-A cold open about the Democratic Debate with an appearance from Larry David appearing as Bernie Sanders and Alec Baldwin as Jim Webb.
-A 30 Rock sketch during the monologue with Morgan, Baldwin, Tina Fey, Jack McBrayer, and Jane Krakowski reprising their characters from the show.
-The return of “Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet” (Which featured a live camel).
-The return of “Astronaut Jones” with a special appearance from Demi Lovato.
We go from three hosts that were great and entertaining to one that I’m not sure anyone wanted to see host the show. Republican Presidential Front-runner Donald Trump returned to 8H for his second time hosting with Sia returning for her second time as the musical guest. I’m not going to be doing a full review of this episode, mainly because of my dislike for Trump, which means I won’t be reviewing the monologue. Instead, I’ll be playing around with a new format for posts where I’ll be focusing on Weekend Update, both of Sia’s performances, and which sketch I thought was the strongest sketch for each cast member. So, in a way, it’s like a mini review of the episode.
Cast Members Strongest Sketches:
Vanessa Bayer: “Live Tweeting” and “Former Porn Stars”.
Beck Bennett: “Mr. Crocker”.
Aidy Bryant: “Bad Girls”.
Taran Killam: “Live Tweeting”.
Kate McKinnon: “MSNBC Forum Cold Open”.
Kyle Mooney: “White House 2018”.
Bobby Moynihan: “Former Porn Stars”.
Jay Pharoah: “Hotline Bling Parody”.
Cecily Strong: “MSNBC Forum Cold Open” and “Former Porn Stars”.
Kenan Thompson: “Rock Band”.
Sasheer Zamata: “White House 2018”.
Pete Davidson: “Mr. Crocker”.
Leslie Jones: “Live Tweeting”.
Jon Rudnitsky: “White House 2018”.
Weekend Update:
I thought the beginning of Update was a little shaky, more on Jost’s part but he redeemed himself by the end, but ended up being a solid episode of Update. In my opinion, Che seemed to have a better night than Jost but both anchors delivered some great jokes. The Jeb Bush joke about the e-mails was great as well as the back-and-forth jokes about Ben Carson. I thought Che’s jabs at Trump were funny as well as brave since Trump was hosting the show. I loved seeing Leslie again and thought she was hilarious, as always. I thought it was funny how she messed up the food innuendo she was about to call Jost and how she stopped Jost from calling her some type of innuendo. Even though the segment seemed to go off topic at times, I still thought the segment was funny. I loved Che’s joke about the World Series. I also loved Che’s joke about his “Negro senses”. I loved getting to see Drunk Uncle again and thought it was fitting for him to appear on this episode of Update since Trump was the host. In my opinion, and some readers might agree with me on this, Drunk Uncle represents who Trump supporters are and what they think and say (again, this is just my opinion). I did love how Drunk Uncle thought Che was Ben Carson and broke his glass at the sound of Hillary Clinton’s name. Overall, I thought this was a solid Update. Honestly, Update was my favorite part of this episode and, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the episode.
Sia “Alive” and “Bird Set Free” Performances:
First of all, I love Sia and her music and I was so happy to see that she was coming back as a musical guest, even if it was so quick for her to return (her last appearance was last season when Kevin Hart hosted). I thought her performance of “Alive” was great and I thought the song was beautiful. For her second song, “Bird Set Free,” I thought the song and the performance were great but the intro with Trump and Kenan was really weird. I thought it was a little unusual for Kenan to come out and impersonate the lead singer of Toots & the Maytals, who was the musical guest when Trump first hosted the show back in season 29. That whole segment just seemed really out of place and really unusual and I'm not even sure why this was included in the show.
Some other things about this episode I liked were Larry David appearing as Bernie Sanders in the cold open and Martin Short appearing as Ed Grimley in the “Hotline Bling Parody.” Hearing David say “Live from New York, eh, you get it!” was probably one of my favorite parts of the episode and very Larry David. Seeing Martin Short in a digital short as one of his most famous SNL characters was unexpected but a fun surprise.
Overall, I just did not like this episode. This hurts for me to write this because I’m such a fan of the show but it was just so bad. This was probably one of the worst episodes I’ve ever seen. More or less it was a bad host choice. To be honest, this would’ve been a good time to try a hostless episode if NBC gave into the protesters demands to have Trump removed as the host for this episode. I had gone back and forth about whether or not to do a blog post for this episode. Even though it would be easy for me to not write a post, I decided this would be the perfect time to try out a new format for future blog posts if there is ever another host that is chosen that I may not particularly like. That being said, it would have to be someone like Donald Trump (or any of the Republican Presidential candidates for that matter) or Justin Bieber (we all remember how horrible that episode was) for me to do another post like this one.
This has been my take, somewhat, on the SNL episode hosted by Donald Trump with musical guest Sia. I'll be back with a review of SNL with host Elizabeth Banks and musical guest Disclosure. Please spread the word about the blog and subscribe to the blog. Also, follow the blog on Twitter @SNLblogger. I live tweet during new episodes on the blog’s Twitter so feel free to join in on the conversation. Feel free to start your own conversations about episodes in the comments section but keep them clean. Also, please feel free to give me constructive criticism about the blog so I can improve the blog in any way.
Thanks for reading!
Lauren
