SNL Highlights Include Trump, Trump, Ken Bone and Trump
via SNL instagram, Bobby Moynihan as Ken Bone
Saturday Night Live with host Emily Blunt failed to maintain its strong season start, and didn’t even live up to the lukewarm second episode of season 42. It was mostly what you would call a fast forward episode if you were playing Sunday morning catch up. But there were a few moments worth revisiting.
On the top of our list for this week’s highlights – Alec Baldwin returns for his third appearance as Donald Trump, and manages to really irritate the real DT who took some time off from calling his opponent “Crooked Hillary” to tweet some anger in Saturday Night Live’s direction.
Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016
The cold open focused on last Sunday’s second debate, and included an expected Bobby Moynihan portrayal of America’s fastest rise and fall internet sensation Ken Bone. The highlight of the segment ran a Jaws-esque score behind Baldwin imitating Trump’s lurking and pacing behind Clinton during the debate.
Watch the full cold open segment.
Michael Che and Colin Jost didn’t quite maintain the energy of last week’s electric, passionate edition of Weekend Update, but it still stood strong compared to last year’s segments. The segment has upped its game this year, and with just a little more tweaking could pack real punch.
Beyond “Weekend Update” and the “Cold Open”, there wasn’t much else to highlight this week. There was a throwaway bit about a talking sink, a few sketches that had some laughs along the way but couldn’t get off the ground (“Escorts” for example) and some downright terrible pieces including a “Honda Robotics” sketch about robots at a car show that malfunction because people don’t put their phones on ‘airplane mode’.
But the true lowlight of the night goes to Saturday’s “Drive Through Window sketch” which was so bad it almost made us wonder if Pete Davidson is being punished for some transgression we don’t know about. At least the other cast members had brief appearances, but Davidson had to just sit there through the full four and a half minutes while nothing happened during the parade of silly voices and costumes that passed by his window with no actual jokes.
There’s been praise around the net for “Melanianade”, a fantasy digital short showing a world where the women in Trump’s life have finally had enough. A play on Beyonce’s “Sorry”, it was definitely a brighter spot than some of the other segments from Saturday’s episode, although still not something we’d normally put in a top 5. Maybe it felt too much like laughing at kidnapping victims, but we’ll let you decide.
SNL returns live next week, October 22.
