‘Saturday Night Live’ review: ‘Bern Your Enthusiasm,’ Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Larry David (videos)

Going into this weekend’s new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” one thing was a given: We were going to see something related to Bernie Sanders. With Larry David in the house and with us being in the thick of the Presidential election, how could you not? He was riding high off of Iowa, and had a solid lead in New Hampshire heading into the show.

We assumed that we were going to start things off tonight with a Bernie cameo (one is supposedly coming), but instead the show decided to give some real significant face-time to Taran Killam in his new role of Ted Cruz. This character was over-the-top and all over the place, with Taran focusing on his negative attributes, his “sense of humor,” and his sneakiness that included the flyers and the Ben Carson rumors. It was pretty funny (especially the Paul Giammati line at the end), and a good way to introduce us to a character we could be seeing more of. (We’ve seen Taran’s Cruz before, but not like this.)

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As for the rest of the show? We’re going to be updating that as the night goes on!

Larry David monologue – It was at times very amusing, with the bit about Jewish people who don’t eat being the best part. The downside is that much of this material for diehard Larry David fans probably feels familiar to stuff that he’s done in the past. Sure, it’s right in his wheelhouse, but we would’ve loved something more daring.

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Kevin Roberts – We have no idea at all what the point of this sketch was, other than Larry playing a really crazy character named Kevin Roberts who distracted Kenan Thompson during his target practice for Quantico training.

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Bern Your Enthusiasm – Ultimately, we cannot imagine a better mixture of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and David’s impression of Bernie than this. Incredibly funny, and a very nice showcase of what the “SNL” team can do when they have a great idea. One of our favorite sketches of the season.

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Titanic sketch with Bernie Sanders – This was a pretty fun way to use Bernie rather than just have him play himself while Larry was also playing him. Instead, he was a fellow passenger aboard a sinking ship, and he and the actor had a pretty funny back-and-forth.

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Totinos Pizza Rolls – Who would’ve thought we’d have a left turn that transformed this entire sketch into a commercial for “The X-Files”? This was certainly disturbing, but in an absolutely great way. “What’s happening to my hungry guys?”

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Weekend Update – This was genius for the most part, largely because of the presence of Jon Rudnitsky doing what we think is an absolutely brilliant mime as a “Dirty Dancing” audition. The jokes were also funny, and we had a Ben Stiller – Owen Wilson cameo! Is the worst part of the entire segment is an okay Kate McKinnon character, you know that you are doing somethings really right.

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Songwriting – It’s the war between frogs and toads! Larry stole this sketch playing a really weird guy who refused to accept the rules of songwriting put upon him by Pete Davidson. Moderately amusing, and the sort of post-update sketch we’ll always take with a smile.

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Ebony and ivory – Probably the first miss of the night. Calling out the treatment of Cam Newton in the media potentially because of his race is certainly a worthy cause for the show, but the jokes themselves just weren’t that funny. There had to be a better way to do this than getting Kenan Thompson to play Cam and then making him sing with Taran Killam’s Peyton Manning.

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Last Call – This always makes us laugh, mostly because of what McKinnon is willing to do here for the sake of a laugh. This time around, it involved smothering her face in red lipstick and then going to town all over Larry’s mouth / bald head while Kenan watched. Just as hilarious as always.

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