Saturday Night Live: Jalen Brunson makes for stiff host in underwhelming season premiere

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

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

A rather weak cold open considering it’s the season premiere. Padilla’s caricature of Harp as a deranged, Fatal Attraction-like stalker is gold and should have been the focus here. Unfortunately, the show decided to lean on Mamdani, which might have worked if they got someone else to portray him, preferably a cast member – you’d think they’d want to bring in someone who could play that role given how prominent a national figure he’s become – or, failing that, a guest with more star wattage than Youssef.

Jalen Brunson, the basketball champion and conquering hero of the Big Apple, hosts for the first time. The MVP point guard stumbles over his first lines, which is appropriate considering he promises to approach the episode like he would a Knicks Finals game: “The first three quarters of the show are gonna be godawful, but the last sketch is gonna be amazing.” He teases a musical performance before discarding the idea, briefly brings out his hater Stephen A Smith (Kenan Thompson) to apologize, and fields some questions and ribbing from four of his teammates in the audience. Brunson’s stoicism can definitely be used for deadpan laughs, but watching the goofily charismatic Karl-Anthony Towns here, one can’t help but think he may have been the better choice to host.

A post-lunch work meeting gets sidetracked by a game of wastebasket hoops, as Brunson’s office drone, Darius, misses a couple of easy shots and keeps putting time back on an imaginary clock to try to sink one. He scores the biggest laugh of the night early, responding to the lone female co-worker (Sarah Sherman) patronizingly telling him he’s out of food wrappers with “Am I, bitch?” before pulling out a basket stuffed with them.

A new season of Dream Academy searches for a new breakout girl group. However, contestants find themselves saddled with two hopeless hot messes: 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 ill-suited to pop stardom, they manage to win the competition with their bizarre single Newton’s Cradle. Season one winners (and tonight’s music guests), Katseye, show up to introduce their new music video. This makes for a good showcase for Wickline, recently promoted to the main cast, and brand-new featured player Reiter. The latter, who has a ready-made fanbase thanks to her prominence on YouTube and TikTok, debuts to a noticeably loud round of applause.

What we first assume is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is revealed to be a support group for men whose wives and girlfriends were brought on stage at an Usher-Chris Brown concert. The men all talk about the trauma of having their ladies dry-humped and seduced on stage and across social media. The best line comes via Kam Patterson, who ruefully asks: “If God is real, why would he create talented light-skins?”

High School Musical: The New Generation sees Brunson play a transfer student who tries out for the North High basketball team, brutally dominating and humiliating the Zac Efron-like captain during his big musical number. The punishment doesn’t stop on the court, 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 by using the business-class air-massage chairs. They enjoy them a little too loudly, making the other passengers deeply uncomfortable with their orgasmic moaning and writhing. This is pretty much a one-man show for Day, who is always best when cut loose from his usual straight-man roles.

On Weekend Update, returning anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che cover the week’s news stories, including Benjamin Netanyahu addressing an empty chamber at the UN following a walkout of delegates protesting against his country’s war on Gaza. Per Che: “I guess wherever Netanyahu shows up, there’s gonna be some relocating.” Che circles back to this topic a little later, reporting that Macklemore, the rapper who was dropped as the opening act for Ed Sheeran over his public support of Gaza, plans to stage his own Free Palestine tour. The live audience cheers, before Che asks: “But haven’t the Palestinian people been through enough?”

Update’s first guest is Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei (Wickline, sporting some bang-on prosthetics). After recently sounding the alarm over the existential threat to humanity posed by AI, Amodei exclaims: “If we can pressure lawmakers to create guardrails, we will be able to stop me.” Mumbling and dissociating like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, he attempts to reassure everyone that AI won’t kill us all, but utterly fails by blurting out the truth: “AI is the devil, and I its maker!”

Later, Jost invites the political pundit Tucker Carlson on to discuss this summer’s hit movies, such as The Odyssey (“It’s so nice to see Greek people do something other than make women feel uncomfortable”), Spider-Man (“Brand New Gender”), Obsession (“The left’s idea of a horror movie is that a woman is forced to love a man”), and Minions and Monsters (“I’m not talking about the children’s film, I’m talking about the Trump cabinet”). Culhane’s Carlson impersonation, which has been a big hit on social media, is very convincing on a surface level, but the caricaturization remains years out of date, although at least they’ve finally acknowledged that Carlson has become critical of Trump. But that’s not enough, and so long as Culhane and co continue to present Carlson as an old-school Christian neocon, as opposed to the anti-interventionist (and particularly anti-Israel) hardliner and ultra-white nationalist that he is today, it will remain blunted.

The next sketch sees a third-grade teacher (Ben Marshall) meet with the mother of one of his gifted students, as well as her numerous lovers. It’s a flimsy setup seemingly developed around the closing line: “Let’s just say, I’m always late for the bus, but I’m never late for the train.”

Then, two self-described feminist inventors (Marshall and Culhane) present their creation – a pair of eyeglasses that loudly beep when the wearer stares at a woman’s breasts – on Shark Tank. They can’t make it more than a couple of seconds before their invention goes wild any time there’s a woman nearby.

In the closing sketch, Brunson, playing himself, finds himself harassed by a pair of scammers claiming to be his old third-grade coach and father, respectively. A risque joke involving someone giving oral sex to Spider-Man gets a big guffaw, but otherwise, this is a weak note to end on.

Brunson made for an expectedly stiff host, but he was by no means terrible. As far as pro athletes who have hosted over the last few seasons, he ranks somewhere in the middle. The bigger issue was the overall lack of excitement. Outside a few moments where the newly elevated or freshman cast members got to shine, this felt more like a mid-season episode rather than a season premiere – especially one that lands just a little more than a month out from midterm elections. Hopefully SNL has more exciting and politically relevant material in store for the next few weeks.