‘Saturday Night Live’ Recap: Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump Impression Isn’t Quite The Home Run We Thought It Would Be

Last night’s season-opening Saturday Night Live began with a cold open that immediately brought to mind the greatest mystery of the new season – why did Lorne Michaels switch his Donald Trump from Darrell Hammond to Alec Baldwin?

Usually, when an important impression is replaced on the show, it’s because the cast member doing it left, or the previous impressionist just wasn’t cutting it, as when Jay Pharoah took over President Obama from Fred Armisen. But coming into this season, SNL already had one of the best Trumps in the business in Hammond, the greatest impressionist in the show’s history.

It could be because Hammond also plays Bill Clinton, who, one can imagine, SNL sees having a larger role on the show if his wife takes the White House. and who popped up in a sketch later in the episode.

But the Baldwin switch still seems odd. The cold open, as one
would expect, parodied this week’s debate, with Kate McKinnon carrying over as Hillary Clinton, and Michael Che in large-forehead make-up as moderator Lester Holt.

The open, a rocky start to an otherwise satisfying episode that included a game turn by first-time host Margot Robbie, revealed a problem with creating satire of an event that already feels like an outtake from Idiocracy.

Donald Trump’s real-life antics have proved so over-the-top that giving them a gentle comedic nudge feels like the safest and weakest place to go, and can even feel less funny than the event it’s parodying.

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The sketch made a point of hitting all the expected topics – on Hillary’s side, her recent bout with pneumonia, which McKinnon drove home by emerging on-stage limping with a cane, only to ditch it for a somersault, and her lack of spontaneity, as she pretends to come up with her debate tag line – “Trumped-up trickle down economics” – on the fly. She also, of course, mocks Hillary’s shimmy from the debate.

But the focus is on Baldwin’s Trump, and while the portrayal is solid – is any Baldwin role ever otherwise? – it feels off compared to the previous one. His first line, playing off Trump’s narcissism and crudeness by telling the audience that his performance there would make them “cream your jeans” – three words he drew out to maximum effect – felt wrong, more projecting the ideas onto Trump than reflecting something he might have said. I also couldn’t help but recoil when Baldwin chose to make the phrase “Jina” – is in, short for both “vagina” and “China” at once – a linchpin of his impression. Anyone watching Anthony Atamanuik’s take on the candidate this year for Fusion and Comedy Central knows that “Jina” was a big part of it. Is it really possible that no one on SNL’s writing staff is aware of Atamanuik’s impression? Given its prominence this year and the uniqueness of the tactic, it’s a bit hard to believe.

This overall perception was not helped by the sketch’s failure to find an incisive angle on the debate, leaving Baldwin to mock Trump’s defensive lying – as when he accuses Hillary and President Obama of taking his microphone to Kenya, breaking it, and then returning it, or sniffling repeatedly then blaming it on Clinton – in ways that felt more familiar than either insightful or funny.

Oddly, the show got better political mileage out of a Celebrity Family Feud sketch, which pitted the Clintons against the Trumps. While leaving the candidates out of it, and choosing a few odd surrogates to include, the sketch hit harder at far more aspects of this strange race.

With Kenan Thompson in Steve Harvey host mode, the sketch took on a wider range of targets, understanding that the obvious elements of the campaign have been parodied so frequently that the only way to stay surprising and funny is to go deeper.

The sketch featured, on the Trump side, McKinnon as Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, lying and getting facts wrong from the outset as she thanks Harvey for having them on Jeopardy; Robbie as Ivanka Trump – to whom Harvey says, “You sexy. I know that might sound inappropriate, but if your daddy can say it, so can I” – Bobby Moynihan as Chris Christie, who can’t stop using phrases with “bridge” in them such as “water under the bridge”; and an eventually shirtless Beck Bennett as Vladimir Putin.

On Clinton’s side, we have Hammond as Bill, eager as ever to get back to the White House so he can hang out and watch Police Academy movies; new cast member Melissa Villasenor as a spot-on Sarah Silverman; Cecily Strong nailing the passionate twisty rhymes of Hamilton creator and next week’s host Lin-Manuel Miranda; and Larry David returning as Bernie Sanders.

As usual for this sketch, the intros take up some time, as David/Sanders notes when, introduced last, he says, “When does this actually start? The whole thing is hellos. My grandmother could knit a sweater in that time.”

The rest of the sketch is topically broad. McKinnon, as Conway, slams the pollster-turned-politico’s duplicitous media appearances, rambling as she switches topics in mid-sentence and, after buzzing in and then saying she had no answer to the question she needs to answer, announcing that she’d do as she usually does, and “talk and talk until people forget the question, then I’m gonna make an insane claim about Hillary. Hillary Clinton is North Korean.” Points to Thompson’s Harvey for throwing it to the Family Feud game board by saying, “Show me a bunch of lies.”

