‘SNL’ has lost the bounce from the ‘Trump effect’
The steady diet of political humor on the NBC late-night stalwart has become stale. News & Views.
Saturday night isn’t so lively these days. “Saturday Night Live,” NBC’s 44year-old sketch comedy institution, has been riding high on the coattails of President Donald Trump since fall 2016, but it appears the honeymoon is over. Six episodes in, the new season has been plagued by dumb controversy, bad Trump jokes and one very bad celebrity breakup. For about a year and a half, the always-topical show – which returns Saturday (11:30 EST/PST) for the final three episodes of 2018 – was doing exceptionally well. “SNL” was boosted by the absurdity of the presidential election, the delights of frequent gueststar Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of then-candidate Trump and Kate McKinnon’s dead-on version of Hillary Clinton, and a nation eager for someone to make sense of the news. “SNL” found a relevancy and a point of view that garnered it the 2017 Emmy Award for outstanding variety sketch series, its first win in a comparable category since 1993. It won again this year. The series fed fans’ hunger for political humor by airing live on the West Coast. It began parading in A-list guest stars to pinch-hit as members of the Trump administration, from Baldwin’s slack-jawed Trump to Melissa
McCarthy’s lauded turn as former press secretary Sean Spicer. But nearly two years into the Trump presidency, “SNL” feels less like vital political comedy and more like a weary checklist of weekly scandals. Oh, Sessions is out? I guess McKinnon’s impression of him isn’t good enough, so they needed Robert De Niro to help out as special counsel Robert Mueller. The tumultuous Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh? Just call Matt Damon to slam his fist into a table. But the political humor that once seemed so sharp peaked, and now the constant onslaught of Trump jokes is just exhausting. Perhaps the best example of the weakness this season lies with one of its
cast members: Pete Davidson. The show’s resident “young person,” Davidson, 25, has appeared on “SNL” since 2014 and carved a quiet niche for himself as a frank millennial voice, excelling in “Weekend Update” segments in which he mostly made fun of himself. But Davidson’s profile exploded after he began dating pop singer Ariana Grande. Davidson’s loud engagement and subsequent split with Grande has made his presence on the show awkward and at times cringe-worthy. In addition to poorly capitalizing on Davidson’s fame, “SNL” has been extrahungry for big guest stars this season. The show’s reliance on famous actors and comedians has morphed from an occasional treat into a crutch, an admission that its regular cast isn’t good enough or well-known enough to play the likes of Kavanaugh and Mueller. Every few years, critics declare that “SNL” is dead, but I think it’s merely hurting, not flatlining. There have been high points such as the “House Hunters” sketch on Liev Schreiber’s episode, in which Schreiber and Leslie Jones played a couple on the HGTV show picking a house from a series of increasingly bizarre options, including one where the toilet is on the ceiling. Another, “GP Yass,” was an apt commentary about appropriation of drag culture. The show desperately needs a shakeup. Its Trump humor is boring. It needs fewer guest stars and more room to create stars from its cast. It needs new “Weekend Update” anchors and new head writers. It should maybe stop booking Kanye West. I’d watch the cast try to use a ceiling toilet over Baldwin’s Trump any day.