Donald Trump has desecrated pretty much every American institution hes been able to get his greasy toddler paws on. (We will never be investigated by the FBI the same way again). But Saturday Night Live, an institution that had suffered from a few shaky years in recent times, came out of its first Season of the Beast looking better than ever. Since coming back on the air last October, the sketch show had its highest ratings in over 20 years and more sweet sweet, sweet cultural relevance than its had since thats right [Thunder Clap! God Voice!] the Nineteen Seventies-evenities-eventies-eventies .
Of course, Lorne Michaels wouldve had to burn Studio 8H to ash if theyd fucked up a golden goose like Trump, and it wasnt as if the show had to go through some big left-wing transformation to make it happen. It still lives on the 50 yard line of political satire. Now, though, that line has vanished (were assuming Steve Bannon snorted it); the centrism cannot hold and the ceremony of above-it-all innocence is drowned. Its been fascinating to watch the show adapt to this weird fresh hell. And they pretty much nailed the panic thats engulfed us, turning the broadest stage in pop culture into a site of real resistance.
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The process through which SNL got its act together was not entirely seamless. Throughout 2016, the show was still lolling around in the same false equivalency backwash we were getting from the New York Times on down. Whats the harm in lobbing a few cheap email jokes, when Hillarys obviously gonna win anyway? There are some lines from last falls run of (sometimes hilarious) debate sketches that were sure everyone at the writers table would love to have back; Who do you trust the be your president, the Republican, or Donald Trump? intoned Kate McKinnon-as-HRC, taking a shot at the most liberal Democratic nominee since George McGovern with a line that definitely made Jill Stein smile.
Campaign season had its daring moments, however, like the shocking appearance of a Klan robe and Nazi armband in their Racists For Trump fake ad last spring, and the smart insights of the Hanks episodes Black Jeopardy, building a class-based bridge between the races out of car tape and Caitlyn Jenner-induced eye-rolls. All the ambiguity and inconsistency culminated in one of the strangest moments in the history of the show: McKinnons cold open on the Saturday after the election as Hillary, sitting alone at the piano playing Leonard Cohens Hallelujah then turning to the camera to tell us, Im not giving up, and neither should you. The line immediately had its own T-shirt. But it was hard to tell who she meant: The obviously progressive comedian herself? The losing candidate shed parodied as a Republican just weeks before? The incoherence was actually part of what made the moment so moving. Nobody was thinking straight at the time. Were amazed these people could even scrape themselves together every mid-afternoon and get to work.
It became clear over time that she meant Saturday Night Live itself. In the following weeks, they were still aiming for formal comedic balance, poking fun of smug liberals with sketches like The Bubble, an ad for a Brooklyn biosphere cut off from Real America that aimed for Portlandia but couldve been written by Brian Williams. McKinnon even briefly floated a reluctant Kellyanne Conway with a soul. Soon, though, the bet-hedging and both-sides-now stuff was gone, and the show started hitting the new administration where it lived: McKinnon-as-Conways terrifying Fatal Attraction desperation as she corners Jake Tapper to get back on the air was genuinely creepy, played with a full-bodied commitment worthy of Gilda Radner herself. The gauntlet truly came down, though, when Melissa McCarthy turned press secretary Sean Spicer into a psychotic prop comic, an amped-up gumhead battling the Glens of the press corps, armed with nothing but dollies and lies and a weaponized podium. This unhinged performance and by a woman! precipitated a full-on Oval Office man-baby meltdown.
One would assume that its basically a rule of national public service that elected officials are supposed to be good natured about even the most relentless caricatures SNL mocked Hillary to her face (twice) and she had to take it. Its an understatement to say that Trump has shredded this norm. Hes like a bad Eighties hair-metal frontman who thinks he deserves to be treated like Springsteen. Thanks to his itchy Twitter finger, we all knew he was watching. It often felt like the show was talking to him directly.
Sketches started to routinely reflect the surreal sleepless jitters of the way we live now, the sense of having your internal circuitry shorted out every time you look at your phone. But its the right comedic rhythm for an era that now makes sitting in front of a TV summer-breezin through the slow roll of the Watergate hearings seem like an idyll. The permanent-midnight morality of the current GOP has forced SNL to dig deeper into the darkness than ever before the portrayal of Steve Bannon as Grim Reaper bakes in the chilling assumption that he likely finds the characterization flattering. Even a poison pen like glory-days writer Michael ODonoghue might have shied away from a sketch where the president jokes about forcing the Speaker of the House to eat dogfood. Today, its right in step with the mood on 65% of the general public.
SNLs best political parodies have always humanized without normalizing the classic example comes from Season One with Dan Aykroyd as Drunk Nixon alone in the White House, going beyond mockery to earnestly probe the cavernous self-pity of pure isolation. (You kind of feel sorry for him, the Not-Ready-for-Primetime Player recalled decades later.) The excellent Melania Moments mines this same territory, rolling out a whole series of Deep Thoughts pegged to that please beam me outta here look that the first lady flashed when Trump turned his back to her at the inauguration. She imagines trading places with the maid so she can escape Trump Tower and experience life: Shed stay here and lay under Donald. Not a fair trade but oh how I long to touch sand. So do we all.
Alec Baldwin did something similar with Trump himself. The 45th president is pretty much 30 Rocks Jack Donaghy if he was still running a company two or three strokes later. Baldwin found a way to make the impression deeper, weirder, dumber, sadder with each time he did it, adding a Chauncey Gardiner-as-Manchurian Candidate haplessness that the man himself couldnt possibly grasp. And when it focuses on Trumps lumbering through the cosmic joke hes playing on the America that made him possible, the show could hit bone: After we get done, youll never have to drive to see a doctor again, Baldwin/Trump tells a Coal Country supporter as he takes his away his health care.
Brutal jokes that take on the real human consequences of Trumps policies thats how (and how well) SNL has adapted to the post-Colbert/John Oliver world, where happy warrior liberal outrage and earnest commitment to the truth dominate the comedy marketplace. When McKinnon appeared on Weekend Update as Jeff Sessions being interviewed by Al Franken (Youre a tricky raccoon, Senatah), she wasnt going to let the elfish adorableness of the simple country liaaaaarrrr shed created overshadow the fierce urgency that essentially said: Seriously, though, fuck this psycho. I may talk cute, but I am very scary, she drawled with a giddy wicked smile.
Watch that Sessions bit though, and despite the enormously satisfying laugh-inducement, the menacing realities it confronts might make you long for a carefree Eden when Bill Clinton really likes fast food a lot was a perfectly viable premise for a pretty entertaining sketch. But the way they ended this season, with Trump at the piano doing his own Hallelujah, surrounded by his crony chorus of the damned, were reminded that as much as wed like some closure, this nightmare isnt going to be tied up any time soon. Have a good summer, SNL. Youve earned it.