The sketch also found Ivanka Trump – a top Trump campaign surrogate who has largely escaped comedy’s satirical eye in this campaign – asking for help, and having her brothers, new cast members Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., respectively, rising up as if out of thin air, and speaking in slow, creepy unison, leading Thompson to call out, “Show me Children of the Corn.” The sketch even got in a shot at third party candidate Jill Stein, with David’s Sanders saying, “For someone who cares about the environment, she sure doesn’t mind asking people to throw their votes away.”

On Weekend Update, Colin Jost and Che, given a long-term vote of confidence by Michaels in the off-season, tackled the debate with a series of analogies. Jost compared Hillary to the iPhone 7 – being forced on us, and not an improvement – while Che compared Trump to a Samsung Galaxy phone, it that it could “explode at any minute.”

Che later talked about Trump’s desire to implement national stop and frisk, rightly noting that while the candidate himself would never have to worry about suffering such a violation, Che’s concern would be constant. He noted, “Granted, if you stop and frisk everyone who looks like me, you’re gonna find a lot of drugs,” then added, “If you stop and frisk everyone who looks like Colin, you’re gonna find better drugs.”

At this point, the pair have a warn-in ease with each other that makes them, at the very least, comfortable to watch. The jokes can still be hit or miss – Che’s well-intentioned monologue defending Colin Kaepernick fell completely flat – but there’s no longer a question they’ve grown into the role. For the first time, it’s possible to see a younger generation of fans eventually looking back on this Update team as their favorite.

Jost even came through with a piece of incisive political commentary, considering Hillary’s victory walk following the first debate this week premature given that two debates remain. “Right now,” he says, “Hillary needs to stop celebrating that she won the first debate. It’s like she’s in a wrestling ring strutting around like the match is over, and she doesn’t notice that right behind her, Chris Christie is handing Trump a folding chair.”

Then, Update took aim at undecided voters – and really, how is it possible anyone is still undecided in this race? – with Cecily Strong playing Cathy Anne, a variation on the type of white trash character she’s played before, who is always yelling outside Che’s apartment window. Set up to parody the undecided voter, she actually makes some valid points. Talking about how neither candidate looks like they’re having fun, she notes that Trump says he’s having fun, but this can’t be true. “If he ain’t hanging out with no Mexicans, no gays, no blacks, and no women, then he ain’t having no damn fun.”

Politics aside, first-time host Robbie had a spirited debut. After marveling at the insanity of our election process, the monologue found her and the cast having their banter fact-checked on screen in real time, an excuse to start the season with a slew of rapid fire jokes.

The first sketch found Robbie and her husband, a nerdy Day, interviewed by a local news team when a sinkhole appears in their town, and the news anchors spend more time marveling at the mismatch between Robbie and Day than the story. The sketch progresses well, as Day is increasingly portrayed as a loser – by the end, he’s revealed to be an impoverished, Kia-driving, Crocs-wearing puppeteer with no penis – and the anchors grow increasingly incredulous as Robbie professes her undying love.

Robbie also stars in a short film called “The Librarian,” where Moynihan plays a school boy with a crush on Robbie, the school’s sexy librarian. When his friend, Thompson, tells the librarian his friend thinks she’s hot, Robbie takes an 80s-metal-video turn, as music starts and she lets her hair down in slow motion. But the scene quickly turns from Whitesnake video to David Lynch film as her sexy, pin-up girl gyrations lead to everything the boys perceive as sexy about her deteriorating before their eyes – her hair falls out in clumps, she pulls her teeth out, revealing distressed fangs – and all as she continues her seductive dance. Robbie goes all in for this one, clearly relishing the chance to deconstruct her sex symbol appeal. This was the highlight of a strong hosting turn overall for Robbie, which also included a sketch featuring her as a visiting member of the Scooby-Doo crew who doesn’t quite fit in, and playing Keira Knightley in a McKinnon tour de force as an older actress talking about the horrible treatment of women in old time Hollywood, when she was paid in brooches and forced to strip for Nazis.

As for the new cast members, Moffat had a great first show for a new cast member, appearing in four sketches, with Day right behind him at three. Amazingly, Villasenor seems to have escaped any serious repercussions for racist tweets found in her Twitter timeline after her hiring, as little has been said about it publicly since their discovery last week. That said, she appeared only in the Family Feud sketch, as Silverman, acquitting herself admirably, but with only a few short lines.

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Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. His greatest wish is to see Stefon enjoy a cheeseburger at John Belushi’s diner. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.