‘SNL’ Wraps An Uneven Season With Leslie Jones Blasting Alabama’s New Abortion Laws

I can’t say I was surprised to see Alec Baldwin, who’s been thankfully absent from the show of late, return for one hopefully final appearance as the president in the cold open of SNL‘s season finale. What I didn’t see coming was the Trump/Queen mash-up, especially given that after a major push in the media following their biopic’s Oscar win, using Queen as a pop culture touchstone feels out of date once again.

Honestly, I’ve been sick of Baldwin’s Trump for awhile now, and this, a parody of “Don’t Stop Me Now” with lyrics reflecting the realities of the president’s scandals, did nothing to change my mind. The lyrics, sung by the cast in whatever administration-related roles they play – Cecily Strong as Melania, Beck Bennett as Pence, Aidy Bryant as Sarah Huckabee Sanders – hit on the usual suspects, such as the president’s lies, then…well, lots of that. The biggest laugh lines went to Bennett’s jokes portraying Pence as having repressed gay tendencies, and Chris Redd popping up as Kanye. Robert De Niro showed up as Robert Mueller, but thankfully had just one line, so there were few cue card readings for him to mess up.

At this point, when it comes to this administration, what laughs are really left to be had? This is a question it would benefit SNL‘s writers to ask themselves long and hard over the summer, because if ever a new approach was needed, now’s the time.

Paul Rudd returned to host, comparing the SNL monologue to a best man speech and delivering a short, sweet, somewhat non-sensical one about his history with the show, which somehow involved him working as a “vomit boy” at Studio 54 in the ’70s. (He thought it would be cleaning up vomit, but boy, was he wrong.) SNL sought to broaden its approaches to the monologue this season, and while the results weren’t always brilliant, it resulted in an interesting series of often endearing monologues overall, losing some (but not all) of its reliance on musical numbers and audience Q&As.

For the night’s first sketch, the show brought back an old reliable, with Kate McKinnon’s UFO sketch now adapted to have her, Strong, and Rudd as the first people to experience time travel. As usual, McKinnon did not have the pleasant experience her friends did. Strong and Rudd were welcomed into a glorious future through a gleaming crystal portal, and welcomed by a peaceful Council of Humanity. McKinnon, on the other hand, was “violently sucked into the past” so hard her pants stayed in the present. She was in caveman times, where “hairy, naked monkey people” started rubbing her with their butts. The sketch was the usual McKinnon tour de force, as she demonstrates bizarre cavewoman behavior by straddling Rudd and stabbing her tongue in his ear. This was everything you want from this sketch, helped along by the fact that SNL left it off the board for a bit.

Next up, Pete Davidson throws down a rap about the Game of Thrones series finale. But as Kenan Thompson soon discovers, Davidson doesn’t actually watch the show. So Davidson switches the rap to be about his true favorite show, Grace and Frankie on Netflix. Soon joined by Rudd and the week’s musical guest, DJ Khaled, the sketch turns into an extended salute to that show. While the notion of the three of them saluting a show about octogenarians is cute and somewhat funny – Khaled shouting out a plot line where a character had sleep apnea got a pretty big laugh – there was also a sense here that there was a bigger laugh to come that never arrived.

The game show parody What’s Wrong With This Picture found host Thompson presenting basic, childlike drawings to his contestants, and asking them to simply say what’s clearly wrong with them. The pictures are the kind you find in children’s coloring books, each with one glaring error, and the answers should be obvious to anyone over five years old. The problem is that contestants Bryant, Rudd, and Davidson are all very stupid, wildly creative, and possibly insane, as their answers miss the obvious mistakes while crafting bizarre and often inappropriate scenarios for the characters involved. So a picture of a woman looking into a mirror, for example, becomes a woman whose twin is trapped in a fish tank to Rudd, and to Davidson, a woman who just did a job interview in blackface and got the job. This was a very straight-forward sketch, clear premise to strong execution, and it worked for me, allowing the writers to free form the strangest scenarios then having the actors go all in. Quite a few strong laughs here.

For the season finale, Weekend Update brought back one of the season’s best new impressions, Strong’s take on Jeanine Pirro, there to present her disturbing blend of loudmouth paranoia and unbending, almost lustful dedication to the president. Playing her sauced for good measure, as she’s committed to taking a drink every time the president ignores a congressional subpoena, she gets in a quality spit-take and then some all over Colin Jost’s face. This was a great take from Strong, who had a fantastic season overall, constantly finding new approaches to characters.

Leslie Jones came on dressed like a character from The Handmaid’s Tale to comment on this week’s Alabama abortion ban. Ditching the costume quickly to reveal a black T-Shirt printed with the word “MINE” and an arrow pointing downward beneath it, she commented on the frightening new law, noting that all 25 white men who voted for it looked like everyone arrested at a massage parlor, or the audition for a Lipitor commercial. The rest was a heartfelt declaration of freedom, a rallying cry of, “you can’t control me.” Like much of SNL’s political material this year, it felt well-intended but short of what’s needed. As we’re seeing, they can control woman, and are well on their way to doing that. The abortion bans are about gender, but also about religion. Confronting one without the other is addressing half the issue, and religion is a topic too sensitive for SNL to whole-heartedly delve into the way that, say, John Oliver might.

Strong and Kyle Mooney play parents out shopping with their young daughter. They see a music box that plays a sweet song, and Rudd, the store’s proprietor, tells them the song has lyrics, and starts to sing them. The song is called “Fancy Party,” and it’s about a ballerina who ruined her career by farting at a party. Soon, Strong, Mooney, and Thompson, who works there, all remember the song and sing along. In the end, Strong breaks the box as her husband and Rudd turn on her, and Thompson gives us a Twilight Zone ending. This sketch felt half-written. The premise was clear, but the execution barely produced a laugh, and the ending felt rushed.

The View returns to talk about the Alabama abortion law. The sketch is almost too meta, more about the subtext of the relationships between the women of the The View and their own fame on the show than about the topic itself, but with nothing new to say about either. Rudd was good for a few laughs as Pete Buttigieg, but this really dragged by the end.

Kyle Mooney and Leslie Jones reignited their fake relationship with a video of them looking back at their fake relationship. A video montage of dreamy romantic moments, set to Burt Bacharach’s “Close to You,” cuts to the harsh reality of them boning on the floor of Rudd’s dressing room – which doesn’t make Rudd happy at all, as he screams that his dressing room smells like a “bad tooth.” By the end, though, Rudd is pulled into their sexual drama. A few mild laughs here. ()

Most of the women in the cast play girls at a slumber party who play with a Ouija board, and accidentally call up a demon played by Melissa Villasenor. But once the initial fascination is past, now they’re just girls with a demon in their room, and the demon wants to be included. Rudd is the dorky dad who stands up for her when the girls can’t relate to her. That’s pretty much all there was to this. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEbIZRUlICE)

And that’s the season. Thanks for reading our recaps, and have a great summer.

Larry Getlen is the author of the book Conversations with Carlin. Follow him on Twitter at @larrygetlen.

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