‘SNL’ Recap: Bad Bunny Pulls Double Duty, Calls In Mick Jagger and Pedro Pascal For His Own Sábado Gigante

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?

What’s The Deal For The SNL Cold Open For Last Night (10/21/23)?

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.”

Who Made Surprise Celebrity Cameos?

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.

How Did The Guest Host And Musical Guest Bad Bunny Do?

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. Did you know Day used to be in the rap battle cast of MTV’s Wild ‘n Out?

They let him speak in Spanish not only for the monologue, but also two other sketches, and in the live sketches, he wasn’t the focal point for the most part anyhow.

In the Telenovela sketch, Bad Bunny got to play-slap Marcello Hernandez around, but it was really a showcase for Punkie Johnson to chew up the scenery due to a classic misunderstanding. She doesn’t speak any Spanish, but got cast because her name is LaTina. Then she gets upstaged by a visit from the papi, as in Mick Jagger.

And in a pre-tape short, “La Era del Descrubimiento,” he and Hernandez played 16th Century Spanish royalty unimpressed with the Era of Discovery treasurers brought back by explorers played by Fred Armisen and Mikey Day. “Behold: The turkey!” “Why does it have testicles on its face?” Bad Bunny and Hernandez are not impressed. A llama, tomato, pumpkin, none of these are quite as good as gold. Or “dookies you breathe,” which we know better as tobacco. But still, the Spanish royals wonder, why can’t the explorers just “go around” the “New World” to get to China?

Bad Bunny seemed to enjoy himself most in the “please don’t destroy” short as well as the convent meeting sketch, where the nuns try to figure out who’s the man hiding amongst them and having sex with all of the nuns? You’d think the bad boy would be Bad Bunny, but he doesn’t have moves like Jagger, apparently.

Bad Bunny also performed his newest singles, “Un Preview” and “Monaco.”

Was There A Please Don’t Destroy Video?

Yes. And it found the trio taking a backseat to Bad Bunny, who drove the sketch in Shrek cosplay, convincing them to portray Puss In Boots (Ben Marshall), Donkey (Martin Herlihy), and the late Michael Jackson (John Higgins) as they performed a read-through of Bad Bunny’s Shrek spec script, somehow already optioned by…A24?

Who Stopped By Weekend Update?

An amazingly short Update segment, only lasting eight minutes, including only one guest, in the form of Ego Nwodim as Jada Pinkett Smith, who seemingly broke new gossip ground on each stop of her book publicity tour this past week. Why is she “publicly cucking my millionaire husband” Will Smith? Because: “If we got divorced, he could mess around and end up happy.” 

Are There Any Recurring Characters This Week?

YES! Marcello Hernandez gets to bring another girlfriend (this time played by Chloe Troast) home to meet his mama (Pedro Pascal) as well as his tia (Bad Bunny). Absolutely adore the slow burn of Pascal deliberately throwing out the cookies she brought, and this recurring premise once again allows SNL to lean into a bilingual future, with most of the jokes written in a cadence to allow the flowing Spanish to be broken up at the end of sentences with English phrases such as “nepo baby,” “flat butt,” “bisexual barista.” 

What’s A Recurring Sketch That’s Not A Recurring Sketch?

Titled “The Right Track,” this pre-taped piece is a spiritual sequel to last season’s Waffle House short, where Jenna Ortega’s dramatic talk with her boyfriend played out while mayhem ensued inside the Waffle House. This time around, it’s a subway platform at West 4th Street, where Devon Walker applied for a job at JAJ’s firm and wants to close the deal, while for reasons unexplained, a subway car is stopped in front of them with the doors closed and a constant stream of chaos flows back and forth inside the car. Giant rats. Pantsless men. Balloons.

What Sketch Filled The “10-to-1” Slot?

At 12:54 a.m. Eastern, we’re inside the offices of Burt’s Bees, where Mikey Day has called a company meeting to announce the company has been acquired by Jergen’s, which Day says is owned by Aveeno, which is owned by Yoplait. Which would be funnier if that were actually true. Mikey Day sure had a busy episode, didn’t he? Anyhow. While Day and the other employees (Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim, Kenan Thompson) might worry about immediate layoffs in their future, Enrique (Bad Bunny) just wants to say one thing. Make that one more thing. Good thing his daughter’s getting married to a rich guy?

Next week, stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze makes his SNL debut, with musical guest Foo Fighters!

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also podcasts with comedians sharing their origin stories at The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.