‘SNL’ Strains for Laughs While Melissa McCarthy Shines

With ratings high and a strong desire from many on the Left for any kind of continued commentary against President Donald Trump, “Saturday Night Live” has become a predictably tepid enterprise. Dish out any kind of anti-administration content, the producers know — and the audience will lap it up.

Comedian Jimmy Fallon hosted “SNL” last night, but he didn’t go the hardest at Trump. The cold open took place in the Oval Office, with Alec Baldwin reprising his Trump impersonation — naturally, since Baldwin still hasn’t given up the role as he said he would. As Baldwin’s Trump spoke to Mike Pence (played by “SNL” cast member Beck Bennett), the president asked for a list of his accomplishments in his first 100 days in office. The Pence character told him he’d placed Judge Neil Gorsuch on the U.S. Supreme Court — and that was all.

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It was a weak joke to be sure — and a blatant sign of little-to-zero insight from the program. After all, former President Barack Obama had already been nominated for the Nobel Prize by this stage of his tenure — so it was eclipsed rather easily. Baldwin’s Trump then ran down a list of “memories” of things that he’d accomplished in the Oval Office, as the Pence character reminded him that no, each of those events took place at Mar-a-Lago.

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There was only the slightest of references to the biggest story of the week: the bombing of an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan. “SNL” simply couldn’t muster any content about this significant event on the part of the administration. The only slight mention was the Pence character’s comment that Trump was bomb-happy, which only means one thing. We can expect that type of commentary about military action to be a regular feature henceforth, from the very program that roundly ignored Obama’s heavy reliance on bombing missions in the Middle East — which was a little more egregious, considering he had promised to end the wars.

Next up was the attempt at addressing the administration “strife” between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. Jimmy Fallon played Kushner — wearing a flak jacket over a blazer, in a poke at the type of gear the Trump son-in-law wore during an early April trip to Iraq. Bannon was portrayed as the character Death, as he has been for some time now. Predictably, “SNL” positioned this infighting as a chance for Trump to treat the situation as an episode of “The Apprentice.” Very lazy and obvious.

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The “Weekend Update” segment did not fare much better. The passing mention of the military dropping of the MOAB was a reference to its cost. The $16 million price tag was weighed against “only” 96 terrorists being taken out. This is insightful only if you are ignorant of the fact that the purpose of the bombing was to eliminate an extensive underground tunnel system that supported the vicious terror network. For proof the show could not generate much more on this score, they very quickly moved onto trivial news — before padding out the segment with two guest appearances that ran for minutes each. Neither were concerning news events at all.

The lone bright spot of the episode would have to be the appearance of the White House Easter Bunny — who turned out to be Melissa McCarthy, in a reprisal of her portrayal as press secretary Sean Spicer. The bit focused on Spicer’s Hitler malaprop of earlier in the week — eliciting surprisingly genuine laughs. McCarthy brought the proper mixture of exaggeration and comedic timing for the routine, and as an actor she ran circles around Baldwin’s continued one-note performance as the president.

For that matter, she shamed the entire production in this fashion.