It’s only the second episode into SNL’s new season so it’s a little early to tell what new cast members (if any) will pop out of the pack, and right now I’m having a hard time telling at least two of the five new white guys apart. Still, I’m ready to welcome the change since I feel like the “old guard” SNL (Sudekis, Hader, Wiig, Armisten) was getting stale and ten years is too long for any cast member to stay there.
Tonight’s new episode featured less of the new cast members than last week, and was more about Miley, Miley, Miley. Very few sketches didn’t center around how wild her persona has become and had her playing a caricature of that or just playing herself. It’s not that she did a bad job, it’s just that it’s already been so parodied (and wasn’t more than skin deep to begin with) that it was hard to really do anything new with it or expand on jokes that everyone else made a month ago. The opening sketch directly referencing her VMAs performance was painfully unfunny and featured a lousy Robin Thicke joke that was the height of lazy. Since when do SNL writers just borrow their material from TMZ?
A disappointing episode all the way around, and I’m also wondering why they chose Cecily Strong to co-host Weekend Update with Seth Myers when it’s clear she’s fantastic in sketches, but maybe the underused Nasim Pedra would have been a better fit for the Update chair. Grade for this episode: C [Although Tina Fey’s episode from last week was much stronger, no surprise since Tina Fey’s episodes as head writer were always much stronger than Seth Myers’ current episodes as head writer.]