THE REVOLUTION WAS TELEVISED
Saturday Night Live wrapped up a season of skewering Trump, #MeToo and gun control
Season 43 of Saturday Night Live, which began on Sept. 30, faced a heavy news cycle with stories including the rise of the #MeToo movement, mass shootings and gun control, the ongoing circus that is the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the popularity of the film Black Panther and more. Which means the show had an awful lot to work with.
Here’s a look back at the year’s best topical sketches — and one that was just pure, unadulterated fun.
BLACK JEOPARDY WITH CHADWICK BOSEMAN (APRIL 7)
One of the year’s most discussed sketches used Black Panther to highlight the difficulties of life as a black American. In the movie, T’Challa (played by Boseman) lives in the fictional nation of Wakanda, which is blissfully untouched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization and the resulting horrors — so he doesn’t know what life is like for black people in 2018 America. The sketch mines this idea by dropping him into a game of Black Jeopardy.
ROACH PRODUCT (MARCH 3)
After the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., this February, in which a teen is accused of killing 17 people, some gun-rights activists argued that teachers should be armed to prevent future school shootings. Many consider the idea, which was endorsed by Trump, to be reactionary. SNL decided to skewer it with a fake commercial for a new type of pest control. Called Ned’s Roach Away, the product is simple: armed roaches. Note: the short form for the product is NRA. Charles Barkley, wearing a cowboy hat and standing in front of an American flag, plays Ned. He explains his product while absurd footage of roaches shooting each other rolls.
THE BACHELOR FEATURING ROBERT MUELLER (MARCH 10)
Much of this season focused on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.
One of the sketches that best captured the way many liberal Americans felt about the investigation parodied the intensely awkward finale of The Bachelor, in which Arie Luyendyk Jr. (the bachelor) broke up with an unsuspecting Becca Kufrin. The sketch brings in Mueller (played by Kate McKinnon) as the bachelor to break the news to Becca (played by Cecily Strong) that he might not have enough evidence of collusion to move forward with a charge.
Throughout the sketch, an increasingly devastated Becca attempts to make sense of everything.
A KANYE PLACE (MAY 5)
One of this year’s stranger news stories came when Kanye West announced on Twitter that he was writing a philosophy book, then that his tweets were the philosophy book.
He also embraced Trump, which came as a surprise to many of his fans.
The sketch parodies A Quiet Place, the year’s breakout horror film about a family living among monsters that will kill them if they make a sound. Only, this crew of people, led by David (Donald Glover), can’t keep their mouths shut because they so desperately want to discuss West’s tweets — which leads to a number of their deaths.
WELCOME TO HELL (DEC. 2)
“All these big, cool, powerful guys are turning out to be
... what’s the word? Habitual predators?” Aidy Bryant says as she kicks off this parody of a KPop music video that firmly addresses the #MeToo movement by pointing out that women have been harassed for centuries — it’s just that people are starting to pay attention.
Bubble gum pop plays as Bryant, Strong, McKinnon and host Saoirse Ronan sing bluntly about sexual harassment in the world.
KELLYWISE (OCT. 14)
This sketch satirizes cable news through Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway by imagining her as Pennywise, the evil clown from Stephen King ’s It, enticing cable news hosts like Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper.
The pre-recorded sketch finds Cooper (Alex Moffat) chasing a piece of paper that blew out of his hands into the sewer, only to find Conway-as-Kellywise (McKinnon) waiting there, dressed in clown makeup. The sketch, a close recreation of the first scene of the new movie adaptation of It, shows Cooper being lured more and more by Conway’s promises of outrageous quotes that will boost his ratings.
DINNER DISCUSSION (JAN. 27)
Amid discussion about #MeToo and what constitutes sexual harassment, no story served as a better Rorschach test than that of Aziz Ansari. An anonymous woman published a first-person account of a date with him in the online publication Babe and accused him of pressuring her into sex acts despite her protests.
Debate raged over who was wrong in this situation, and SNL caught that lightning in a bottle. The sketch features three couples attempting to discuss their views on the situation at dinner, each one awkwardly beginning sentences to see how the others will react. Not only is the sketch funny in its absurdity but it managed to present both sides of a loud argument without endorsing one.
MEET THE PARENTS WITH MICHAEL COHEN AND ROBERT MUELLER (APRIL 14)
This cold open brought in Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro to re-enact the Meet the Parents lie detector scene. Only this time, they were portraying Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and Mueller, respectively. The sketch came after FBI agents raided Cohen’s Manhattan office to seize records about his clients.
“If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about,” De Niro’s Mueller says as he subjects Stiller’s Cohen to a polygraph.
Much like the Bachelor/Mueller mash-up, the brilliance of the sketch comes from Trojan horsing a real world news event through a beloved franchise.
THE GAME OF LIFE: DACA EDITION (APRIL 7)
The Trump administration has continuously see-sawed on whether it supports the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program announced by former president Barack Obama in 2012 that helps protect some immigrants from deportation who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children. SNL filmed a fake commercial for the classic board game The Game of Life. The video shows Melissa Villaseñor getting the Dreamer card, as a voice-over explains the game. “Only Dreamers get to jump through bureaucratic hoops, duck from ICE officers and work three jobs just to get by,” the voice-over says.
DINER LOBSTER (APRIL 14)
Some of this season’s best sketches, such as Papyrus, were just bits of absurdist humour. Diner Lobster was by far its best.
The premise is simple: Pete Davidson orders the rarely requested lobster at a diner. Kenan Thompson, dressed in a lobster suit, is wheeled out in an enormous tank and launches into a riff of Who Am I from Les Misérables. The sketch turns into a full-out musical from there.