Last year, I wrote an article about the uncertain future of the popular sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. I worried that the television show, which has run for nearly five decades and produced some of the most famous names in comedy, was hitting a rough patch that it wouldn’t be able to recover from. At the time, the show had been in a slump for a while: many of the sketches felt bland, half-baked, or too focused on current events and pop culture, many of the musical guests were lackluster, the hosts too often were inexperienced in comedy and as a result, the popular show struggled immensely. Add to that the exodus of cast members like Kate McKinnon, Aidy Briant, Alex Moffat, Pete Davidson, and Cecily Strong,, many of whom felt like they were carrying the show, and it really did appear as though SNL wasn’t going to be able to recover. But over the past year, by some miracle, I think they just might have.
We are currently in the middle of season 49 of SNL. As of writing this, the show has aired six episodes, the last one being hosted by Emma Stone with musical guest Noah Kahan. Slated for the next two weeks will be Adam Driver with musical guest Olivia Rodrigo, and Kate McKinnon with musical guest Billie Eilish. I don’t know how those episodes will turn out, though both of those pairings match up with the trends I’m about to discuss in this article, but right now it seems like the show is in a really great place. Granted, I’ve missed a few episodes, but I have watched nearly every sketch from this season on YouTube, and something about this new iteration of the show has somehow felt so correct, in ways that its recent predecessors have not.
Let’s break it down: what about SNL season 49 is working?
To start, they have definitely upped their game with the hosts and musical guests. SNL has always had at least a few huge stars hosting/performing per season, but this time around, every single episode so far has been something to look forward to, just because of the host and musical guest. For one thing, many of the hosts are experienced to some degree in comedy, either by having actually been on SNL or proving their prowess when they’ve hosted in the past. SNL tends to pick a host so that the host can promote a new piece of media they’re in, but because of the writers and actors strike, they haven’t been allowed to actually plug that work until very recently. Thus, although they have continued the trend of picking hosts who have a big movie or a TV Show out right now, it seems like that has become less of a focus than actually being funny.
I mentioned before that they seem to be picking hosts who are experienced to some degree in comedy, or at least have proven their comedic skills in the past. The season premiere of SNL season 49 was hosted by Pete Davidson, a longtime former cast member of SNL and one of the many whose comedy career has expanded beyond the show into even more mainstream media. In the second episode of the season, Bad Bunny hosted and performed as the musical guest. I was a little worried because I didn’t know how funny he was, but the episode turned out surprisingly funny. Other hosts this season have included Nate Bargatze, an experienced stand-up comedian; Timothée Chalamet, who had hosted previously and done quite well; Jason Momoa, a veteran actor with a lot of off-screen charisma; and my personal favorite, Emma Stone, who joined the five-timers club this past weekend. Stone in particular absolutely destroyed her episode -- there was only one skit that was a little bit unfunny, and even that was pretty bearable. She brought such incredible range to her characters, and it was clear she knew what she was doing. Even more so, she fully committed to each skit, and took the time to memorize her lines instead of reading from the cue cards, so she was able to keep the pace going the whole time. Her acting felt real, and that made it so much more funny.
My point is this -- nearly every host so far has demonstrated that they know how to do sketch-comedy, or that they are just naturally funny. The host makes a huge difference, not only because it can dramatically increase viewership, but also because they are in nearly every sketch, so they can make or break an episode.
I mentioned the musical guests briefly as well. The musical guest isn’t as important as the host, and episodes can still be great without a great musical guest. But they do help to increase viewership, sometimes even more than the host, since pop stars generally have a larger, more dedicated fanbase than actors and comics. The musical guests this season have been absolutely incredible. I love Ice Spice, but I’ll be the first to admit she seemed a little uncomfortable up on stage. But even so, she wasn’t bad, and all the others have been even better. Bad Bunny, the Foo Fighters, Boygenius, Tate McRae, and Noah Kahan were all amazing, and that helps to maintain the energy throughout the show, instead of making the performances feel like an interruption that we have to sit through until we can get back to the sketches.
The cast has also been one of the major successes of the season. This current iteration has some people who are now longtime members of the show and who know how to consistently bring the laughs, like Kenan Thompson, Heidi Gardner, and Mikey Day, as well as the weekend update anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, who are often the funniest part of the episode (along with the filmed sketches by the Please Don’t Destroy trio). Additionally, we have more recent members who have proven themselves incredibly capable in the past few seasons. Oftentimes, it feels as though the newer talent on the show is forced to take roles that don’t really fit their comedic sensibilities, but this time, it seems like SNL is using them in sketches where they are able to really shine, instead of being background parts for the older cast members. A great example is Chloe Fineman, the star impressionist of the cast. Unlike Melissa Villaseñor, a former cast member whose incredible talent for impersonation rarely saw any use on SNL, Fineman has been able to showcase her skills regularly, and it really seems like she has a purpose on the show. This is also true for the most recent, featured cast members, such as Chloe Troast, whose vocals are so good she could be on Broadway. Those pipes have already been a main focus of two of the sketches, a shockingly good amount of airtime for someone in the newest generation of the cast. In the past, SNL would frequently give parts to people based on seniority, but it now feels as though the cast members are receiving roles that are best suited, almost tailored, to them. Everyone is in their element, and that means they’re able to do the work they do best.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the writing this season is some of the best that the show has had in a long time. For a while, one of the main critiques of SNL was that it was “too political.” I talked about this in my article on the show last year, but I would disagree. SNL has always been political. The problem was that far too many of the sketches were based on a recent event in pop culture, and instead of fleshing out an actual storyline, the whole joke was “oh, remember this thing that happened that was so wild a few weeks ago?” Don’t get me wrong, the show still has its fair share of these, but it’s nowhere near as many as in previous seasons. Instead, many of the sketches, even the ones that are semi-referential, are creative, original, well-executed, and some even have an ending (a rarity on the show). The first one that comes to mind was a sketch from the Emma Stone episode, which riffed on how the song “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Mama Cass has shown up in many films and trailers recently. It referenced without being so obvious that the only joke was the basic premise. Stone’s character was so outrageously funny, it was in my mind one of the best sketches the show has had in the past ten years, possibly of all time. Another sketch from that episode, a prerecorded song about being fully nude in the city of New York, was similarly hilarious, not only because of its ridiculous premise, but because the things that happened just kept getting weirder and weirder. It feels like SNL is no longer trying to play it safe and is willing to take crazier and crazier ideas for sketches, and I for one am here for it.
Of course, there are many things that could still be improved on at SNL. Like I mentioned earlier, most sketches have an unnatural ending. I wish the cold opens had less of “President Biden/former president Trump addresses the nation,” and featured more variety in their characters and premises. And I miss how there used to be a lot more prerecorded sketches with advertisements for insane products (there have been a few but not nearly as many as before). But overall, the show is absolutely heading in the direction that it needs to be. This season has felt like a return to form, not to the past decade, but of the 90s and early 2000s SNL that many viewers consider to be their favorite era of the show. If they keep doing what they’re doing, I think they can be fairly certain that the show won’t be going away anytime soon.