Miley Cyrus and the SNL Cast / Writers Sparkle and Shine On the Season Opener

Miley Cyrus and ostensibly the entire cast shined on the SNL season opener. Miley opened with a fond farewell to this years news stories / scandals with a killer rendition of Frank Sinatra's My Way as everyone from Kim Davis to Josh Duggar to "That Dentist that Killed Cecil the Lion" was summarily skewered. No skit fell flat except for the overly pandering surprise cameo by Hilary Clinton. I mean, that segment was admittedly sort of fun and Hilary did seem like a nice person and I guess that was the idea but it just felt like politicking propaganda gone awry and then segue into Hilary introducing the first Miley Cyrus performance was just so weird. APART from that, the rest of the show was surprisingly spot on as was Miley.

Performing with the Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips, Miley appeared to be a vision of Eve and she looked angelic. Besides the trippy art rock, maybe Coyne's hippie lifestyle has rubbed off on Miley too. She doesn't look as gaunt as she did during the Bangerz tour, looks more rested and as the camera lovingly focused in on her face I am reminded how beautiful she is. Her subdued yet vocally stunning performance was beautiful too. The song, Karen Don't Be Sad sounded like old school Flaming Lips, like it could of been off of 1999's The Soft Bulletin. I really liked the song. At this point I am wondering who benefits more from this creative pairing??  Cyrus or The Flaming Lips??

The News Segment was as smart as it was funny and I love Leslie Jones and Pete Davidson. SNL thrives on it's filmed segments and the "Albilify" segment will undoubtedly find it's way on Youtube. Political humor needs to contain truths to cement in the satire and the writers made this biting satire truth heavy.

 Miley's second song, an artfully rendered rather abstract pop love ballad entitled The Twinkle Song mixed nonsensical dreams with a simple yet pretty melody. Performed in a spartan way with only Cyrus on piano, she actually had tears streaming down her face by the end of the song. She is after all an actress and the Miley haters might just assume it was superb acting. Maybe so or maybe she went into a sad zone and the tears were real. Either way, her performance was great theater.

For whatever reason, Instagram was filled with Miley detractors and seemed to regard her being the host as beneath SNL which is just hilarious to me. That kind of attitude also seems so highschool so clique-ish. In the end, Cyrus did a great job as did the writer and cast. They all killed tonight and hopefully this will portend a great entertaining season ahead.

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Robb Donker

Miley Cyrus tears up during her spacy, trippy and sometimes nonsensical song performed solo. I didn't know she played piano..... #strange yet #moving performance. Art pop. #artpop #snl #mileycyrus

A video posted by Robb Donker (@americanrobb) on Oct 3, 2015 at 10:12pm PDT