As the seasons change and the weather gets colder, a new Saturday Night Live season has inevitably returned.  The show’s 48th season premiered on Oct. 1, with host Miles Teller and musical guest Kendrick Lamar. 

In June, at the end of the 47th season, many of the show’s long-time cast members departed from the show.  Comedians such as Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Alex Moffat, and many others went off to start their own ventures, such as television shows and stand-up comedy.  Pete Davidson has gone on to produce and act in a new show, Bupkis, that will be streaming on Peacock.  Joe Pesci co-stars in the show and it is said to be loosely based  on Davison’s life. 

The “Cold Open” of the season’s first episode, or the sketch before the introduction, was unlike anything they have ever done and received high praise from critics and fans alike.  In the sketch, host Miles Teller and cast member Andrew Dismukes played the parts of the Manning brothers, who do a commentary-style show covering Monday Night Football every week.  Fans watch this show for the brothers’ fun jokes and laughable chemistry.  In the sketch however, the “brothers” were watching SNL’s season premiere instead of their usual Football game.  They proceeded to break the fourth wall and crack jokes about how awful the sketch they were watching was.  This “sketch inside a sketch” was a typical Saturday Night Live skit that could have been shown any time in the past six years.  It consisted of ex-president Donald Trump, Trump-related characters, and other bad pop-culture jokes.  The reason this skit has gotten such high praise is because SNL has finally learned how to make fun of themselves. 

“When I first turned on my TV just to see another Trump sketch I almost turned it off.  I found it annoying how the writers constantly had the same jokes. I ended up loving it though, and the cold open was my favorite sketch of the night,” said sophomore Sarah Germana. 

The next week, on Oct. 8, the show was hosted by Brendan Gleason and musical guest WILLOW.  Gleason is an Irish actor who has starred in many movies, such as Braveheart (1995) and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). 

One memorable sketch from this episode was the Try Guys skit, where cast members Bowen Yang, Mikey Day, and Andrew Dismukes played three of the four Try Guys.  The Try Guys are a Buzzfeed YouTube group of four men who “try” different things.  They have made a large fan base by doing this, so when it came out that one of them, Ned Fulmer, cheated on his wife, people were understandably upset.  Many fans felt that SNL had made a mockery of the situation through their sketch, and were offended on behalf of the group. 

“It’s not okay that SNL was making jokes and teasing the Try Guys, when it was actually a really messed up situation.  They have worked for many years to produce content for their fans, and do not deserve to get made fun of on national television just because of what one of their coworkers did,” said sophomore Charlotte Packer.

The Weekend Update segment on this episode covered Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, Kanye West’s interview with Tucker Carlson, and Hurricane Ian, all while making jokes about the topics.  As a “special guest,” they brought out new cast member Marcello Hernandez, who did a stand-up style routine about the MLB playoffs.  WILLOW sang her songs “curious/furious” and “<ur a stranger>” on the show both gof which got high praise. 

“I really enjoy WILLOW’s song “No Control,”and wish she performed it on the show.  I did like her outfits in both performances and the cool lights as well,” said sophomore Emmett Cryan. 

In the third episode of the season, on Oct. 15, the host of the show was Meghan Thee Stallion.  She was also the musical guest of the day and had so-called “double duty.”  Fans were very excited to see her perform her music and  act in the skits. .  Many of her skits surrounded her “hot girl” personality, such as Hot Girl Hospital and Girl Talk.  In both of these sketches, she acted with cast members Ego Nwodim and Punkie Johnson, where they all played funny characters attaining (fix word choice) Meghan’s reputation.  For her musical performance, she sang her new song “Anxiety” which fans adored.  Overall, she got very good ratings from both fans and critics.

“Meghan Thee Stallion’s charisma brought her sketches to another level,” said writer Amanda Wicks for The Atlantic. 

Overall, Saturday Night Live has seemed to have gotten off to a good start with their season.  Although many watchers thought it may be hard to continue with such major cast changes, we have all been surprised how they have pulled it off in a rather seamless way.