‘SNL’ Season 43 Preview: The Trump Administration Is The Show’s Gift (And Its Curse)

On the surface, it appears that things couldn’t possibly be better for Saturday Night Live right now.

The show, which returns this Saturday, just won nine Emmy Awards, including for Best Variety Series, Supporting Actor and Actress for Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon, and Best Guest Actor and Actress for Dave Chappelle and Melissa McCarthy. (By proxy, then, congratulations to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Sean Spicer on their Emmys.)

Viewership-wise, SNL is a monster like never before. Last season’s ratings saw a 30 percent improvement over the previous year, and the show even placed in the Top Ten for all entertainment series, including those on network prime time, with viewers under 50.

For the season premiere this weekend, they’ve tapped Ryan Gosling – who’ll be promoting the upcoming, long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner – to host, with musical guest Jay-Z.

So – hottest actor in Hollywood hosting, musical legend playing, awards and ratings favorite. Hard to see how things could be better. That all said – how psyched are you for the new season? Very psyched? Kinda psyched? Maybe not psyched at all?

Yeah – me neither.

Because the source of last season’s success had little to do with any inherent brilliance in the show itself, or even among its cast or guest actors (McCarthy aside).

Last season’s success was not due to any creative or masterful approach to any topic, or any particular sketch or comedic conceit.

This success was a catharsis, a screaming howl of momentary relief from a left-leaning fan base desperate for a way to vent the anger, frustration, and confusion they felt, and continue to feel, due to the presence of Donald Trump in the White House.

Baldwin’s version of Donald Trump is no less cartoonish than Stephen Colbert’s – which, for those who haven’t seen it, is an actual cartoon that will have its own series on Showtime. Baldwin takes the broadest possible approach to the president, bulging out his lips and making generalized jokes about the most recent silly things Trump said. Everything about his Trump sketches is scattershot, with Baldwin and the show’s writers treating him like a cartoon villain rather than tackling why he’s worrisome.

Here’s a quick thought experiment: Which of Baldwin’s Trump sketches from last season was the best? Is there a clear winner? Was there a classic, a la Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin sketches? Did any one sketch rise head and shoulders above the rest?

The answer is no, and this says something. When Fey tackled Palin in 2008, the sketch where she spoke Palin’s words verbatim was regarded as an instant classic for nailing precisely why Palin was a problem. Fey presented her words as is, and the vice presidential candidate’s shallow grasp on essential issues was put firmly on display.

Baldwin’s Trump is the comedic equivalent of shooting at a precise target and feeling lucky you hit the wall at all. His performance has done nothing to shed further light on Donald Trump, nothing that takes a principled or political stance in any direction, nothing that attempts to explain the phenomenon of him, or put it into any context beyond a vague “this guy sucks.” Baldwin portrays Trump as a buffoon in much the way Kevin James portrays husbands on sitcoms – daft, but so much so that the ultimate effect seems harmless and almost lovable.

Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump impression is the comedic equivalent of shooting at a precise target and feeling lucky you hit the wall at all.

And yet, after McCarthy’s brilliant Sean Spicer take – which contained all the malice Baldwin has failed to convey in Trump, and will almost certainly not return now that Spicer’s out of the White House – Baldwin was the supposed highlight of the season, the reason that SNL finds itself among television’s top-rated shows.

(Baldwin has even parlayed his success as Trump into a book deal, writing a parody with Kurt Andersen called, You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President. The book comes out on November 7, Election Day, and we can probably bet right now that Baldwin will appear on SNL as Trump the Saturday prior.)

As of now, Baldwin has confirmed he’ll appear as Trump in the season premiere, though less frequently this season overall than last.

But once you get past Baldwin, what remains for us to look forward to this season?

The end of last season saw three cast members depart. The absences of Bobby Moynihan and Sasheer Zamata will have almost no impact this season. Moynihan, one of the best cast members of the past decade, already saw his screen time and impact severely reduced last year, most likely with his exit (for his new CBS sitcom, Me, Myself & I) in mind, and Zamata never found her voice on the show.

Vanessa Bayer’s exit is a bigger loss, but many of Bayer’s more memorable characters had run their course. Anyone have a pressing need to see more of Jacob the Bar Mitzvah boy? No, but come Super Bowl time, I will openly mourn the loss of her Totino’s commercial parodies, possibly with actual weeping.

On Tuesday, three new feature performers were announced – Chris Redd, Heidi Gardner and Luke Null. Null and Gardner are virtual unknowns, graduates of, respectively, iO Chicago and the Groundlings. Redd co-starred opposite Andy Samberg in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, making a strong impression as his rapping nemesis, Hunter. Before last year, it would have been safe to predict that all three, as newcomers, would get minimal screen time. But after the first season successes of Mikey Day and Alex Moffat – especially Day, who was in more sketches last year than most veterans – anything’s possible. Still, at this point, the new cast members can only realistically be considered wild cards.

Compared to last season, then, this new one appears to promise more of the same, propelled by an unavoidable focus on an impression audiences could find increasingly tiresome.

Last year at this time, the public was still wondering what would happen with a maddening election. Now, we’re eight months into a presidency that has devoured and politicized every aspect of public society, including, as we all just witnessed, the NFL. Last year at this time, people were trepidatious. Now, they’re angry and tired. Will Baldwin’s over-the-top Trump hold the same catharsis now that it did then? Will vague entreaties be enough at a time when war with North Korea looks frighteningly possible?

And if we look beyond Trump and the show’s takes on him, does the rest still constitute a show that gets record ratings? If we look beyond the guest stars and the unstoppable force that is Kate McKinnon – who has seen the public profiles of the subjects of her two greatest recent impressions, Hillary Clinton and Kellyanne Conway, diminished, making those impressions less relevant – does the show have much else to offer?

Last season saw Beck Bennett and Day ascend to the top of the SNL call sheet, with the two emerging as the show’s new stars (after McKinnon). Both have shown range, but also something less than star quality. This is the first season where they’ll be expected to carry much of the show going in. Are they enough of a draw? Are they enough to get people to tune in on weeks when Baldwin is off on another project?

It’s entirely possible that SNL’s audience will find Baldwin’s Trump as cathartic now as they did last year. But given how politics has seeped into every aspect of our lives, it’s equally possible, if not more likely, that merely mocking the president will grow tiring. Beyond that, it’s hard to see what SNL will offer beyond standard comedic fare.

The show still has several considerable strengths. With celebrities seeing how McCarthy and Baldwin have benefitted from their time on SNL, many would surely be eager to pull a similar guest star stint, so it’s entirely possible we could see surprises a la McCarthy’s Spicer or Larry David’s Bernie Sanders.

Given that McKinnon is something of a zeitgeist machine, who knows which newsmakers should could turn into memorable characters? And in addition to those mentioned, Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson were as reliably funny as ever last season while Moffat was a joy in his debut, which should all lead to more of the same this season.

But given the likely driver of the viewing public’s current enthusiasm for SNL, it’s hard to see how the current cast and direction add up to a season funny, lively, and relevant enough to justify the hype.

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.