I’m just going to say this right from the top. This won’t be your typical Saturday Night Live recap. In fact, it won’t really be a recap at all. Part of this is due to practical reasons. I was out of town on Saturday night and unable to write and submit my piece in the usual way. But I did see the Donald Trump-helmed episode live from my hotel room and, along with a friend, watched the entire, lifeless and laughless 90 minutes. My goal, though, before I watched was to see write a sketch-by-sketch recap, as I always do, on my second viewing when I got home. But after watching the episode, and how nearly 24 hours later, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no purpose.
This is my third season writing about SNL and probably my 10th watching it on a weekly basis. This week’s episode was the single worst episode I can remember. Now there’s been bad episodes (Blake Shelton’s outing from last year comes to mind) and really bad episodes (Justin Bieber’s cringe-worthy episode) but Trump’s was a perfect storm of awful that resulted in the most unfunny and uncomfortable hour of televised comedy I can remember. Trump’s performance was listless and without energy, the writing was uniformly bland and confused and the cast seemed to have the deer-in-the-headlights expression of “Help! I’m being held hostage!”
Now, let’s back up. I’m no fan of Trump, either as a political figure, reality show host or media mogul. He is a racist, bullying, blowhard whose antics are making a mockery of the presidential election cycle. To be fair, even though I don’t think Trump deserves the attention or prestige that comes with an SNL gig, I can see why, once upon a time, the idea of Trump hosting made sense. He has hosted before, he is a New York City institution and, oh yeah, he’s a huge ratings draw. (In fact, despite the abysmal show, SNL had record-high ratings this week – so I guess at least one person is happy with how things turned out). But since it was announced that Trump would be hosting, his antics turned from entertaining to irritating, humorous to hurtful. As we saw with Tracy Morgan, SNL can really fly when the cast and audience are behind the host. The opposite happened this week.
The worst part of his episode was the feeling that nobody involved wanted to be there. In dire sketches like the "Trump 2018" and "Live Tweeting" ones, two things were strikingly clear: the casts’ embarrassment and lack of interest and the fact that the writing staff had no clue how to deal with Trump. While I have no clue how micromanaging Trump was over the material, most sketches oscillated between building up Trump’s image in strange ways and toothlessly commenting on his controversy in a way that came across in a self-aggrandizing “see, I can take a joke” kinda way. Every time, the company tried to mention the hullabaloo surrounding the episode it fell painfully flat, as if even the cast was apologizing for having to work with Trump. Having Taran Killam and Darrell Hammond imitate Trump next to him didn’t work, trotting out the tired "Ex-Porn Stars" didn’t work, and a strange bit involving the previous musical guest didn’t work.
There were a few semi-worthwhile moments that shined through. The cold open with the return of Larry David’s Bernie Sander had some genuinely funny moments – the vacuum pennies bit was pretty damn great – and Leslie Jones’ interactions with Colin Jost during Weekend Update would have probably killed on a better night. In fact, Drunk Uncle was the only use for Trump that worked. Just the fact that Drunk Uncle was Trump’s biggest supporter was both the night’s best joke and the most cutting.
But except for a few glimmers, this episode was largely a failure; a 90-minute example of what happens when a disliked host (with zero comedic chops) is forced upon an institution like SNL. For those who tuned in Saturday and don’t generally watch the show, this is not a good representation of what SNL does. The last two weeks with Tracy Morgan and Amy Schumer have been stellar. Next week, with Elizabeth Banks, we’ll hopefully be back on track.
This is why I don’t think publishing a sketch-by-sketch recap is worthwhile. It would just be me writing “THIS IS AWFUL” over and over. I’ll be back next week with bigger and hopefully better things.
Oh, Sia was great, by the way. I really dug her new material and the dancer’s anguished thrashing physically represented how I felt watching most of the show’s sketches.
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