Well, the new season is a week and a half away and, with one of the biggest cast turnovers in SNL history (several factors involved here, probably the biggest being Covid, which caused some members to stick around longer than they'd planned to because they didn't feel it was the right time to leave), I'm both excited and nervous to see how a team of members that mostly got the B spots in previous seasons shapes up on their own.

Here's who is returning this season, along with my favorite sketch each one did. If you follow SNL as closely as I do, I'd love your thoughts. If you don't, I'd love you to check these out!


Mikey Day is absolutely one of my favorite SNL players of all time, but his true talent is in stealing the spotlight in other people's sketches. From the more memorable of the B boy dancing skeletons in David Pumpkins to the sad old divorcee in Boomers Got the Vax, Day always seems to have the exact right delivery at the exact right moment to elicit maximum laughs. In this example, he's certainly not the main focus of the skit, but he sure steals the scene at 1:18 and again at 5:39. I'm very curious to see him take on more leading roles as a senior cast member this year:




Andrew Dismukes began as a writer who (I suspect) shifted into being a cast member because no one understood how to deliver his lines the way that he did. His best sketches and moments are an unusual balance of cool/understated and thoroughly absurd, all at the same time. It's hard not to find him awkwardly charming here as a young mortician who seems to take far too much pride in his work.





There are only two returning cast members that I have absolutely zero excitement for, and Chloe Fineman is one of them. I wince every time she plays Elmo and find nearly everything else she does forgettable. Still, she is gutsy and has range. This is probably the best showcase of those two qualities:




Heidi Gardner is another long time veteran who tends to thrive best in support roles. She can deliver a throw away line in such a way as to make it infinitely memorable, but what she always does best on SNL is play the cold-hearted wife in failing marriages, especially alongside Beck Bennett (who was pretty much only funny when playing against her).




James Austin Johnson joined the cast last year and has been so busy playing an amazing Biden and a somewhat less impressive Trump that he hasn't gotten to do much else. Still, his Biden is flawless:




Punkie Johnson is the other returning cast member that doesn't interest me much at all, though it's less that I'm certain I dislike her and more that she just hasn't been in very much up to this point. Here's a sketch in which she was adequate and possibly even good as an unorthodox couples therapist:




Ego Nwodim will almost certainly dominate in this new season, as she is both extremely talented and supremely confident. Her breakout skit last year was playing Dionne Warwick alongside the real Dionne Warwick, paying a very touching tribute to an arist who clearly means a lot to her personally:




Sarah Sherman is obnoxious. In her debut season last year, she came off as Gilda Radner without the charm. Still, she is an extremely strong writer, and if she can mellow out her character delivery just a little bit, she might have serious staying power. Her best work thus far:





Cecily Strong is the second most senior member of the cast at this point, yet, despite her clear talent and her many many appearances in skits over the year, I'm not convinced she's really hit her Golden era yet. Still, this skit last year was an absolute high point, less because it was funny and more because it tapped into the true power of comedy -- to courageously say things that people who aren't wearing costumes and eliciting laughs can't get away with:




If you are of a certain era, then it's nearly impossible to see Kenan Thompson and accept that he is an accomplished actor in his forties and not a kid on a Nickelodeon sketch comedy show. Despite being (I believe) the longest running SNL cast member of all time, he still brings a youthful joy and silliness to his roles that never gets old. I'd argue he's an acquired taste: it takes a while to fully appreciate his nuance and even the unusual inflections he chooses for so many of his lines. Often, what looks at first like he's just overplaying a part is a mastery of comedy if you understand and appreciate Thompson's work enough. Here's a perfect example of a silly and initially forgettable skit that gets funnier every time I watch it because of the many miniscule decisions Kenan makes in it:




I'm still not sure how to summarize Bowen Yang. All I know how to tell you is that he is a master of the one-liner. Here's a skit in which he gets so very many of them:





Michael Che and Colin Jost may well be the best news anchor team that SNL has ever had (yes, I'd even choose them over Tina and Jimmy). Their chemistry is priceless, Jost always seeming embarrassed by his own jokes and Che being totally unrepentant. This isn't even a particularly remarkable example of the two at work; it's just the most recent clip I could find.





And, if everything else somehow fails this season, we can at least count on the Please Don't Destroy videos, which have come to dominate SNL in the same spirit as Saturday TV Funhouse and the Andy Sandberg SNL Digital Shorts of days past. While 3 Sad Virgins is, by far, the most well-known of the videos thus far, I think this one is actually a better demonstration of just how talented the trio is:







So who else is excited to tune in for Season 48?