‘Saturday Night Live’: Aziz Ansari ratings strong, even without Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump
It was somewhat of a surprise to see this past episode of “Saturday Night Live” come and go without an appearance from Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, especially since this was the first show after the Inauguration. Then again, maybe Lorne Michaels decided that the show got its fill of pee humor the week prior during the Felicity Jones broadcast.
The ratings are in for the Aziz Ansari hosted episode, and they are by and large really strong. The show scored a 2.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is stronger than the majority of the shows from season 41 — it may be weaker than a few others from this season, but in all honesty nobody over at NBC is going to complain about drawing this sort of performance from the show.
Also, it helps that a show like this without Baldwin was as funny as it was, especially at a time when there is a lot of negativity both in the country and surrounding some aspects of the show itself. (Remember, a good many people were threatening to boycott the episode over the comments made by one of its writers in Katie Rich.) This rating proved that any perceived protests did not make much of an impact, and hopefully, many of the viewers who tuned in will want to keep doing so live, even if they were expecting Alec and were met with something different.
The show is going to return on February 4 with an episode hosted by Kristen Stewart, which is also going to feature an appearance fro musical guest Alessia Cara. Given that the two do have devoted followings, we imagine that they could each provide a ratings bump of some sort. It is going to be particularly interesting to us to see Stewart host the show now, given that during her “Twilight” days, she was probably under significantly more pressure to do something like this. Let’s just hope that they give her some funny stuff to do.
Want to get our full review of this weekend’s show hosted by Aziz? Then be sure to head over to the link here now. (Photo: NBC.)