Is Saturday Night Live new tonight, October 20?

Saturday Night Live won’t be back this week, as they’re taking a short break. But there’s still lots to catch up with on the season so far.

The well-oiled machine that is Saturday Night Live is still hitting its stride, well into its 44th season. And though only a few episodes in, three to be exact, the show’s proven that it’s staying strong as a long-time comedy favorite.

The show left off with the return of alumn Seth Meyers last Saturday, and the episode marked itself as the best one yet with Meyers’ touch. Perhaps it’s a bit too early to call now, but the episode, overall, had the most number of funny sketches compared to the others.

With the first two episodes, hosted by Adam Driver and then Awkwafina, it seemed like the sketches just didn’t know how to use the hosts. Adam Driver’s hosted before, so there was likely no problem with him getting back into the swing of things. In fact, the best sketch of that night came would have been mediocre at best, if it wasn’t for Driver’s superb performance as the character, Mr. Parnassus. Other than that, there were no sketches for Driver to steal the show with, and that was a disappointment.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — “Adam Driver” Episode 1747 — Pictured: (l-r) Melissa Villaseñor as Samantha, Pete Davidson as Mortecai, Adam Driver as Abraham H. Parnassus during “Career Day” in Studio 8H on Saturday, September 29, 2018 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)

The same feeling came with watching the Awkwafina episode. Here’s a comedian who delivered a great monologue, and yet had to wing the sketches she was in because a lot of them just weren’t funny in the first place (don’t get me started on the dance-off sketch).

Meyers’ episode might have been different because he knows SNL so well (he was the head writer after all). The sketches seemed to heavily feature Meyers; maybe he wanted it that way. And if that was the thinking behind this latest episode, then that’s what’s going to drive the show in the right direction this season. Everyone has their favorite cast members, but the novelty of seeing a celebrity/athlete/etc. take the stage and goof off is the best part. But if they only show up in a handful of sketches or get a few lines to speak, that definitely won’t make for an enjoyable or memorable episode.

I can predict that the show will continue to do particularly well with its cold opens through the rest of this season. Everybody remembers the Brett Kavanaugh/Matt Damon cold open, which will probably go down in SNL history. And through the next cold open featuring the Republican celebration was just okay, last week’s Kanye West-Trump open really redeemed the show. Here, SNL’s strength lies in holding up a mirror to politics and letting all the unbelievable stuff of the week doing the talking. As we said before, the jokes practically write themselves at the point. Yet Saturday Night Live always finds a way to finesse those into gold.

Sadly, SNL won’t be back next week either. But you can catch it on Nov. 3 when Johan Hill returns to host with Maggie Rogers as the musical guest. When that day comes, you can check back here on Culturess for our review!