And Saturday Night Live has returned, after a writer’s strike that threw the entire timeline of the show off, stemming all the way back to last season’s scheduled finale. But the show picked up with host Pete Davidson (who was supposed to host the finale) and Ice Spice as musical guest.

Davidson began with some thoughtful remarks on the events in Israel and Palestine in the place of the usual premiere cold open. The actual monologue was a mildy funny stand up effort about sex in cars and Game of Thrones before we got fully underway.

Our first spot was a FOX Sunday Football skit which was actually about the Taylor Swift NFL invasion and featured our first surprise of the night when Travis Kelce came out and actually wanted to talk about football to a Taylor obsessed FOX panel.

Quick point. Kelce can’t be complaining about the NFL covering Taylor then make appearances like this on SNL. It makes zero sense.

We had a digital spot with Davidson singing a Ken song knockoff from Barbie. It was more “being famous is so hard” energy that didn’t really connect and would keep popping up during the show.

This was followed by a forgettable Wired auto complete spot and quirky law firm skit (thanks to Heidi Gardner).

Then Please Don’t Destroy showed up and these guys just never miss. Seriously. They haven’t really had a bad skit since they’ve been on. Their Def Jam throwback was terrific

Weekend Update was good. When Che and Jost keep the jokes fast and popping, its a fun time. They gave me the first non PDD laughs of the night.

I’m not in Ice Spice’s demo but I wasn’t bored during her performances.

It also doesn’t help having Taylor Swift introduce you. I thought the show did a good job having her make the second intro without stealing the spotlight from her friend. I have no idea how they kept the crowd under control for that.

The backend of the show wasn’t much better. The ladies made the Glamgina skit humorous but I could have gone without the beach and bar spots.

All in all the SNL premiere wasn’t that great.

Next week should be a pretty solid watch with Bad Bunny doing double duty. What will he do with the spotlight?

I’ll see you then.