3 takeaways from 'Saturday Night Live' season 51 premiere

"Saturday Night Live" kicked off its 51st season this weekend. Here are three takeaways:

The cold open was way too cautious

You don't get to a 51st season by throwing bombs, and Saturday offered none. The most viewed part of any "SNL" — the cold open — offered exactly what most cold opens offer (a riff off the news), without once (in this case anyway) pivoting to either a surprise or an outrage. It was an open that effectively wrote itself, for an audience that has come to expect nothing more, or less. Colin Jost as "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth, with gay jokes, followed by James Austin Johnson as the POTUS who spoke truth to the head writer: "So sad to see something get old and confused and still demand your constant attention." A real surprise, perhaps, would have been an impromptu visit by Jimmy Kimmel, or at least NBC's own Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Late-night TV is under genuine assault but the most "SNL" offered in support were a few spitballs. A little solidarity with those under fire would have been welcome, but "SNL" long ago learned how to cope with this POTUS — draw his scorn (on Truth Social), not his threats. The 51st season began with a whimper.

Bad Bunny brought a Latin flavor that worked

Over the show's first half-century, there were only about two dozen Latino hosts, and a few of them were named "Jennifer Lopez." There have been just five cast members, including Melissa Villaseñor (who left in 2022) and Marcello Hernández (who joined that year). Bad Bunny closed out the 50th season and opened the 51st — and there's a reason for that. He's not only one of the biggest music stars on the planet (Latino or otherwise) but also a competent guest host (he was Saturday), who lapses into Spanish on occasion to remind viewers, and maybe "SNL" itself, that there are nearly 70 million Latinos in the United States. Most of the sketches had a Latino flavor, most importantly that final one — the riff on "El Chavo del Ocho." No doubt most Anglo viewers were puzzled but not many of those Latino viewers: "El Chavo" ran on Mexican TV in the '70s and was later syndicated. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny could have brought a little controversy to "SNL" — thanks to certain corners of the right-wing mediasphere, his Super Bowl halftime appearance already has. Instead, he called (in Spanish) his big game appearance "an achievement for all of us," which is all about "our contribution to this country." It's something, he added, "no one will ever be able to take away or erase."  And it's also something that no one — either Spanish- or English-speaking, "SNL" fan or not — needed to be told what was meant by those words.

'SNL' spoofed Long Island again (surprise, surprise)

Well, how about that? Long Island made "Weekend Update," or at least the Holtsville Ecology Site did (that's the location housing the zoo the Town of Brookhaven is shutting down). "Long Island Zoo Closed for Abusing Animals" read the "Update" headline. Jost: "But isn't all of Long Island really just a zoo for abused animals?" Sure, lame, but Long Island has been a popular punchline for years. This was about keeping  up with tradition.