'SNL' Highlights: Jalen Brunson, 'High School Musical' and 'Dream Academy'

Cold Open — Ramy Youssef opens the season of SNL as Zohran Mamdani filming a TikTok about the nor’easter, and the sketch was going great for about 30 seconds, until James Austin Johnson’s Trump showed up. The sketch was mostly about how obsessed Trump is with Mamdani, but also about how obsessed Natalie Harp (Ashley Padilla) is with Donald Trump. Not bad. Not good. Nice to see Youssef. (Score: 5.5 out of 10)

Jalen Brunson — It’s a New York show, and the Knicks won the championship, so it makes sense to have Jalen Brunson host the premiere (he’s the first athlete to host since Travis Kelce in 2023, I believe). He seems nice. He’s not a great comedic presence (in fact, his Knicks teammates — who asked questions — seemed livelier), but who could begrudge the MVP of the first Knicks team to win a title in more than 50 years a turn hosting SNL? Let’s just hope the cast can carry the episode. (Score: 4 out of 10)

Office Shooter — Jalen Brunson plays an office worker who is terrible at shooting crumpled-up wrappers into the trash can, but he’s determined to prove himself until Mikey Day gets sick of it and slaps him, at which point he reveals he’s actually Jalen Brunson. It’s a very “We have an athlete and we don’t know what to do with him” sketch, but I’m gonna let it slide one more time in honor of the Knicks. (Watch Here) (Score: 4.5 out of 10)

Dream Academy Season 2 — For those who don’t know, KATSEYE was discovered on the first season of Dream Academy. The second season, here, features two contenders who were forced onto the show and are terrible — Jane Wickline and newbie Grace Reiter — and I can already tell these two are going to be good partners. Reiter, Wickline’s old sketch-comedy collaborator, is the missing piece for Wickline, and those two and Veronika Slowikowska are going to be a formidable trio this season. (Score: 6.5 out of 10)

Men’s Support Group — It’s a sketch about an anonymous support group of men who confide in each other after their partners are brought up on stage at an Usher and Chris Brown concert. It’s hit-and-miss — Ben Marshall and Marcello Hernandez are the hits, and the rest are the misses. (Watch Here) (Score: 5 out of 10)

High School Musical — Here we go! A new guy (Jalen Brunson) joins the High School Musical team, and he goes Peyton Manning in the United Way on all of them, and it turns out he can even sing and bounce a basketball off of Jeremy Culhane’s skull. Predictable, but still hilarious. (Score: 8 out of 10)

Airport Massage Chairs — This is a one-joke sketch, but it’s a decent joke. Mikey Day and Jalen Brunson are in airport massage chairs, and they can’t stop making sex moans. It’s really only funny because Brunson breaks a little. (Watch Here) (Score: 4 out of 10)

Weekend Update — One of Che’s jokes was edited — it was about how the U.S. doesn’t commit acts of terrorism, just isolated acts of mental illness, and the follow-up that got cut was about Lindsay Clancy. Hmmm. Otherwise, “Update” is a little more unhinged than usual, as though Che is determined to rage-bait the audience, but after 12 years, we’re immune to it. Bring on your West Bank Barbie jokes, Che! You can’t hurt us anymore. Also, Jane Wickline plays that Anthropic guy who tried to warn us about the dangers of AI (watch here), and Jeremy Culhane returns as Tucker Carlson to discuss the summer movies, which is reliably great. (Score: 6 out of 10)

Parent-Teacher Conference — The episode is going off the rails, and this one is about a mom who shows up to a parent-teacher conference at her son’s elementary school with the many men who rail her nightly. Not even Padilla can save it. (Watch Here) (Score: 3.5 out of 10)

Shark Tank — Two “feminist” inventors come up with a pair of eyeglasses that set off an alarm every time the wearer looks at a woman’s breasts, but they can’t get through their pitch because of all the alarms. You get it. (Score: 4 out of 10)

Locker Room — Alas, they didn’t finish the show strong, either, as this sketch is about a guy pretending to be Jalen’s old basketball coach so he can ask for a handout. Oof. (Watch Here) (Score: 2.5 out of 10)

Verdict — Brunson seems like a genuinely nice guy, but he has the comic presence of an athlete. High School Musical and Dream Academy were great, but the rest of the premiere was severely lacking. And Che and Jost were even sweatier than usual this week. (Overall Score: 4 out of 10)

(FYI: KATSEYE put on a great performance, but they don’t even pretend not to be lip-syncing.)