In the second episode of the 43rd season of Saturday Night Live, the cold open was something a bit different than their usual Donald Trump sketch.
After being on stage at Route 91’s Harvest Music Festival while shots were being fired into the crowd, Jason Aldean opened the show by stating, “You can be sure we’re gonna walk through these tough times together, every step of the way, because when America is at its best, our bond and our spirit, it’s unbreakable,” followed by an emotional tribute to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”.
First time host Gal Gadot, best known for her recent role as Wonder Woman, began her monologue by addressing her accent. She then proceeded to speak in Hebrew to the people of her home country, Israel, as they got to watch the show live for the first time in history.
Shortly after, SNL cast member Leslie Jones (posing as Time Square’s very own Wonder Woman), came out and talked to Gadot about their character. Jones hilariously compared Gadot’s Wonder Woman to her own as Gadot bragged, “I have a lasso that makes people tell you the truth,” Jones fired back, “And bitch, I got vodka!”
Cutting Gadot some slack since it was her first time hosting, it wasn’t a bad monologue, but Jones sure helped make it memorable.
Following the commercial break, they opened with a sketch that they called “First Date”. OJ Simpson’s trial ran in the same year as the first season of SNL, 1975. So they’ve been following his whole showdown the entire span of the show. Now that he’s just gotten out of jail and was put on probation on October 1, the brilliant writers of SNL decided that he’s going to want to date again.
Gadot, who played his date, had grown up in a country where there was a war taking over during the 90s, rendering them very isolated from the outside world. Therefore, she had no idea who OJ was and throughout their date, there were people all around them taking pictures.
She didn’t understand why and he asked her if she ever Googles the people she goes out with. She said no, she likes to keep it mysterious. Then her friend called her and she admits it was in case he was crazy and she wanted to leave the date.
She tells her friend everything is okay and that she’ll talk to her later. After she hangs up, her phone starts blowing up but she ignores it and OJ gets her to leave with him, followed by looking at the camera and saying “I still got it”. This sketch probably got the most laughs overall.
The weekend update seemed to not be the best it could be. The only thing they brought up about the incident in Las Vegas was when Colin Jost compared the gunman with 47 guns to a person owning 47 cats and how no one should own 47 of anything. With that, Michael Che proceeded to state that 70 percent of Americans don’t even own guns and 3 percent of Americans own 50 percent of all the guns in the country, trying to bury the thought that “Americans love guns”.
The best part of the update was when Jost had Ruth Bader Ginsburg behind the desk, played by the hysterical Kate McKinnon. As we’ve seen her play this character so many times before, it was entertaining to watch with her signature “Ginsburns”.
A few more mediocre sketches later, SNL tried to spoof Gadot’s role of Wonder Woman in a sketch called “Themyscira,” an island nation of the Amazons. They began the sketch with Gadot and a group of girls training in combat. Then two girls come in on the island from a boat (played by Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant).
It basically turned into the girls on the boat asking the Amazonians if they’re gay, the girls from the island all denying it and ending with Gadot and McKinnon making out in an effort to get Gadot’s Amazonian queen to see if she’s actually gay.
When she denies feeling anything from the kiss, the girls get back in their boat and leave. This was a pretty disappointing comparison to Gadot’s Wonder Woman role and the only thing that was really notable from this sketch was the lip-lock between Gadot and McKinnon.
The musical guest on this episode was Sam Smith who absolutely blew the house down. His first song was his new single, “Too Good at Goodbyes”. He sang it nearly perfectly. The second song he sang was the premiere of his new song “Pray” from his new album that is releasing early next month. This was a big hit for him; the response after premiering his new song was crazy, as it’s already in the top 10 on iTunes.
Overall, I give this episode of SNL a B. It wasn’t completely mediocre but it certainly wasn’t the best.