‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Taran Killam’s Donald Trump, Leslie Jones, Hillary Clinton, Miley Cyrus, more (videos)
Let’s face it: Donald Trump was a hot topic almost all summer. Was there any other way how “Saturday Night Live” was going to start off this season? It was such an easy target, and it was so easy to predict that the show was going to move in this direction.
Coming up with a new angle on this was hard, but there was another challenge this season courtesy of a new actor in the role: Taran Killam. How did he do in this first performance? For the most part, pretty well! He actually raised Donald up a little bit in terms of pitch and then added some familiar enunciation. It’s funny in a way that most impressions of the Donald tend to go the other direction pitch-wise, but it worked really well once we started to get used to it.
The problem in the cold-open was, as mentioned, how to do something that has never been done before on another show; trust us, that is challenging thanks to all of the spoofs already out there. This is why bringing Melania Trump (Cecily Strong) was a super-smart choice to bring in someone to call out some of Trump’s comments. This was a pretty perfect way to start the show, but where was Hillary Clinton during most of this? Remember when she was meant to play a big part? Maybe plans changed.
As we’re going to do for the rest of the shows this season, take a look below to check out the remainder of the sketches on the night.
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Miley Cyrus monologue – About as perfect a way as “SNL” can come up with for mocking everyone from Jared Fogle to Josh Duggar to Kim Davis, who the show would have clearly skewered and then some had they been around this summer. Also, pretty great vocal performance for Miley as she sang a pretty straightforward version of “My Way” while being surrounded by the rest of the group.
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Abilify … for Presidential contenders – This was about as good a commentary for people like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee as possible: Just stop. This was perfect.
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“Grease” spoof – What happens when the target of your affection is not so sugary-sweet, and hangs out with some dude who is going to watch the two of you have sex and/or participate? This sketch ran a little long, and really would not have worked were it not for Miley’s presence and her hip-hop interludes.
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Hillary Clinton sketch – This was the sketch that we were expecting at the start! We’re not entirely sure why it wasn’t the cold open, but major kudos for Hillary for playing the figment of fake Hillary’s imagination. Sure, it was a little bit obvious that it was an appeal to the “SNL” demographic, but she did poke fun at her own policies.
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Weekend Update – Did the humor keep coming in the first update of the season? So long as you forget a couple of jokes and that entire segment with Pope Francis happened, we feel like you are probably going to be happy in the end. Michael Che and Colin Jost are getting more comfortable in their role at the desk, and to go along with that, the show smartly pulled out the big guns with Leslie Jones and Pete Davidson as guests. Sure, their spots had almost nothing to do with current events, but we still found both of them enjoyable.
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The Millennials – Is this the new version of the Californians? There is some potential for this to be a recurring sketch since everyone loves making fun of this particular demographic. There were some good jokes in here, but overall we feel like this has been done far too much in other ways.
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When Harry Met … Leslie Jones – This was all Leslie completely killing it, sitting down with her friends at the same table as the infamous “When Harry Met Sally” scene, and then also really committing to a reenactment of it. To say that this was absurd would be an understatement … but it was also thoroughly entertaining.
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The Squad – This was about as silly of a Taylor Swift parody as you are going to find, and we are completely surprised at how much we enjoyed it. Thank the writing for this, with the mock trailer’s direction by “Alfonso Cuaron” and also the commentary on how many of Taylor’s “squad” members are models who are now suddenly actors.
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Talk show – We prefer the end-of-night sketches when they are completely silly; race humor typically works a little bit earlier in the show, so we wish the Leslie Jones part was a little earlier. For the most part, though, this was weird … and a little bit of a dud.
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This sketch almost bled into that one with Kyle Mooney, which is why we didn’t really write about it last night. We were having some sort of odd fever dream where the two were almost connected.
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Miley performances – Head over here to read our take on them.
What did you think about the premiere of “SNL” this weekend? Share in the comments, and head over here to check out some other TV updates on everything we cover, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)