The problem with betting on a sure thing over and over is that eventually your luck will probably run out.
“Saturday Night Live” has bet multiple times on Bad Bunny, an incredibly charismatic performer who was all over the show’s 50th anniversary specials earlier this year and who was an excellent host and musical guest in late 2023.
For the “SNL” 51st season premiere, Bad Bunny’s streak as a perfect go-to personality for the show has ended with an episode that was bafflingly weak, with dated sketches and writing that didn’t cater to the host’s strength as the show’s done in the past. Even appearances from Jon Hamm, “One Battle After Another” actor Benicio del Toro and Huntr/x, the trio of singers from the wildly popular “KPop Demon Hunters,” barely moved the needle on an episode that couldn’t find its footing until “Weekend Update” and then quickly lost momentum again afterward.
The musician is coming off a lengthy residency of concerts in Puerto Rico and was just announced as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime performer. Hosting the premiere should have been a victory lap with a summer’s worth of strong sketches to kick off the season. But it comes at a time of major cast and writer turnover, which couldn’t have helped. Last time he hosted, Bad Bunny was served well by sketches that either let him play himself, or let him speak throughout in Spanish (“The Age of Discovery” being a perfect example).
This time, he had to portray in English an obsessed “Kpop Demon Hunters” fan who happens to be an adult, a contestant on “Jeopardy” who simply can’t form answers into questions, a man who wants to donate sperm to strangers in a restaurant, and a member of a group of Spaniards in 900 A.D., including del Toro, trying to form the rules of their language (but discussed in English, for some reason).
The host fared a little better in two late sketches, one about an amorous principal (Ashley Padilla) disciplining a student (Marcello Hernández), and an homage to “El Chavo del Ocho” that wasn’t very funny, but was at least a pretty accurate recreation of the Mexican sitcom.
We’ve seen Bad Bunny soar on “SNL” when the material is built around his charm and abilities. This time, the writers shoehorned him into multiple sloppy sketches (“Jeopardy,” in particular, felt half-baked) that could have been written for any guest host. He deserved better.
Musical guest Doja Cat performed “AAHH MEN!” and “Gorgeous.” She didn’t appear in any sketches.
In the season’s first cold open, “SNL” relied again on the premise of a sketch getting going — in this case Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) berating U.S. military generals — and then being interrupted by a President Trump (James Austin Johnson) monologue. Given all the new cast members, Jost was a surprise to carry the first part, in which he complained as Hegseth, “our military is gay as Hell!” Hegseth said the military must be a place where there are “no fug-ups, no fatties, no facial hair, no body hair. Just hot shredded hairless men who are definitely not gay!” When Trump appeared, he said, “‘SNL’ 51 — off to a rough start. Seventeen new cast members and they got the ‘Update’ guy doing the cold open.” His meta commentary included references to the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival (Jost claimed he wasn’t invited), and a bad joke about Saudi Arabia that drew groans: “We like the Saudis because they like to saw-deez journalists in half.” Mikey Day appeared briefly as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and before Trump concluded, he made the “SNL” crew, whom he claimed as Trump voters, promise to “keep an eye on Marcello for me.”
In his monologue, Bad Bunny said the reason he wasn’t serving as musical guest like the last time he hosted was that he needed to rest. He showed footage from one of his concerts, including a shot of Hamm dancing along. Hamm was shown in the audience wearing the same tropical outfit. As for the Super Bowl controversy, the host deftly addressed it by showing a spliced together Fox News clip with hosts saying, “Bad Bunny is my favorite musician and he should be the next president.” Then, in Spanish, he thanked Latino fans in particular who’ve supported him and said that no one can erase their contributions to the United States. “If you didn’t understand what I said, you have four months to learn,” he concluded.
Best sketch of the night: ChatGPTío might take unexpected pictures of you
ChatGPT might be too nice and sycophantic; what if it were more like a Latino uncle who’s honest to a fault with you? In this mock commercial for OpenAI hosted by Chloe Fineman, Hernández and Bad Bunny play AI characters within ChatGPT who give loud advice and sometimes call in the middle of the night to ask about Smash Mouth. How do you make vegan banana bread? “You don’t!” Was Jesus really God? “Yes.” It doesn’t quite work as a concept if you think too much about it, but Hernández makes a meal yet again out of playing a Latino elder with strong opinions.
Also good: Huntr/x keep it ‘Golden’ for a superfan
While it wasn’t the best showcase for Bad Bunny, who struggled with line deliveries, this sketch about a “Kpop Demon Hunters” fan had a surprise appearance by the singers from the animated movie’s soundtrack, who performed part of their hit “Golden” and had some strangely funny dialogue, such as the reveals that one of the brunch companions is on the Epstein list (for flying JetBlue through his island) and another was the writer of the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Jeans commercial. It also featured Bowen Yang as “Demon Hunters” villain Jinu singing “Soda Pop,” another fun surprise.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Expect someone to make They K. Rowling shirts after this
New cast member Kam Patterson made his debut in a segment begging “SNL” to let him use the N-word (“I’m a stand-up comedian from Florida, saying that word is what I do!”). But it was Yang in prosthetics as Dobby the House Elf from “Harry Potter” who won the night despite a hilarious wardrobe malfunction — his rag outfit kept coming off at the shoulder. Dobby begins by defending J.K. Rowling’s views on transgender people, but ends up questioning the author’s views and freeing himself in the process with his possession of a They K. Rowling T-shirt. It’s a good thing Yang didn’t leave “SNL” as was rumored because this episode badly needed him.
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