Saturday night live
Credit: X@nbcsnl
Although former President Donald Trump refused invitations for a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, "Saturday Night Live" came up with another setting in which both presidential nominees might share the stage: the game show "Family Feud."
This weekend's SNL broadcast, hosted by Ariana Grande and featuring musical guest Stevie Nicks, opened with what looked like a CNN report -- but quickly threw to a special election edition of Family Feud, hosted by Steve Harvey (played by Kenan Thompson).
Thompson first introduced the players on the Democratic team, led by Maya Rudolph in her recurring role as Harris. "My campaign has raised a billion dollars," Rudolph noted.
"How are you not winning by a landslide?" Thompson asked her.
Rudolph laughed and then replied, "That's a question I scream into my pillow every morning."
The rest of the Democratic team included Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff, Jim Gaffigan as Gov Tim Walz of Minnesota ("I am such a huge fan of your standup, Cedric," he told Thompson) and Dana Carvey as President Joe Biden.
Told by Thompson that he was looking good, Carvey replied: "'Cause I'm getting my rest. No. 1, I sleep when I can. No. 2, I'm asleep right now."
Next, Thompson introduced the Republican team, helmed by James Austin Johnson as Trump.
"Let's move over to President Trump's lovely wife, Melania," Thompson said, indicating an empty space at the contestants' table. After a pause, he added, "Oh, she ain't here."
"It's so strange," Johnson said. "I could have sworn she was standing right beside me two years ago."
The Republican team was rounded out by Sen. JD Vance (Bowen Yang) and Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day), who said that his Trump Jr. and Yang's Vance were pretty much twins.
"It's almost like my dad picked me to be his vice president," Day said. "But he didn't. He didn't."
Rudolph and Johnson traded a few barbs before they were asked to respond to the game's first survey question: Name something you keep in your glove compartment.
Rudolph rang in first and began to answer with a familiar portion from Harris' stump speech -- "I was raised in a middle-class family" -- before giving a proper answer: "a big old Glock." That got the Democrats control of the board.
Samberg opted to give the same answer as Harris. (A second gun was the No. 1 answer.) But Gaffigan answered with HotHands, napkins and Tums "in case I eat something spicy like tomato." Carvey's response was "I'd like to buy a vowel."
Given the opportunity to steal it for the Republicans, Johnson began to give a long, discursive answer about "Seinfeld," mom jeans, immigrants and Moo Deng.
Thompson took it all in, looked at the game board and said, "Show me dementia."
Musical Guest Host of the Week
Grande, the onetime theater kid turned pop music sensation and co-star of movie musical "Wicked," vowed at the start of her monologue that she was on "SNL" only to host and not to steal the thunder of Nicks, the actual musical guest.
But Grande did, of course, sing in a number of segments, including one sketch that had her play a not entirely on-key bridesmaid singing a parody of Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" and another that cast her as a Renaissance castrato.
But Grande's skills were perhaps best put to use in the musical number that accompanied her monologue, a song about how she wasn't going to sing or perform celebrity impressions. While dropping her on-the-nose impersonations of Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and Gwen Stefani, Grande also sang the line, "I'm not going to do a duet tonight / So please don't bring out Stevie Nicks." When Nicks did not appear, Grande quickly added, "Worth a shot."
It's All Coming Back to Me Now of the Week
Grande's established arsenal of celebrity impressions also includes Celine Dion, but it wasn't certain she would get a timely reason to play the Canadian singer, who has performed only rarely since revealing she has a neurological condition called stiff person syndrome.
Then the news cycle came through: There was Dion, appearing in a promotional segment for "Sunday Night Football" and getting doused with Gatorade. That was inspiration enough for an "SNL" segment in which Grande played Dion promoting another equally improbable sport: the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And you know that her heart will Octa-go on.
Weekend Update Jokes of the Week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the 2024 presidential race.
Jost began:
"Donald Trump held a rally today at the site of the Coachella music festival. Because just like Trump, Coachella brings out the worst in white people. And maybe it was the 100-degree heat, but it also brought out the weirdest in Trump."
Jost then played a segment from the rally of Trump pointing out someone in the crowd and saying: "Look, it's Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, stand up."
He continued:
"Given your recent history at rallies, do you really want both you and Abraham Lincoln to stand up? It was also reported that during the first three months of her campaign, Kamala Harris raised over $1 billion. Which I hope is finally enough money for her to stop texting me."
Che picked up the thread:
"A new poll shows that 47% of voters see Kamala Harris representing change better than Donald Trump. 'How about now?' said Trump with bangs. Next week, Donald Trump will participate in a Fox News town hall before an all-female audience. Well, good luck trying to talk over all those rape whistles."
Weekend Update Desk Segment of the Week
If your musical palette wasn't tickled by, say, the parody of "Espresso," here's hoping you hung around long enough to catch Nicks' performance of her white-winged classic, "Edge of Seventeen."
For other audience members who have aged out of the Top 40 chart, there was also a desk segment from Weekend Update in which Johnson and Sarah Sherman played the squabbling Gallagher siblings of Oasis, who recently announced they were reuniting for a 2025 tour.
As it turned out, the brothers did agree on their favorite Ninja Turtle (Donatello) and their mistaken perception that Jost and Che were twins. As Sherman sang (to the tune of "Wonderwall"), "Well maybe / your mum had Black and white babies."