Saturday Night Live: Chris Rock, Jim Carrey deliver huge ratings

Saturday Night Live review

The first ratings are in for the Saturday Night Live premiere, and to the surprise of no one, the numbers were pretty darn strong.

Overall, the premiere drew more than 7.7 million live viewers and a 1.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic. This makes this the most-watched episode since the first episode of 2016, the one where Alec Baldwin first debuted his impersonation of Donald Trump. We think a lot of the hype was tied to Jim Carrey being announced as the new Joe Biden, which was a way for the show to drive a lot of hype from the get-go. Of course, we anticipate seeing more of Jim over the next few weeks — depending on what happens in November, he could have this gig for a rather long time.

We also think the presence of Chris Rock as host aided Saturday Night Live significantly. Here you had a big-name comedian and former cast member who has a multi-generational following, and everything was set up for this show to be really successful.

Also, we think that the ratings benefited tremendously from this being the first episode of SNL in a long time to be in the famed Studio 8H. The final episodes of last season were all produced remotely, which was far from an ideal situation for everyone involved. This is much more of what we’re used to as longtime viewers of the show, and there was some comfort that came in seeing something that felt much more like the SNL we remember.

We know that there are going to be some fun shows coming up moving forward — think along the lines of Bill Burr and Issa Rae coming on board as hosts. Both of them are capable of drawing laughs in many different forms.

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What did you think about the Saturday Night Live season 46 premiere?

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