2026-10-06
Saturday Night Live. Season 51. Episode 2. October 3, 2026.
Late start for reasons I do not know. Maybe you want to squeeze the newscast and sportscast, WDIV, in order to realign your affiliate with the network schedule . . . or maybe the network schedule was messed up because of [local sports team]. How should I know? But first, a wad of annoying, ham-fisted political commercials.
1. RNC cold open. A series of solid jokes, which blew away, forgotten, with the appearance of James Austin Johnson’s Trump. Here is the problem with relying on this impression too much, as the show has. This cold open would’ve worked much better without the J.A.J. Trump, which just spun it into, “Ugh, this thing again” and killed the sketch dead.
2. Dakota Johnson guest host monologue. A red plasticized Johnson relies on stunt casting from Tater-Tot Swiffer, which also cannot save this empty air-biscuit.
3. Press Your Luck. Augh! Game show! No. Just no. (And Dakota doesn’t known the difference between 2,000 and 20,000.) Ashley Padilla’s commitment to even the rottenest premises is admirable, if, as in this case, completely misplaced.
4. Mean Scary Girlfriend pre-tape. Starts with a little promise, then crashes. Semi-premise overload. Pick a lane, rather than swerving through seven or eight of them and not sticking anything.
5. Hospital cafeteria gossip. Medical waste. Biohazard.
6. Gun for women pre-tape. Another one of those sketches written by and for not-terribly-bright seventh-grade boys. Does the sketch work if its centerpiece is a visual that standards & practices mandates must be pixelated? Well, it evidently doesn’t help any.
7. Game Of Thrones ended in 2019. “I’m such an expressive puppet.” No jokes. And no ending/punchline.
8. Musical guest Turnstile. “Me and my friends got this band. It’s kind of like a Beasties Aglia e Olio tribute act, only not as good. You should come out and…uh, endure us. We’re pretty edgy. For example, our drummer doesn’t wear a shirt.” [Gasp.] On the positive side, it was brief, if derivative and tedious.
9. Weakened Upchuck. What was once the show’s defibrillator paddles has become its unresponsive coma patient snowed with Ativan, yet somehow smug about being comatose. Three desk pieces, none of which worked. Can we get a dialect coach for Sarah Sherman, please? It lasted 20 minutes this week, which just highlighted its shortcomings: the stale jokes, the anchors’ smugness, the ill-conceived “features” hammered into a mushy pulp and the hobbled pacing, among other less-than-delightful aspects.
10. Get-ready-with-me videos. Two premises. Neither worked, until they finally collided in a doubly pointless finish.
11. Turnstile II. Didn’t anybody tell you kids there’s no money above the fifth fret?
12. Amazing Tales Of Truth. Is that supposed to be Rod Serling? Not even close. “Yeah, we have a title…and a song…and a title…and, well, that’s pretty much it.”
“I suppose anything funny is too much to hope for.”
“You are correct. Nothing amusing whatsoever.”
Given what a great singer Veronika Slowikowska seems to be, why throw that away, instead of finding a way to make it . . . y’know . . . like, the, uh, comedic engine of a sketch?
13. Goodnight. And so, after what feels like a four-hour sentence to a some anti-comedy gulag, we are at last set free as Dakota Johnson turns another year older. How many more unwatched/unwatchable movies is she going to make before her career fizzles completely?
Next week’s guest host: Slow-witted, doughy dimbulb Shane Gillis, White male moron privilege poster-boy, the pride of Pennsyltucky, and your guarantee it’ll be a Very Special™ Remedial Edition.
The genuinely funny, sharp Stephen Colbert gets canceled and this weekly garbage dump persists? Well, nobody ever said life — or television — was fair.
