‘SNL’ Season 47 Premiere Recap: Owen Wilson, Kacey Musgraves And The Biggest Cast Debut Ever

Remember just four months and a week or two ago, when multiple repertory players of Saturday Night Live bid subtly tearful and joyful farewells? Yeah, well, none of those comedians could bear to part with the program, or Lorne Michaels couldn’t bear to let them leave. Either way, just about everyone’s back in 30 Rock’s Studio 8H for SNL Season 47 (bye bye Beck Bennett and rookie Lauren Holt), and the cast is now the largest it has ever been, with 21 rep and featured players in all. Will Cecily Strong or Pete Davidson address their non-farewells? How will SNL introduce Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman? Let’s find out together!

What’s The Deal For The SNL Cold Open For 10/2/2021?

You know who we didn’t see in the cold open, or for that matter, the entire episode? KATE MCKINNON.

You know who we saw first, and then more than anyone else during the show, perhaps even more than the guest host? New guy James Austin Johnson, who opened the season as SNL‘s latest, jury’s-still-out-on-whether-he’s-the-greatest to take on the task of impersonating President Joe Biden. Sound the alarms! Cue the GlitchTVbot.

Johnson looks like Darrell Hammond’s kid in all that makeup, don’t he? At the end of this cold open, Alex Moffat (the previous SNL Biden in this KFC rotisserie game of chicken) showed up with the consolation prize of portraying Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Our sketch premise, for those of you playing along at home, was the notion that Biden must negotiate with his own Democratic wings in the House and Senate if he wants to pass his budget and infrastructure bills. As JAJ’s Biden put it: “So now I’m bringing together the Democrats like Voltron. Sure, they’re all different colors, but fundamentally, they’re robots.”

We see immediately why Strong and Bryant had to stick around: So they could laugh it up with appropriate mockery of stick-in-the-mud senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. Ego Nwodim entered stage right (stage left, even?) as Rep. Ilhan Omar, while Melissa Villaseñor gave it her best AOC. Pete Davidson reprised his Andrew Cuomo just to remind us all of that happening over the summer. So can the president hold his party together? Can a rookie hold his new cast together? Interesting questions, but TOO SOON!

As someone with a politics degree, I get it all. But as a casual comedy fan, I still wonder who these sketches are for? They’re not for casual comedy fans, who couldn’t care less about recognizing most of these politicians. They’re for the media machine and the political machine, who’ll gleefully circulate the clips on the Sunday morning political panels and throughout social media. If they were for us, they wouldn’t try so hard to remind us what’s actually happening in D.C. and would focus more on the jokes.

How Did The SNL Guest Host Owen Wilson Do?

You want focus? Owen Wilson is focused and ready for his close-up, bringing loads of middle-child energy to the proceedings, as well as pointing out his two brothers in the audience. He made fun of himself in his monologue for failing or dropping out of multiple schools, and wondering how he’ll fare in this live situation and whether he should read the reviews. Read this one, you coward! (Just kidding, loved you in Loki!) I want to know who wrote this monologue line, though: “What we lose on the rooms, we make on the sandwiches.”

Owen did get brother Luke to join him in this pre-taped sketch having a laugh at the expense of all the billionaires rocketing themselves into space, with Owen Wilson as Jeff Bezos (Alex Moffat played Sir Richard Branson, while Mikey Day took on Elon Musk).

Wilson’s turn as a middle school science teacher also hit (see below).

He played himself and mocked his character’s dark turn for Cars 4 (which, when the live studio audience roared its approval when he said his Lightning McQueen catchphrase, “Ka-chow,” immediately made me feel 50 times older than I actually am).

His other adventures onscreen didn’t quite land as hard, and frankly, didn’t need to? His doctor delivering live COVID-19 test results to the ladies whose talk show is definitely not The View since it’s called “The Talking Show,” or his oblivious priest at a grandmother’s funeral where she requested an Atlantic City singer perform her favorite R. Kelly songs, much to her family’s dismay? Those sketches served to remind us that SNL’s writing staff watched the news this past week. But points to Kenan Thompson as that singer, LeVar B. Burton, for reminding us of his middle initial, “that’s very important legally.” Wilson also did an impersonation of Troy Aikman for an NFL on FOX spoof that wasn’t the point of the spoof, as we’re all just waiting to find out more about the new FOX show, crazy house.

Most importantly, however: How did we not get to see Villaseñor’s Owen Wilson impersonation in this episode at all? Not even a glimpse?! Nary a whisper???

How Relevant Was The Musical Guest Kacey Musgraves?

Kacey Musgraves, who won Album of the Year for her fourth studio album, Golden Hour, just released her fifth album in September, along with a movie version of Star-Crossed available on Paramount+.

