidson, erstwhile “Weekend Update” wunderkind/prolific seducer of Hollywood’s most famous women, is back. The Bupkis star—who, as the first cast member born in the 1990s, was relegated to being the show’s “resident young person” during his tenure—departed Saturday Night Live in May 2022 after eight seasons. Originally set to host a May 2023 episode late into season 48 (more on that later), he instead made his return for the season 49 premiere in a decidedly Gen Z episode that also featured TikTok favorite Ice Spice as the musical guest. But despite the youthful airs—including a surprise cameo from the world’s biggest pop star—the opening episode felt sadly stale.
Cold open: Acknowledging the unavoidable
“This week, we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel, and Gaza and I know what you’re thinking: Who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?” the comedian somberly opened the show. But Davidson made a strong case for his input: He tragically lost his own father, an FDNY firefighter, to an act of terrorism in the 9/11 attacks and related his own childhood grief to the suffering that countless innocent children are currently experiencing in the Middle East. Pointing to the way the 1983 stand-up special Eddie Murphy: Delirious helped him navigate his sorrow, he promised to do what he always does in the face of tragedy: “Try to be funny…remember, I said try.” Sometimes, comedy is the only way forward through tragedy, he explained. And forward we go.
Monologue: Is this 2023 or 2013?
The tough thing about kicking off a new season of SNL is the wealth of joke-worthy material that occurred during the show’s down season, an especially lengthy one this time around as season 48 was shortened due to the writers’ strike. (Speaking of strikes, SNL was granted permission to resume during the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike because the show is not covered under the same contract that the actors’ union is striking over.) And yet, instead of trying to weave in topical beats, Davidson’s stand-up monologue tackled such of-the-moment news as…the amount of incest in Game of Thrones, a series that has been off the air for [checks calendar] four years.
Best sketch of the night
No, it wasn’t a shock seeing a Barbie-related bit given how much of a phenomenon the fuschia-hued flick was this past summer. Nor was it a surprise to see Davidson take on Ryan Gosling’s instantly iconic “I’m Just Ken” power ballad and retool it with his usual self-deprecating snark. (“I’m Just Pete, looking like a meth head on the street.”) However, that expectation didn’t make it any less enjoyable to see the comedy star gamely croon about his “butthole eyes” and bipolar disorder. Though, like the original movie musical number, the segment could’ve been trimmed a solid minute, it was worth it for the thrusting “Kenergy” dance breakdown dedicated to Davidson’s most infamous appendage.
Worst waste of a celebrity cameo
If you needed any proof that Saturday Night Live was attempting to cater to a younger demo, just count how many Taylor Swift references the writers’ room shoehorned into the premiere. (If it was a drinking game, you’d be well on your way to rigor mortis.) A Fox NFL Sunday sketch saw Mikey Day’s Howie Long, Devon Walker’s Michael Strahan, Molly Kearney’s Terry Bradshaw, and James Austin Johnson’s Jimmy Johnson’s football analysis swiftly devolve into sheer Swift Mania, with Davidson as Kenny Ditullio videoing in for a spirited rendition of “Love Story.” (He’s no Richie Jerimovich, but who is?) It all culminated in a rather lackluster appearance by the pop star’s rumored beau, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, but that wasn’t the most confounding celebrity cameo of the night: that belonged to Swift herself, who later blandly popped up to surprise-introduce Ice Spice’s performance of “Pretty Girl.”
MVP of the night: Heidi Gardner
On the whole, most of the sketches Gardner was featured in this week didn’t work: The “Glamgina” bit (“makeup for your other face”) would have fared far better as a fake commercial, and that USS Asperon space number was an absolute yawn but Gardner made good use of every minute of screentime, flinging her Secretary Trudy through a wooden office desk with a full-bodied slapstick glee that would make Chris Farley proud. Honorable mention goes to Bowen Yang and his campy Christopher Columbus, all trilled Rs and self-delusion. (According to Chris, he also “discovered” electricity, Tex-Mex, and the “sad gay songs” of boygenius.)
Stray observations
- Mentions of Staten Island (a.k.a. “the only island in the world with a worse reputation than Epstein”) in the monologue alone: five.
- Between Chris Columbus’ Hot Ones mention and that “Sean McEvans” character in the Wired Autocomplete Interview spoof, this episode seemingly comes to you by way of First We Feast.
- One of the current iteration’s most reliably funny bits is Michael Che bamboozling Colin Jost into saying racist things from the “Weekend Update” desk. This week’s “Ebony Alerts” bit was no exception.
- The season 49 cast has one fresh face: Welcome new featured player Chloe Troast!