'SNL' host Bill Burr
Credit: X/@nbcsnl
A serious development in current events can sometimes leave Saturday Night Live unable to make any satirical comment on it, and that was briefly how it appeared the show might react to the reelection last week of former President Donald Trump.
This weekend’s broadcast began with seeming solemnity, as a group of SNL cast members, including Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim, Kenan Thompson and Heidi Gardner, took note of Trump’s presidential election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, who had made a surprise cameo on SNL just last week.
“To many people,” Nwodim said, “including many people watching this show right now, the results were shocking and even horrifying.”
Gardner continued, “Donald Trump, who tried to forcibly overturn the results of the last election, was returned to office by an overwhelming majority.”
Thompson said, “This is the same Donald Trump who openly called for vengeance against his political enemies.”
Now, said Yang, “thanks to the Supreme Court, there are no guard rails.” Nwodim added that there would be “nothing to protect the people who are brave enough to speak out against him.“
“And that is why,” Thompson said, “we at SNL would like to say to Donald Trump: We have been with you all along.”
The cast members added that they all believed in and voted for Trump. “Because we see ourselves in you,” Nwodim said. “We look at you and think, ‘That’s me.’”
Sarah Sherman added, “That’s the man I want my future children to look up to.”
In its first broadcast after Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, SNL did not immediately try for laughs. That show famously opened with Kate McKinnon, who had played that race’s losing Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, seated at a piano in character and performing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. McKinnon then turned to the camera and said, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.”
That sketch was intended as a tribute both to Clinton’s loss and to Cohen, who had died earlier that week, but it has since come to epitomize the show’s mawkish sentimentality in moments it can’t bring itself to satirize.
This time, however, SNL let many of its cast members lampoon their own disappointment and apprehension, including Colin Jost, who has frequently mocked Trump on the Weekend Update segment he anchors with Michael Che.
Speaking to the camera, Jost said: “Mr Trump, your honour, we know that you say things that are controversial sometimes, but really, you’re just speaking the truth. And I hate how the lamestream media — Michael Che — tried to spin it to make you look foolish.”
The opening sketch also featured SNL alumnus Dana Carvey performing an impression of Elon Musk, and James Austin Johnson as a new musclebound character he called “hot, jacked Trump.”
“Because he’s frankly my hero,” Johnson said. “And he’s going to make an incredible president and eventually king.”
In conclusion, Yang said: “All of us at SNL are so excited for Trump 2.0. Which is also what I blew on a breathalyzer Wednesday morning.”
Nwodim said: “We can’t wait to see what you do with the country this time. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, screaming. With joy, of course.”
Opening monologue of the week
In his second outing as an SNL host, Bill Burr, the iconoclastic standup comedian, seemed at the start of his opening monologue as if he might not address the elephant in the room. “Nice to be here on such a fun week,” Burr said sarcastically, adding, “I don’t watch politics, so we’re going to keep it light.”
He made a few jokes about getting the flu, then said, “All right, let’s get to what you all want to talk about” and pivoted to an emblematically provocative routine about the presidential election.
“All right, ladies you’re 0 and 2 against this guy,” Burr said. He added: “Ladies, enough with the pantsuit, OK? It’s not working. Stop trying to have respect for yourselves. You don’t win the office on policy. You got to whore it up a little. I’m not saying go full Hooters, but find the happy medium between Applebee’s and ‘your dad didn’t stick around.’”
Burr continued: “You all know how to get a free drink. I know a lot of ugly women — feminists, I mean — don’t want to hear this message. But just tease them a little bit. Make a farmer feel he’s got a shot. Swing a state over a little bit.”
Burr said that he found it impossible to believe that voters had not made a choice between Trump and Harris — “two of the most polar opposite people ever” — by the time of their debate in September, if not sooner. Then he commented on the failed attempt to assassinate Trump in July.
“When I was a kid, if you were running for president, and you got shot, and you didn’t die, that was the end of the election,” Burr said.
He also joked that Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s last month was a rare instance of the president-elect showing empathy to other people. “It’s like when the Grinch came down the hill bringing the toys back and his heart got a little bigger,” Burr said.
Weekend update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, anchors Jost and Che continued to riff on the results of the 2024 election.
Jost began:
Well, on Tuesday we learned that Democrats actually don’t know how to rig an election. Donald Trump swept all the swing states, won the popular vote, and Republicans took back control of the Senate. It’s like we’re living in a computer simulation and whoever’s controlling Trump has a cheat code. He’s invincible. He’s like a character in Grand Theft Auto who throws a prostitute out of a car and drives straight to the White House. But don’t you guys worry. If I know Democrats, they’re going to take a long look in the mirror, learn from their mistakes and then run Biden again in 2028.
Che continued:
Man, how did I let y’all convince me that rural Pennsylvania would pick the Jamaican Indian lady? Clearly, I’ve been spending too much time with you white liberals and your goofy optimism. It wasn’t even close. At one point, Trump was so far ahead they put in Bronny. [His screen cut to an image of basketball player Bronny James.]
Jost picked up the thread:
During Trump’s victory speech, he promised that this will truly be the Golden Age of America. You know, because things turn golden when the sun is setting on them. It is believed that J D Vance may have helped Trump’s numbers with Catholic voters. Which is kind of crazy because JD Vance converted to Catholicism as an adult. And I’m sorry, you’re not really a Catholic man unless you survived being an altar boy. [Jost’s screen showed a picture of himself as a child] My strategy? I disguised myself as a lesbian.
Non-topical sketches of the week
On a weekend following a highly consequential presidential election, not every SNL sketch needs to be about that election. Not every sketch should be about that election. Still, when SNL wasn’t commenting on the election, it often felt as if the show were self-consciously avoiding the topic. And some segments — like, say, the one in which Burr played a firefighter who keeps seeing pornographic cartoons in his Rorschach tests — felt downright weird.
Among the remaining sketches that are still worth your time, we would give the nod to a commercial parody for Buffalo Wild Wings (featuring Burr as a particularly vocal fan of the New England Patriots) and the unexpectedly well-produced musical tribute to male baldness, complete with a dream ballet interlude. Eat your hearts out, Rodgers and Hammerstein.