‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Donald, Melania Trump sketch, Mike Myers open Ryan Gosling show
This weekend, “Saturday Night Live” wasted no time dipping into a pair of separate wells: Donald Trump and Christmas.
With the former “Apprentice” star still high in the polls, clearly the show thought it would be a smart move to tackle Trump yet again with Taran Killam and Cecily Strong playing him and his wife Melania. The problem this time around? Other than the idea of the naughty / nice list, it just wasn’t that funny … kind of like Trump’s appearance hosting the show earlier this fall. Most of the jokes didn’t land, and this was probably one of the shortest cold-opens in the history of the show.
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Did things get better moving forward? Stay tuned…
Ryan Gosling opening – We hope that the whole show is not just sketches reminding us of how handsome Gosling is. Not exactly that original. Bringing in Mike Myers was a nice touch for the comedy, especially the line about him living backstage. Also, Canadian stereotypes galore!
One other problem that we have is that given that there are two more episodes this year, should we really be getting in to Christmas-themed sketches already?
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Settl – A very short faux-commercial about a dating app for women wanting to get married right away; therefore, they take what they can get from men. It was quick, but effective and very funny. This is the first time in the night we left satisfied.
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NSA screening – This was a bizarre but absolutely hilarious exercise in watching as many different cast members as possible break character in a short amount of time, mostly because of house Kate McKinnon completely crushed this as a chain-smoking alien abductee. This may be one of our favorite performances in a single sketch in quite some time, and it felt like almost no one in the cast knew what she was going to say.
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Santa fanatics – Completely demented, but a rather hilarious take on a crazy man (Gosling, looking somewhat like Sam Trammell) and his wife who want to meet Santa on a dangerous level.
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Melanie – A nice showcase for Aidy Bryant that was also another reminder that while Ryan was clearly enjoying being on the show, he is not good at staying in character.
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Weekend Update – We’re not entirely sure that everyone on Twitter seems to know what the whole “tech expert” played by Cecily Strong was proofing: Companies hiring women to just aggressively pander and flirt. It was offensive, sure, but that was sort of the point to be offensive. It’s about how certain companies try to insult the intelligence of their consumer base … kind of like how Anthony Crispino does to us on a regular basis with this Second-Hand News. Still, playing the Third-Hand news guy may be the best gig Gosling has had all night.
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Ryan’s lame friend – After a few funny sketches, this was a quick drop downhill. We saw Gosling dance and sing, but kudos to him for not taking off his shirt for the sake of total pandering.
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Nespresso – A weird, not-that-funny take on the George Clooney commercials. The issue here to us is that while we love Bobby Moynihan, his impression of Danny DeVito really isn’t that great other than the bald cap and the hair. Also, the ending made zero sense.
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The Wiz – Super-predictable that there would be a “Wiz” spoof somewhere in the show, given the fun that “SNL” has had with some of the other network musicals. There were a few laughs in here, but let’s face it: This was “Black Jeopardy” with better costumes.
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Santa’s elves – We’ve seen this more or less this sketch before on the show, but it’s so messed-up that we do enjoy it for whatever reason. The elves are probably the dirtiest elves of all time.
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Overall, though, it’s hard to give this episode a great grade just based on the number of misses, and because we’re not sure that the host got through a single sketch without breaking character. Gosling had fun, but he was late delivering many of his lines and there was some sort of big gaffe in the Santa sketch in particular. Grade: C+.
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