Alec Baldwin Cold Opens a Strong SNL Christmas Episode Filled with Guests

Saturday Night Live aired its last live episode of 2016 last night, with a Christmas theme. Casey Affleck hosted, and proved that you can choose an actor known primarily for sad movies to host and still have a great episode. There were many highlights and some great guests, like John Goodman, and Fred Armisen, the return of some Kate McKinnon favorite characters, and a cold open featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Christmas Cold Open (with John Goodman). It’s not easy to pull off playing a character week after week, and even though Alec Baldwin’s Trump takes some weeks off, the character has been on this season enough times that we should be sick of it. But we’re not. The writing is fresh and clever, Baldwin is spot on, and Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway is perhaps the most brilliant writing of all, with her under-the-breath commentary. Absolutely worth watching this week, and every week. Donald and Kellyanne cover the cabinet picks, “So now all I have to do is pick who will be President”, the list of musicians willing to perform at Inauguration, “I love them both”, and a visit from shirtless Putin, “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds incredible.” Running through it all is Trump’s fear that he’s being “Scrooged”, but the best line of the sketch comes from Kellyanne. “Don’t worry, I’m handcuffed to you for all of history.” A special guest appearance from John Goodman as Rex Tillerson tops it off.

.

 

Hillary Actually.  The hit sketch of the night was a parody of a famous scene from the Christmas movie, Love Actually. We’re always happy for any excuse for Kate McKinnon, and this was a perfect fit. Clinton shows up at the front door of a member of the Electoral College with a special message to deliver, secretly. For those who haven’t seen the movie, the scene being parodied involves a visit to the home of a married couple by their best friend who secretly is in love with the Mrs. Using a boom box and note cards, he asks her to tell her husband that it’s just carolers at the door, while he uses note cards to let her know his true feelings.  In this digital short, the message Hillary wants to deliver is a plea not to vote for Donald Trump when the Electoral College meets on Monday. The short throws some major jabs at Trump and a few friendlier pokes at Clinton and it’s well done all around.

.

New York Now. Every week SNL makes an attempt at one or two silly-funny sketches. Sometimes they land and sometimes they are a far miss. This show had one of each with an uncomfortably bad bar bit about Brooklyn where the joke was that Brooklyn guys over use the crutches of “this is embarrassing” and “I really shouldn’t be saying this but…”.  It was more or less an excuse to do some unimpressive Sebastian Maniscalco impressions. But silly shone in the New York Now bit, about a trio of Long Island parents who took over a kids Christmas Pageant because the kids just aren’t funny enough. Casey Affleck, Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong are perfect, and the sketch is not only silly, it’s stupid, but stupid in the best way. There’s an “Oh Hello” inspired feel to it mingled in and we laughed enough to watch it twice.

Dunkin’ Donuts. Is this product placement? It must be, but we can’t even be angry because if something’s funny, go ahead and place anything you want. Casey Affleck is perfect as a donut loving, chain smoking Bostonite with a cracked phone screen. Make the movie. We’ll go see it.

 

Depending on your sense of humor, you may also want to watch three elves begging for discipline [which one of your writers has a Hershey Kiss fantasy? We’re just curious], or opt for a re-treat of Kate McKinnon’s Ms. Rafferty character, this time explaining her encounter with the real Santa Claus. Both are funny, well written, solid. We’d have been happy to see Ms. Rafferty remain a one-off, because the first sketch was perfect and there’s just no reason to go anywhere else, but this is 2016 and there’s no such thing as a perfect one-off. Anything good is going to get a sequel.

.
Saturday Night Live is off for the next three weeks, but will be back live in 2017!

Read more comedy news.