Adam Driver hosted the "Saturday Night Live" Season 44 premiere, but other than his award-worthy performance in the "Career Day" sketch, he was overshadowed by other events.

The first event was Matt Damon's surprise appearance as Brett Kavanaugh in the Cold Open. (Some folks were particularly surprised considering Damon was considered to have supported Weinstein.)

The other big event happened at the end of the show, when Kanye West gave a political speech to the audience that was cut off because it went way past the end of the show.

All told -- even without fans knowing those particular events were ahead, although they could guess about Ye -- the SNL Season 44 premiere was up in the ratings from last year's opening, which was hosted by Ryan Gosling with musical guest Jay-Z. As Deadline noted, Saturday's premiere also had higher ratings than last season’s finale and every other episode last season -- except for the Jan. 27 show hosted by Will Ferrell with Chris Stapleton as musical guest.

Here's the 13-minute cold open with Matt Damon:

Here's Kanye's end song and speech:

Here are more SNL sketches. The Saturday, October 6 episode will be hosted by Awkwafina, with Travis Scott as musical guest.

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