SNL is back and Pete Davidson was the host. His opening was perfect.
Article is about Pete Davison hosting SNL
The preview in the above-the-fold video is a picture of Taylor Swift
Well done, editors.
Well, they did a lot of Taylor-Kelce jokes on the show. Taylor and Kelce both had a brief appearance.
But the article does contain a transcript of his full opening. I found it to be very touching.
I’m seeing Pete now
The cold open by Pete Davidson had the right tone. The situation had to be addressed in some way in order to move on to the rest of the show and we thought they did quite well with it.
Pete’s monolog was pretty good. We’ve never seen him to stand-up. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but we’ve always kind of liked him.
We watched through Weekend Update, which has been better. Everything in between was pretty underwhelming. The bit with the “writers” was amusing, though.
This may be a stupid question but isn’t SAG still on strike? Does the cast not belong? Usually at least some of them do some outside acting roles. I would think that they would honor the strike.
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/movies-shows-airing-amid-sag-strike/
Reality and variety shows will keep airing
These shows aren’t directly affected by the strike because their unionized cast members work under a different SAG-AFTRA contract, commonly known as the Network Television Code, which doesn’t expire until June 2024. Hosts and presenters for these shows can still work. The simultaneous writers strike shouldn’t affect them
I think they were blocked by the WGA until the settlement or at least they wouldn’t cross the lines
We missed the cold open and came in during his monologue. Reading his cold open, yeah appropriately played. SNL has some practice coming on after tragedies. That’s their play and he executed it well.
Unfortunately he and the team failed in their goal of trying to be funny. This was unfunny. Painfully unfunny.
We are all used to a few dud skits, one or two that work, and decent on the news bits. This had none that worked, nothing funny, including the news. The making Colin say racist “jokes” schtick is so overdone. Having his nose booped was the only smile earned the whole show.
It went from funny to very sad pretty quickly at the end. (I’m not complaining, it was good. Just sad)
Yeah…when he mentioned the fate of the girl he’d had relations with the audience didn’t know how to react. Neither did we. There was almost a sudden intake of breath, Then he hit the punchline, which tied the whole story together, which kind of defused the situation. The joke wasn’t in good taste, for sure, but he’s one of those people from whom I wouldn’t expect good taste.
My wife walked in just as they started the bit with the kids doing stand-up, and she stuck around to laugh appreciatively until it ended, which means that it’s possible that she thinks they’re batting a thousand…
Now that’s funnier than anything I saw on the ep! 
Every time I think the musical guest is a gross parody of contemporary music, another musical guest comes along with even less talent.
I’m old, I know.
I keep swearing that I’m done with this wretched show. I haven’t been particularly impressed with it for a long time. But old habits die hard, and with SAG-AFTRA still on strike, it’s part of the tiny trickle of new content that we’ll be getting for the foreseeable future, so I tuned in. The sketch about the sportscasters wasn’t too bad, and I stuck around through Pete’s song, but the sketch about the secretary was atrocious and drove me to bail out.
I was surprised at the lack of political jokes and skits. No Trump and no Biden? That’s usually in the cold open (in which Davidson doing a splendid and appropriate job). All that I recall was a line in Weekend Update about Black George Santos.
The AV Club was mostly underwhelmed by the SNL season opener.
My teen laughed a lot. I did too, but it felt more like the episode was written for teen girls, my kid in particular (Taylor jokes, Barbie takes, Marvel interview spoofs). The monologue and cold open did fall flat and I had to explain Def Comedy Jam and why that was funny, the Original Kings of Comedy, etc. So half for teens, half for middle-aged Gen X parents.
Neither of us loved the incest and overdose stuff. But as far as expectations of a Pete hosted show? I guess they were exceeded but the bar was on the floor.
Yep. My 15 yo daughter said she was laughing out loud and really enjoyed the episode. I thought it was middling.
The weekend update skit with “I hope the cops find them before I do” was cringe worthy.
I found it funny with a few LOL moments. I’d been laughing at the Taylor Swift and Kelcie news and Dion Sanders stuff for weeks and they nailed it. I was happy to not have any political stuff, there is enough of that in the real world.