A few of SportsAlcohol.com’s founding editors are longtime Saturday Night Live viewers and fans, so we like to occasionally get together and check in with how the show is doing. SNL is getting record ratings this season, with special guest stars like Alec Baldwin doing his Donald Trump impression and Melissa McCarthy dropping by to play Sean Spicer. We discuss those sketches and more: what this political engagement means for a larger-than-average core cast, how Weekend Update is faring in the Funny News landscape, how this year’s group of hosts has measured up, and what sketches we feel have been overlooked in all of the political hubbub. This conversation, recorded immediately following the most recent, Baldwin-hosted episode, is a must-listen for any SNL fan.
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And if you love this and want to hear some of our classic archival thoughts on Saturday Night Live, check out these previous episodes:
The Season 40 Opener
That Time Trump Hosted While Running for President
SNL at the Movies
- The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Biggest Holiday Movies of 1995 - December 22, 2025
- The Long-Awaited SportsAlcohol.com Anniversary Podcast Double Feature: 1985 and 2005 - November 30, 2025
- The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Oscars Special 2025! - February 25, 2025
Marisa is totally right that Hilary gets dinged (not just on SNL, but everywhere) for basically being a politician with political ambition when her contemporaries get a pass because it’s expected behavior. Watch Sam Bee’s piece on how societal expectations of a candidate’s wife forced her to become a middle of the road, compromise-style politician if you want to get really angry. However, I believe Jan Hooks was the first person to play Hilary on SNL and she would talk over Hartman’s Bill Clinton and call herself a co-president, so they’ve come a long way.
Yeah, I think there’s something kind of triumphant about the way McKinnon plays (played) it: a version of Hillary who wants to embrace her ambition and work ethic, rather than playing those qualities as purely irritating (SNL on Hillary in the entire ’90s is pretty much a garbage fire). I do think McKinnon tends to re-orient impressions away from imitation and toward however she can showboat (which is where Dana Carvey ended up a lot of the time, but usually starting from someplace less crazed)… but I don’t think it’s an especially cruel or unfair version of Hillary, as far as these things go. I think there were way more egregious election-season false equivalencies made on Update than there were through McKinnon.
This is probably unfair to Moffat and Day, but in my head Lorne panicked after firing Killam over scheduling issues and thought to himself “I need two mediocre white guys with one-note impressions to fill his shoes” It doesn’t help that stuff like the boat guy and the friend zone thing read to me as things they did in their audition and just kept pitching until there was a spot for them.
(Oh, how I wish I was on this podcast because I have so many feelings)
ETA: probably also unfair to Killam, who will kill it in Hamilton (even though his casting bothers me).
This podcast also reminds me that none of you hate Garth and Kat enough. It is everything bad about those performers.
I feel comfortable standing by the “funny the first time” rap for Garth and Kat. There was a joy of performance to it (though obviously it got increasingly self-indulgent each of the next hundred times they did it).
Yes — and I think Rob is right that it’s everything bad about those performers, including the fact that you can see talent in the initial execution before it wears you down with repetition and self-indulgence.