On Saturday night, Studio 8H was briefly remodeled into a pop-up Ready For Hillary campaign headquarters for the 41st season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Right out of the gate on SNL, the real Hillary Clinton got to look at McKinnon’s image of Hillary Clinton, defining herself as a “grandmother” and “a human”, and say, “Oh, I get it. You’re a politician”. “All anybody wants to talk about is Donald Trump“, said McKinnon’s fake Clinton.
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In the post-Jason Sudeikis years, Taran Killam has stepped up as the show’s go-to male lead, pulling off high-profile impressions (like last night’s Donald Trump debut) and more low-key straight man bits in run-of-the-mill sketches (like “Millennials”) easily. She commiserates, as a “normal, everyday person” does, with her barkeep, Val-played by the former First Lady. (I’ll let those who have stronger attachments to either’s music adjudicate their relative merits.) Despite both being performers since they could walk, essentially, Timberlake-who, I’m not the first to say, could be a full cast member anytime he chose to set aside his lucrative recording career-has the ability to throw himself into a character.
Beyond the actual appearance, in fact, it’s safe to assume the Clinton campaign directly or indirectly negotiated her appearance as part of a de facto package deal with NBC to showcase the candidate.
During which, Clinton was able to take shots at her record, including taking too much time to decide her stands on the Keystone Pipeline and gay marriage.
Clinton closed out her performance with a singalong with McKinnon to the tune of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me”.
Clinton pulled off her lines without a hitch. It’s one of the few sketches in which Jones has shown some restraint, and is a departure from the way she’s usually deployed on the show – as a loud, uncouth black woman lacking in self awareness. If you see someone say to you, Wow, that Hillary appearance probably really helped/hurt her, you have my permission to report them to the authorities.
HollywoodLifers, do you think Donald’s overreacting to the SNL sketch? By which I mean back on SNL, not back in general, because it’s not like she went anywhere. But every single season of Saturday Night Live has just as many bad sketches as the next, but we’ve just forgotten about them because they don’t get played during clip shows. “Yeah… coulda been sooner” said fake Clinton.
McKinnon’s Clinton continued that she wanted Trump to win the primaries so she could “destroy him, and mount his hair in the Oval Office”.
Now that even Mick Jagger has gotten on board, Vanessa Bayer and Aidy Bryant are two of the last remaining people who haven’t been subjected to Taylor Swift’s notorious friend-collecting.
Cyrus worked hard to be outrageous with her wardrobe, donning a giant headdress for one number.
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Notably absent from Clinton’s big comedic performance was any reference to her email scandal, something that she taken the time to jab at in the past.