Musgraves performed two of her new songs. First came “Justified.”

A half-hour later, she returned to perform “Camera Roll.”

Which Sketch Will We Be Sharing: “School Board Meeting”

The best comedy sketch of the evening came just after midnight local time, where Lucerne County’s District 7 School Board Meeting showcased all of the terrific and terrible insanity that happens at public proceedings on your local level. As a newspaper reporter in my 20s, I covered so many city council, zoning commission and utility boards that felt like ham-fisted soap operas, and sure, you may have seen a viral clip or two in recent years, but this sketch gives you a full tasting menu.

There’s the loud and crazed conspiracy theorist (Cecily Strong) who eventually admits to the school board: “I don’t have a child! And I don’t live in this town!” The mother (Punkie Johnson) mad her son (Chris Redd) cannot play football because they don’t recognize the Mike’s Hard Vaccine. The woman (Heidi Gardner) who clearly spouts fringe talking points while not knowing what they mean. This school board meeting was the Stefon of meetings. It had everything. A guy (Mikey Day) who wants the kids to take unproven hormone treatments meant for elephant sperm production. A woman (Aidy Bryant) worried more about high-schoolers vaping and having sex. Two students (Andrew Dismukes and Kyle Mooney) who just want to play video games during class. Oddballs who get dismissed before we hear too much of their oddities (Bowen Yang, Sarah Sherman). People who want to bring outside politics inside (Bowen Yang, JAJ). Pete Davidson as Dogg the Bounty Hunter for some reason? Chloe Fireman and Aristotle Athari dressed as cheerleaders or some such wanting to sing a song with Villasenor? Nope. This sketch is a fine way to make use of the extremely large cast, and there’s Kenan Thompson as “Scary” Gary Loomis who just wants to keep his haunted house in the suffocating gym this Halloween. Maybe if he included David S. Pumpkins, they couldn’t have said no?

Who Stopped By Weekend Update?

Colin Jost and Michael Che continue to anchor the Update desk for another season, much to the delight of this studio audience.

Their guests for the season premiere included Ego Nwodim as an unnamed black woman missing for 10 years, to highlight the disparate treatment for minorities in America compared to when a white woman goes missing.

Pete Davidson, who somehow still has more self-awareness than anyone else in the cast, calling his Met Gala look both “I look like James Bond at his Quinceañera” while also “I look like if one of the three blind mice sold fentanyl,” as well as “I look like Tilda Swinton on casual Friday.” Davidson also got in cracks at Colin Jost’s expense, about his performance in this year’s movie edition of Tom & Jerry; and about his uncles for their homophobic discomfort. But Davidson’s final line was the most self-effacing? “I can’t believe I’m back!”

Davidson also wore a T-shirt with Norm Macdonald’s photo on it.

And just to remind us all how much Update has changed since the 1990s, Jost and Che ceded the rest of their segment to the late Macdonald, allowing some of his old Update bits to close it out. Wow.

What Sketch Filled The “10-to-1” Slot?

At 12:53 a.m. Eastern, the final sketch of the night featured rookie Sarah Sherman alongside Andrew Dismukes as doctors promoting their “Robinson’s Mail-In Stool Testing” operation for a TV commercial, directed by Owen Wilson’s character. Fellow rookie Aristotle Athari got to work the clapperboard, and by take three, we learned that the Robinson family’s medical motto, not to mess around with your stool samples, might not tell the whole story. Especially when their postal carrier (Chris Redd) offers his own testimonial about carrying your literal shit around. “I don’t mind!”

Last but not least, just before the good-nights, we saw a tribute card for Herbert Schlosser (1926-2021). You might not remember him, but without him, Lorne Michaels and SNL would’ve never happened. Schlosser was the NBC president in 1974 when the network negotiated to give Johnny Carson the night off on Saturdays, and wrote the first memo suggesting that time slot be filled with a live program showcasing young talents.

Who Was The Episode’s MVP?

JAJ, of course. That’s James Austin Johnson to the rest of you until you call him by his initials, too. Not since Dana Carvey in season 12 — that’s 35 years, people! — has a rookie cast member made such a big impact in their debut on a season premiere. Carvey got Church Lady and “Chopping Broccoli” on the Season 12 premiere, btw. Johnson anchored or co-starred in four separate live sketches in his first episode. Three of them as impersonations: Biden, Larry the Cable Guy, and Joe Buck. We may quibble over how great any of those impersonations sounded. And yet. The show asked him to deliver, and he did. That’s. Just. Remarkable.

Next week, Kim Kardashian West hosts (so she’s keeping Ye’s last name?) with musical guest Halsey.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Season 47, Episode 1 of Saturday Night Live on Peacock