Alec Baldwin returned as Donald Trump in SNL last night. Did anyone else wish he’d stayed away? I thought the cold open fell totally flat. It was badly written with really poor jokes and the cast really had to struggle, though the audience dutifully laughed when they were supposed to. Baldwin himself was dire. I found him quite funny in his sketches before the election but this performance was just embarrassing to watch.
I do hope they’re not going to have him do this every week.
I thought that both the sketch and Baldwin’s performance were… okay, but not particularly inspired. The show’s still trying to figure out how to make a Trump presidency funny. The best part was McKinnon’s performance as Kellyanne Conway.
Would Darrell Hammond, or one of the regular cast members, have done a better Trump?
It occurs to me that Baldwin may be the barometer of continued liberty under Trump’s America. If Baldwin is free, so are we.
I saw last night’s performance and I don’t remember Baldwin’s nose being quite that shape.
Yes, McKinnon was on top form as she always is. As for the Trump character I don’t think any of the other cast members would be better. And actually I would like to see Baldwin return if they’d only write him some better lines. Baldwin is a superb actor both in serious and comedy roles but actors can only work with the material they’re given and his material last night was crap.
I’ll admit, it doesn’t take much to make me laugh, so I thought it was pretty funny. What’s even funnier is the angry tweets from Donald “tiny hands” Trump.
It wasn’t that funny because it really wasn’t much of a satire; it seems to be pretty much how the transition is playing out so far, except that they oddly refrained from having someone playing Jared Kushner escorting everyone out with a baseball bat. McKinnon’s portrayal of a regretful Kellyanne Conway is funny, but that woman could be hilarious doing “Who’s on First” as a one woman show.
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No one loathes Trump more than me but I gotta say, Baldwin’s take doesn’t eviscerate Donald to the extent I long for. I don’t get the weird way Baldwin holds his mouth open when doing trump. Not the first thing that leaps to my mind. More sniffing! That was one of the major red flags on Trump for me. I listened to him sniff repeatedly for 90 minutes during the debates. Next day…he denies ever having sniffed. Bum mic. Never did it. I can understand a politician lying about big, consequential things. When they lie about tiny little things like that it really triggers my spidey sense!
They’re trying to make Baldwin’s Trump come across as more sympathetic/pathetic than they did in the past sketches, but I’m not sure if it’s working. I wonder when we’ll get another Melania sketch. I was surprise they didn’t do one last week when she met with Michelle Obama.
yeah, I’ve despised Alec Baldwin for a while now, but at least prior to the election I have to say I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d seen recently.
Trump didn’t like it either, apparently. We’ve elected a petulant child as president.
And he thinks equal time applies. snerk
One of my many fears is that Trump Chief-E is immune to satire. His voters went for a man with complete disrespect for facts. His opponents completely understand that, but it’s never going to be funny to them, because… it stopped being funny on November 8, 2016.
In the words of Mad Magazine, “That movie is already a satire.”
I cannot recall any particular examples at the moment but did anyone else feel like SNL was making an effort to appeal to Trump supporters and / or take more jabs at the left?I’d have to rewatch it to better explain what I mean but there were several times when I thought to myself that they were trying to appeal to a broader audience.
Baldwin’s portrayal is wearing thin. He’s OK, but the exaggerated facial features kind of ruins it for me. I thought the sketch was pretty funny, even if it is more or less what is actually happening-- you can’t write this stuff yourself, folks! KM is a comedic genius on par with Steve Martin or Carol Burnett. The guy who plays Pence is right on target.
There was a great bit on this week’s where there was a bubble community for all the people who didn’t support Trump to move to. Look that one up.
SNL has classically been left leaning but they do take shots at both sides.
Yes, good example. I guess if I really think about it they’ve always mocked liberals too but after all the right bashing it almost seemed out of the ordinary. I don’t think I can be counted as part of “The Elite” by anyone’s definition but I am a liberal and I thought the bubble skit was very good. There’s plenty of comedy to be mined from both sides.
I thought McKinnon was a bit weak in that role. It’s hard to play. No one really knows anything about Kellyanne Conway, so she’s hard to make fun of.
To satirize a public figure you need to do one of three things:
a) Exaggerrate what they are; see, for instance, Dana Carvey’s wonderful impression of the first George Bush, or Darrell Hammond’s hilarious Sean Connery.
b) Precisely reverse what they are, as per the brilliant sketch where Phil Hartman played Ronald Reagan as being, well, Ronald Reagan in public, and then turning into a brilliant, scheming mastermind who spoke fluent Arabic when no one was watching, or
c) Just make up a persona and run with it, as per The Onion’s hilarious Diamond Joe Biden stories.
The Kellyanne Conway character was sort of forced in there to give McKinnon (who is brilliant) something to do. If they keep running with it I’m sure they’ll figure something out.
As to replacing Baldwin as Trump, hell no. Let him play the character as long as he wants, he’s great at it. The sketch was weak, but not every sketch hits it out of the park.
Yeah, the mannerisms are a little overdone. I did like the never ending Romney handshake but I got a good laugh when Trump started freaking out about being president and he calmed himself with “ok, don’t worry, Donald. Hillary is still ahead in the polls.”
“Big beautiful boobs and buildings…Big beautiful boobs and buildings…Big beautiful boobs and buildings.” It’s hard to satirize someone who is already a cartoonish characture of an inflated egotist, especially now that we’ve collectively realized that Trump can be as dangerous as he is buffoonish.
McKinnon didn’t have much to work with in the sketch other than making Kellyanne Conway has nauseous and regretful as everyone else who wasn’t a die-hard Trump supporter, but she’s previously done a great job of making Conway seem sympathetic and downtrodden by the bluff incompetence of her candidate, even though the actual Conway seems about as convivial as a pit viper and has all the warmth of a dead fish. She does a similarly good job with her Hillary Clinton even when ostensibly playing up her micromanaging and cold-blooded persona. And her despairing Angela Merkel, distraught about what “Barash” will see in her emails, is incomparable.
Hopefully Pence has enough of a sense of humor to delay sending her to the reeducation camp as long as possible.
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