The best of Saturday Night Live with host Seth Meyers

Seth Meyers took a break from his Late Night duties to return to Saturday Night Live as host. Here are all the highlights from the season’s third episode.

It was clear from the opening monologue through the goodbyes at the end of the show that Seth Meyers was thrilled be back at Saturday Night Live. If you watch him on Late Night then you know how often he references his time at Studio 8H, especially when he interviews anyone with their own SNL history.

The shows are always the best when the host is game for anything and willing to serve a sketch in any way necessary. This is almost always the case when the host is a former cast member or writer.  To that end, Meyers slid right back into familiar territory despite not being known for being a sketch performer after taking over Weekend Update. 

In Last Night On’s preview of the episode, we gave you three things to look for. So before we get into the highlights, let’s see how those predictions turned out.

Alec Baldwin back as Donald Trump

This one seemed like it was a given considering how often Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression has been used since 2016. After no Trump in the first two episodes, the absence was becoming a story itself. With Meyers being a frequent critic of Trump on Late Night it seemed like this was the week to bring Baldwin back.

Baldwin all but confirmed his appearance the night before on The Tonight Show. It also didn’t hurt that Baldwin had his own talk show, The Alec Baldwin Show, debuting the next night. Getting his name back in the news for the Trump impression surely helped with publicity.

Seth Meyers on Weekend Update

With no signature character to revive as host, it was Weekend Update where most fans wanted to see Meyers. It wasn’t exactly going out on a limb to predict Meyers joining hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che.

However, Last Night On was half-right about a couple other predictions. The prediction that Meyers’ friend and frequent Late Night guest John Mulaney would make a contribution. The former SNL writer was included in the credits. It wasn’t, as we hoped, for helping write a new Stefon piece for Meyers and a would-be cameo by Bill Hader.

We did see the return of the “Really!?!” segment but without a cameo by Amy Poehler. Instead, Meyers slid in between Jost and Che for their own version:

Saturday Night Live vs. Kanye West

The cold open went off just as we expected. Kanye West’s visit to the White House was the top story of the week and provided a perfect opportunity to bring back Baldwin’s Trump. Everyone knows things didn’t go smoothly when West was the musical guest for the season premiere.

It’s difficult to get much comedy out of West’s rants considering how incoherent it was at times. Reading a transcript, you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were West’s quotes or came from the parody version performed by Chris Redd.

The best of the week:

So now that we’ve looked at what we expected to happen, let’s recap the best sketches from host Seth Meyers. The episode overall was solid and proved that Meyers is much better as a writer than a performer. His one sketch that let him show the most as a performer was “Beta Force”

It was one of the few sketches that made any changes to Meyers’ appearance. The sketch would have been fine as just a parody of those testosterone supplement commercials. It goes to another level when Meyer’s bald, skin-tight shirt wearing alpha gets too extreme and has to be pulled back by Beta Force.

The show seems to be ramping up the dosage of Kenan Thompson each week. After having basically nothing to do in the premiere, the longest tenured SNL cast member has found his way into more sketches the past two weeks. And this Bill Cosby showed why he deserves it:

The reveal of Thompson as Cosby emerging from the shadows was executed perfectly. Thompson kept his Cosby voice hidden just long enough not to spoil the reveal. Meyers spends the entire sketch just facilitating and setting up Thompson. He seemed to be playing a version of a character that appeared in a few sketches, like “Movie Talkback” and “Thirsty Cops.” Meyers knows his strength and stays out of the way of the over-the-top characters he shares the scene with better than anyone.

One of the stranger sketches in a while had Seth Meyers playing…Seth Meyers. He was one of the guests alongside Taylor Swift on “Bayou Benny’s Liberal Lagniappe”

This one makes the highlights because of its sheer absurdity. It’s appreciated when Saturday Night Live still goes so far off in one direction. It certainly isn’t aimed a broad comedy audience but if this is your brand, then you had to of enjoyed it. The setup is similar to another talk show, “What Up With That?” But this sketch should be celebrated for Beck Bennett assuming the Canjun accent mantle from Jason Sudeikis:

Saturday Night Live with Seth Meyers gave us both the expected and unexpected. We saw Baldwin back as Trump, Meyers return to Weekend Update, and Kanye West keep an SNL connection for the third straight week. But “Bayou Benny” proved the show can still keep viewers on their toes. Saturday Night Live returns with a new episode on Nov. 3 with host Jonah Hill and musical guest Maggie Rogers.