‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Chris Christie, Donald Trump, ‘American Ninja Warrior,’ and Drake (videos)

We really want to groan about the cold open for “Saturday Night Live” being yet another impersonation of Donald Trump. This is something that we’ve seen so many times, we don’t know how the show has anything at all still to milk from it. Yet, they continue to find a way! We’re not sure how it happens, but yet, it somehow does.

What surprised us was that we liked this sketch more than we expected because of the writing, which was surprisingly blunt and edgy for the show right off the bat. We laughed often, especially when Bobby Moynihan’s Chris Christie desperately trying to convince Trump that he was veep material while also suggesting Bruce Springsteen at one point. Also, there was a good opening about Trump pretending to be his own publicist, which was in the headlines this week.

We’re going to review this episode LIVE all night, so check back for our take on all the sketches.

Also, we now have videos for some of the sketches below.

Drake monologue – At times, the idea of Drake making fun of all his own internet memes was better than the execution of it, but we love the ambition and Drake randomly impersonating Obama midway through. We want to use several of these memes now for our own personal use!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSRJ5k2TdYk

Car Rentals – We’re not sure what exactly this was parodying, but it was a surprisingly silly, fun sketch anchored by Drake and Jay Pharoah, who also had a great Ben Carson impersonation during the opening. Lots of great lines in here; it made no sense, but we still laughed.

American Ninja Warrior – Brilliant. If there was ever a worthwhile spoof of reality TV editing packages (“he’s doing it for the town!”) and also a great bit of physical comedy for Moynihan. There really are so many people like this on reality TV, so we’re pretty thrilled that this just kept getting sillier and sillier as it went on.

“Sexy” special – This was the first real miss of the night, and it’s odd since the premise could have been interesting: A host’s show gets sabotaged by some frustrated crew members. We’re not sure why the execution was what it was, since the whole game of the scene was buried to the point that the audience didn’t know where to laugh, and this particular audience really didn’t even seem to care.

Baby Boss – In some ways, we’re fairly over this Beck Bennett character piece, but the show did give us a nice twist in having Mr. Patterson meet with Paul Ryan to discuss being a better Presidential nominee to back than Trump. The character’s still a little old, but we like that there was at least a new angle rather than just doing a very by-the-numbers sketch like with Gilly so many times in the past.

Weekend Update – Let’s just ignore most of the jokes tonight, since they all really pale in comparison to the absolute awesomeness that was the return of Olya, one of our favorite correspondents at the moment. Meanwhile, Leslie Jones and Pete Davidson are probably being used a little too much; they’re both funny, but we’ve come to anticipate many of their jokes. We also saw Drake doing his impressions in this spot fairly recently, but we’re not hating this here since it gave Jay a chance to go back and forth with Drake.

Black Jeopardy – Drake was the MVP mostly because of him playing a guy from Toronto talking a ton about Canadian things. Hats off to the TTC reference! We dug the character, but this went on far too long. The only reason a “Jeopardy” parody on “SNL” should last for a while is if Will Ferrell is involved.

Drake’s beef – This was mostly funny because Drake seemed to make up fights with every single cast member almost out of nowhere. The best one? Him pretending to hate Lorne Michaels, only to still be nice to his face.

School Dance – Why was Drake’s character not explicitly Hulk Hogan? This was a disaster, and it made no sense. Let’s just pretend it never happened, since the rest of the show was decent. Some highlights, but we’re not going to say there were many classic sketches in here beyond the “American Ninja Warrior” spoof. Grade: B-.

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