“I don’t know if they know, but I do whatever I want.”
As host and musical guest for this week’s Saturday Night Live, Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny alerted viewers during his monologue: “I don’t know if they know, but I do whatever I want.” So if that means mostly speaking Spanish, que así sea. And if he wants to turn SNL into Sábado Gigante, the longest-running variety TV series in the world at 53 seasons when it ended in 2015 (SNL could break that record in 2028), then why not really mix things up this week?
One thing that’s not going to get weird or crazy this week: The cold open. Instead, they predictably went with topical D.C. politics and the continuing melodrama with Congressional Republicans failing to select a House Speaker. So Mikey Day plays Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) breaking his phone, apparently enough times for his assistant (played by Heidi Gardner) to have a new landline set at the ready. Rep. George Santos (R-NY), played by Bowen Yang, doesn’t show up to cheer Jordan up so much as remind us all that he grabbed a stranger’s baby at one point this week and somehow remains in Congress. Chloe Fineman calls in her support as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), but mostly so SNL can belatedly cash in on the mockery of her fondling shenanigans in a public theater. Leave it to James Austin Johnson and his Donald Trump impersonation to provide the only reliable misdirects with a series of contradictory riffs, and dissing his MAGA acolyte as a loser. Why? “That’s because I prefer the Jordans who win,” JAJ’s Trump says, you know, like Michael Jordan, or Jordin Sparks. He also ribs this Jordan for being no fun, not hilarious like Trump. “I’m Coke. You’re Shasta.”
This Saturday’s cavalcade of stars dropping in began with Pedro Pascal during the monologue (he’d also return later for very good reasons), continued with SNL alum Fred Armisen in a pre-taped sketch. Mick Jagger showed up in not one, but two live sketches. And the lady from the Nurtec ads also introduced Bad Bunny’s first song. I’m being told in the good-nights by Mr. Bunny that that was Lady Gaga.
Introducing himself first by his birth name, Benito, the rapper better known to fill arenas as Bad Bunny let us know that English wasn’t his first language, and he wasn’t going to try to fix that over the course of 90 minutes of live TV. And the cast, aided and abetted by those big cameos, did all they could to carry as much of the load. The first sketch after the monologue basically let Bad Bunny stand in as a mostly silent straight man named El Fuego for a rap battle as his opponent, Walter White Boy (Mikey Day) self-sabotaged himself.
