‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump, Secret Word, Kristen Wiig highlights (videos)
Going into this weekend’s new episode of “Saturday Night Live” hosted by Kristen Wiig, it was already common knowledge that Alec Baldwin would be returning to Donald Trump for at least one more gig. With that, the only real drama that remained would be how the show would present him. Given that this is a man with a penchant for creating headlines, even if they’re negative ones, we gotta imagine that we’re going to be seeing a heck of a lot of him over the course of the next few years.
So in starting off tonight’s show, we had Baldwin’s Trump in a very different environment: In a room taking meetings with various people, where he found himself confronted with having to deal with all sorts of various promises that he made over the course of the campaign. There was a great appearance in here from Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway, and then also Jason Sudeikis as Mitt Romney! We hoped that he’d be turning up given recent headlines with him meeting Trump.
Overall, this was a pretty funny monologue, mostly accentuated with assorted jokes on Trump’s various flip-flops — many were predictable, but we’re fine with that if the jokes deliver. we do gotta say that Beck Bennett’s Mike Pence still needs some work, though he’s also so vanilla that it’s probably hard to come up with a good impression. Good on “SNL” to work in a “Hamilton” reference so soon!
As with all of our other “Saturday Night Live” reviews, we’re going to be offering up some more coverage of this show as the night goes on. Be sure to fresh the page! We’ll have some video highlights from the show, as well, once we roll around to the morning.
Kristen Wiig monologue – Here, the former cast member came out to sing about “the first Thanksgiving.” The idea of this was luckily brilliant and silly enough to justify the entire premise of the host singing in the monologue, which is such a tired trope. The fact that all of her facts were intentionally wrong made this pretty great, as was the Steve Martin and Will Forte cameos. It almost reminded us of when Wiig appears on “The Tonight Show” pretending to be famous celebrities, spouting off fake facts in the process.
The Bubble – Hilarious. Through the first three sketches tonight, we had a sentiment almost as though “SNL” took its time to feel a little bit better after the election, and now they’re more or less making fun of themselves and the New York Millennial viewpoint that everyone should be different and diverse — provided that they share the same exact opinions as them. They’re mocking what is in many ways a perception of themselves.
Secret Word – We have a feeling that “SNL” is going to want to bring back a lot of old Wiig characters and sketches that she is famous for, and Mindy Grayson is a fairly popular one. There are two issues that we have with this sketch in particular: It’s basically the same thing every time, and it’s really not as great without Bill Hader on board. It had its moments, but this sketch is past its prime.
CNN sketch – Credit to “SNL” for really going all out here when it comes to mocking the media for effectively saying the same exact thing about every story under the sun. The idea of them all as “Westworld” robots was all sorts of amazing, and this was the perfect reflection of some of the election news-coverage fatigue that we are definitely feeling at the moment.
Target – We have to say that it’s really odd that we had a Target sketch without an appearance from the iconic Target Lady character played by Wiig, not that we really mind. This was short, to the point, but also a really funny premise: Come to Target around the holidays to hide out from your family. We’ve seen “SNL” do similar things before, but a worthy idea nonetheless.
QVC audition reel – Wiig and Cecily Strong played here two women auditioning to be a host, despite the fact that one of them hated the other for doing it and accused them of stealing their dream. This particular woman went over to her rival’s house and threatened to shoot her with a fake gun before things got even more weird. This was all about the two ladies’ performance, but credit to them for really committing to an idea that would’ve been lame in the hands of lesser performers.
“Weekend Update” – This edition brought us a lot of really strong political humor (who would’ve thought that would happen?), but then also a really fun and at-times hopeful bit from Pete Davidson reacting to everything from the past week while talking about Staten Island and some comments he made that offended some.
Then, we had Willie, who we really shouldn’t like but for whatever reason we do. The funny thing is that the cadence of the character has changed, so that the “it’s like they always say” parts aren’t necessarily the highlights anymore.
Macy’s Parade – Apparently, this is what happens when you watch the parade on acid. We’re actually surprised that Macy’s was okay with this, since the entire premise of the sketch was the giant parade balloons coming to life and terrifying children plus people with clown phobias. It was just the right length for a sketch like this and surprisingly funny.
Whiskers R We – We consider our love for this similar to Willie in that there’s zero good reason why we appreciate it as much as we do, but at the same time, we just cannot help ourselves. It’s completely ridiculous, but also really fun and something that does genuinely provide us with a good many laughs, especially with the cat descriptions that come completely out of left field. We’d also be really nervous that the cats would scratch us up.
Sue a.k.a. Surprise Lady’s return – This is one returning character we certainly did not see coming, but we were fine with it as a whole given that she really brought a lot of broad comedy without feeling like we got the same shtick as every other time. In general, that’s one of the things about Wiig’s characters that we don’t like.
Overall – Our least favorite sketch was probably Secret Word, and that was REALLY early in the show. While we cannot say with 100% certainty that this episode was an instant classic, but it was consistently funny in a way that few “SNL” episodes are. Grade: A-.
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