Saturday Night Live Season 42: Lin-Manuel Miranda review

Lin-Manuel Miranda stopped by Saturday Night Live tonight, but id his Hamilton charm lead to acclaim or did it sink him with expectations too high?

Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda hosted SNL this weekend, and things went a little less spectrally than we hoped. The highlights once again had more to do with Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump than it had to do with the host.

That’s not to say that Miranda wasn’t a good host, but he didn’t take things to the next level like others have. It was pretty much on par with Margot Robbie’s performance from last week, which is never that great of a thing. We’re not looking for a clock management host, we want one that turns in a memorable role.

Miranda did what we thought he’d do: rapped a little in the monologue and in a skit. But he didn’t really do a whole lot more. That being said, he’s so damn charismatic that we didn’t really care, especially since The Weekend Update brought the heat this weekend the way they failed to last week.

SNL Rundown…

1. The cold open kicked things off with a bang. SNL duped us into thinking they were trolling the VP Debate, but instead came off the top rope with a response to Donald Trump’s sexist comments.

2. Of course, what’s the use of having Lin-Manuel Miranda as host if you’re not going to have him rap?

3. This week saw our first SNL music video with the female members of the cast. It wasn’t the strongest outing, but it was still nice to see that these will remain a thing this season.

4. Kate McKinnon portraying Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is something we need to see more of. Although, her skit this week seemed to be a nice farewell if that’s what it comes to.

5. Michael Che was phenomenal again on Weekend Update. He led things off by stating that tape recordings are the worst thing to happen to old, rich white men since tennis elbow.

6. We also saw the return of ‘Resident Young Person, Pete Davidson’.

7. Also, lest we forget that SNL is never afraid to dust off a Penn State rape joke:

8. The highlight of the Update was the return of Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey. They portrayed suburban Philly voters who will swing this election.

9. It seems that “Melania Moments” are going to be an every week thing. They’re a throwback to punchy 90s filler we used to see, soother’s nothing really wrong with them.

10. I’m 24-years old. I’m a Millennial. I shamelessly watch MTV for Teen Mom OG. I watched about six-seconds of TwentyOne Pilots and was over it. Big musical guest fail this week.

 Next Week on SNL…

Date: October 15th
Host: Emily Blunt
Musical Guest: Bruno Mars
TV Channel: NBC

Be sure to check out Last Night On for all your SNL highlights.