42x01 Margot Robbie with The Weeknd

9.5/10. No episode of Saturday Night Live is perfect. Invariably, some sketches will be better than others, some will be outright duds, and you just hope for a batting average that’s good overall. But this was an episode with only one real misfire and a lot of great varied material that served as a hell of an encouraging season premiere and the best episode since Larry David hosted the show.

The element of the show people were most excited about was, understandably, the debate sketch, and the writers and performers delivered in spades. Kate McKinnon was superb, and her Willy Wonka bit, coupled with Hillary’s shock at her opponent digging his own grave and the usual “striving be human” take on the candidate the show offers paid real dividends. Baldwin also made for an unexpectedly great Trump. The vocal impression is not perfect, but visually he looks amazing and he has Trump’s exaggerated mannerisms down pat. It was a definite success in the part of the show the people were most likely to talk about at their digital watercoolers.

The other political material worked well too. A Trump vs. Hillary family feud leaned into what is usually a weakness in this sketch, too little time for anything to breathe, and turned it into a nice punchy way to deliver a lot of fun observations and impressions of the personalities surrounding the candidates in a brief amount of time. But my favorite political sketch was actually “Melania Thoughts,” which had a real Jack Handy vibe in portraying Melania Trump having aloof thoughts in the guise of philosophical mediations. The tone and ridiculousness were perfect.

Weekend Update showed no signs of slowing down either coming back from the summer break, with nice takes on the election and other bits of the news from over the summer. Letting Jost and Che lean more into doing standup at the desk has worked well (though Che seemed to lose the crowd their a bit) and the dynamic between the two hosts is very joshing and enjoyable as well. Cecily Strong’s “Undecided Voter” character grated on me at first, but eventually won me over with Strong’s commitment to the mispronouncing famous names bits and general furor. Kenan’s David Ortiz impression is the same shtick every time, with lazy jokes about how Spanish words sound funny, but it is what it is at this point.

The rest of the sketches had some hoary premises, but made it work from the quality of the joke-writing and the performers. The first sketch after the intro, about news anchors debating how a nerdy guy could have such a hot wife was hacky in principle, but funny in its observational, almost Seinfeld*ian bent. The Scooby Doo parody wasn’t especially novel either, with the whole “real world intersects with fictional goofiness” setup, but the idea of the Fred expy having a girlfriend who just didn’t get the energy of the group was specific enough to work. And even the women in film roundtable sketch (which will no doubt get some criticism for being seen as minimizing today’s complaints about the sexism of the film industry) succeeded thanks to one of the most consistent results on *SNL -- Kate McKinnon making the sketch funny through sheer force of will with her performance of a weird character.

The only real dud of the night was the final sketch, which tried to mash up Mr. Robot with Leslie Jones’s real life hacking scandal, and which felt listless and undercooked. The other sketches were solid at worst. The pre-taped bit with Margot Robbie as a hot librarian who’s actually insanely weird was another easy premise, but as usual with these pretaped bits, it got a little charge from leaning into that weirdness and the specificity of the parody. Similarly, the monologue with Robbie (and several members of the cast) “fact checking” themselves led to some amusing if predictable one-liners and was a perfectly charming bit for the monologue.

Overall, there was a lot of great stuff here. Robbie was generally game, if unfortunately relegated to “hot girl” roles to some degree. And while I skipped The Weeknd’s musical performance, I love that they brought back the “Weeknd Update” gag. A fine way to start the new season!