“The episode sucked.” “The jokes went nowhere.” “Half the sketches were awkward and the other half were aimless.” “The pacing was weird and the last half hour was ridiculously low-energy.” “Half the cast looked like they didn’t want to be there.” “They played it too safe.” “The host isn’t a natural sketch comedy performer.” All these criticisms are dominating the internet the day after Trump hosted…seemingly by people who have never actually seen an episode of Saturday Night Live since you could actually use any of these criticisms to critique two-thirds of the episodes the show has done lately (or ever).
In fact, Trump’s episode was actually better than this season’s Tracy Morgan episode and (especially) the Miley Cyrus season premiere. [Highlights of Miley’s episode: watching Leslie Jones fake a horrifying orgasm for 5 long minutes and Miley dressed as a pile of trash to sing bad songs. Yep, 90 minutes I’ll never get back.] Only the Amy Schumer one was arguably better, so apparently the critics aren’t grading on a curve.
The sketch they seem to have the biggest problem with is the “Trump 2018” one that showed him doing a hyperbolically (and satirically) great job as president, but even that criticism seems to just be an excuse to show off what nice people they are by calling Trump a bad man. The skit was more than fine as an actual parody of the bragging Trump is famous for (there were allusions to how vague his plans of “winning” actually are), but I guess any parody of his rhetoric that doesn’t definitively say Trump sucks is too subtle.
A lot of the criticisms seem to be about SNL’s unwillingness to criticize Donald, but why would they expect SNL to attack the show’s host? As far as I can remember, Trump is the only presidential candidate who’s hosted SNL, so the idea that he would show up to be humiliated was always a fantasy. The GOP field has relentlessly attacked the “left wing media” so I can’t even imagine someone like Rubio watching SNL, let alone having the guts to host an episode. [Anyone who thinks I’m being too soft on Trump is probably right, as I’m more actively terrified of Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, etc. or of a Rubio/Kasich ticket that could actually win. Liberals need to wake up and realize there are worse things than a Trump nomination for them, if they can cool their sanctimonious outrage long enough.]
Anyway, it was a decent episode that actually did parody Trump’s hyperbolic rhetoric, his easiness to impersonate (great to see Daryl Hammond’s Trump again), and his mean tweeting complete with accusing Kenan Thompson of being Kenyan. And if Larry David, Michael Che, and Drunk Uncle calling him a racist—with wildly different approvals of that racism—isn’t enough for the detractors, then they probably wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less than a cast member throwing a cream pie at Trump’s face. The one accurate criticism of the episode may be that some of the cast members did look like they didn’t want to be there, and looked scared of appearing too chummy with Donald, but SNL has always been left-of-center and will surely overcompensate in next week’s episode. Don’t worry, hugging a Republican on stage won’t make people think you are one.
Good Parts: Trump 2018 (yeah, I said it), The Opening Democratic Forum, Trump’s Mean Tweets Parody, Drake’s Dancing Parody, The Monologue, Bad Girls Do it Well, and Trump Introducing Sia for the Second Time. Bad Parts: The sketch about band introductions, the porn-star final sketch, the sleazy music producer sketch (although it does make the case that Trump could easily play legendary movie producer Robert Evans or that Jon Voight should play both of them), and even though I like Sia’s music her ridiculous-meets-pretentious performances are maybe a little tiresome in a post-Lady-Gaga world. Missed Opportunity: I’m not sure if the FCC rules allow this, but why not a Republican Primary debate sketch? Also, maybe present Trump as, well, Trump in a motivational speaker sketch about “Talking Like a Winner.”