With months to go before the election, the show is running out of things to say about the former president.
Whether it’s an impression from a cast member or from its teeming roster of celebrity guests, Saturday Night Live’s political sketches often favor highlighting the absurd over making a point. That approach has only snowballed in our current era, when a growing swath of politicians practically write their own punch lines. James Austin Johnson’s eerily precise rendition of Donald Trump—a far cry from Alec Baldwin’s mumbly, squinty-eyed caricature—infuses the former president with such verisimilitude that sketches featuring him don’t require much, beyond leaning into the word salad.
In the cold open of last night’s season finale, SNL took on the press conferences Trump has hosted during his hush-money trial in Manhattan. “I’m really enjoying this post-court press conference in this very weird and depressing hallway,” Johnson, as Trump, began. He went on to suggest why he might really be running for president a third time: “For me, much better to not win and say it was rigged and then get very rich raising money to stop the steal and you never have to do president again.” Even if that argument had some truth, a November win could possibly erase Trump’s legal troubles—something the sketch called out, as Johnson quipped, “If you’re tired about hearing all of my trials, all you gotta do is vote for me, and it’ll all go away.” His trials might, but SNL’s drained coverage of him would not.
As SNL wraps up its 49th season, and looks ahead to the celebration of its 50th this fall, the show seems exhausted by what it’s treating like yet another election. In cold opens such as this and many others this season, its Trump sketches have simply replicated what the former president has been up to in the news. The show’s political commentary had more bite on “Weekend Update,” whose format lends itself to incisive wisecracks that don’t need much of a setup—as when Michael Che joked about Trump’s request that he and Joe Biden stand during the two presidential debates they’ve agreed to this summer. “So that’s the status of our presidency,” Che said. “Standing is a feat of strength.”
The show’s non-Trump sketches make clear that the writers and performers can still work up sharp, engaging takes on contemporary life—provided the subject isn’t something we’re forced to think about all the time. SNL’s satire exhibited more piquancy last night with the parody commercial for Xiemu, a thinly veiled take on the fast-fashion brand Shein and the online shopping hub Temu, both of which have been criticized for pushing low-quality goods with a negative environmental imprint.
The idea was pretty straightforward: The ad featured models showing off $5 shoes and $3.99 tank tops, while a voice-over revealed the horrific labor conditions required to produce such cheap clothing, and the cascading problems resulting from those conditions. (Notably, a low level of lead in all of the clothing.) By SNL’s standards, the sketch was cutting, especially when the voice-over turned on consumers. “Be real, is this shady?” asked a model played by Ego Nwodim. “If it was, would you stop buying it?” the voice-over retorted.
Compared with past commercial parodies, such as the CVS send-up about men who rush to the drugstore on Valentine’s Day to purchase a last-minute gift for their girlfriend, the Xiemu bit was certainly more loaded. While calling out the obvious fell flat during the Trump cold open, the “Fast Fashion Ad” sketch managed to take a scathing stance by doing the same with Temu and Shein. Weariness is antithetical to good comedy, and perhaps SNL’s writers feel the strain of finding humor in a political climate that feels closer to a heated reality-TV brawl.
Ahead of its 50th season, which will surely arrive with no shortage of fanfare, SNL has the summer to recharge for the upcoming election. Its enthusiasm for taking on politics may have dulled since Baldwin first impersonated Trump, but you’d rather it not slog through the obvious. The election itself promises enough of that.
