‘SNL,’ with Baldwin Back as Trump, Has Nowhere to Go

“Saturday Night Live” is settling into a world in which Hillary Clinton is becoming more and more of a memory with each passing day — and Donald J. Trump is inching closer to being sworn in as president of the United States. Yet the series is not leaving politics in the dust — and it certainly isn’t warming to Trump or his impending administration (no surprise there).

In a big move for the show, Alec Baldwin returned to his famed Trump impersonation after many guessed he would retire the schtick now that Trump had a guaranteed four years in the White House. After criticizing NBC on Twitter for not allowing the show itself to endorse Clinton (something it already did through its slanted sketches) and not portraying Trump following the election results — Baldwin returned in the latest episode hosted by Kristen Wiig to take new shots at Trump and his transition team.

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In the show’s cold open, Baldwin’s Trump and Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway (Trump’s campaign manager) run down the transition team’s new responsibilities and campaign promises.

After meeting with a general and being pushed on his plan for ISIS, the “SNL” Trump begins sweating and googling ideas and even looking to his phone’s Siri for help. He also quickly turns on his promises of building a border wall, deporting illegal immigrants, and assigning a special prosecutor to look into Hillary’s controversial email scandals.

So “SNL” already has the Trump administration in its sights — and it also took on Mike Pence’s trip to Broadway and Mitt Romney’s meeting with Trump to keep the hits coming.

“SNL” alum Jason Sudeikis played Romney, and after awkwardly shaking Baldwin’s hand, he said, “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” “Trump” replies.

Later, “Trump” meets with “Mike Pence” and asks him how his viewing of “Hamilton” went. “I got a free lecture,” he replies.

Related: Mike Pence Harassed at ‘Hamilton’

The Baldwin Trump impersonations may become a regular thing now, according to the actor (maybe nobody else came calling?). In an interview with Vanity Fair before the new episode taped, Baldwin said regarding his absence as Trump, “I’m going to do it again this weekend, but not all that often. There [were] a lot of things online that [were] said about it — like why didn’t I do it after the election? I was booked that weekend. Not even other jobs — we have things to do. It crashed every weekend.”

Most of the rest of the show kept things light and silly with a Thanksgiving-themed song that invited back “SNL” favorites Steve Martin and Will Forte. There was even a skit that lightly took on millennial hipsters unable to deal with the reality of a Trump presidency.

It is simply going to keep preaching to the choir.

Invited to The Bubble, where the election never happened and news is filtered through a “proper” leftist filter — the only sites available are things like Huffington Post — the place is for “like-minded thinkers … and no one else.” Though the sketch wasn’t the takedown of safe spaces and weepy Clinton voters that a true satire series should perform, it had some light digs at those unwilling to accept people who think or vote differently.

In a sketch showing a mockup set of an Anderson Cooper-type show, talking heads run through various political controversies in the media. Predictable shots about the popular vote are thrown around, but the scene mostly poked fun at the short-minded press and faux outrage of many talking heads in the mainstream media.

Meanwhile, “Weekend Update” kept to the usual leftist talking points and took tired digs at Steve Bannon and soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The segment used to be home to biting comic originals like Dennis Miller and Norm MacDonald — but now it feels like a wrap-up of lazy mainstream headlines mostly devoid of laughs.

In the wake of an election in which much of America denied a candidate and politics pushed by the satirists at “Saturday Night Live,” the show proved that instead of opening up its target audience or committing to satire against all — it is simply going to keep preaching to the choir.

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