On SNL , the Struggle (For Power) Was Real

This season of Saturday Night Live has gotten a lot of mileage from inaction. Week after week, sketch after sketch—as James Austin Johnson’s version of Donald Trump interrupts whatever comedy might be at play—the show’s performers have done more than merely step aside as the president storms the stage. Instead, his presence leaves them comically petrified: frozen, at pretty much the moment of his entrance, unable to do anything else.

Like much of what plays out on live TV, the gag works because, so often, it doesn’t quite; half the fun is watching stars such as Kenan Thompson, temporarily transformed into audience members, trying to stifle their laughter while Johnson Trumps it up. The freeze-frame device also works, though, because of its upstager in chief. Few jokes capture the president’s scene-stealing capabilities better than ones that find Trump like a modern-day Medusa, turning everyone in his path to stone. There’s a fine line, however, between running joke and crutch—and it’s one that SNL has frequently crossed. Only five episodes into the current season, the freeze-frame bits have become notably tepid.

But on last night’s episode, the freeze frames were not just the point; they made a point. The cold open was an inevitable recap of the midterm elections: the blue wave that, on Tuesday, swept the country. The sketch’s action began in expected fashion, with the Senate Democrats Hakeem Jeffries (played by Thompson) and Chuck Schumer (Sarah Sherman) celebrating, and analyzing, their party’s landslide victory. How did they do it? What was the source of their historic rebuke to Trump, the MAGA coalition, and the political status quo?

“Me!” said Trump, storming the stage. Johnson’s version of the president blathered (about Millennial cringe, about the long-gone sitcom New Girl, about men’s backsides); Colin Jost, as Pete Hegseth, at one point smarmed onto the scene. All along, Jeffries and Schumer were relegated to the background, present but vacant: two power players rendered awkwardly inert.

The staging made sense—because the upstaging made sense. The sketch, dominated by Trump even in his moment of loss, hinted at Democrats’ famed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It also visualized the fickle workings of American party politics. Power, particularly in this moment, is largely a function of attention: a matter of which politician can occupy the forefront of voters’ screens and minds. The sketch, as each character jockeyed for eyeballs, managed to turn that reality into comedy. American politics is a battle of attrition; last night, on SNL, the (power) struggle was real.

The episode’s host made that opening salvo especially apt. The comedian Druski has made a specialty out of skewering the politics of race (which he brought with him to the show, including to a sketch co-starring Andrew Dismukes as a fictional Atlantic reporter) and rose to fame posting comedy videos to Instagram. He is the first digital creator to host SNL. His episode’s cold open fittingly, and elegantly, mimicked the workings of the phone screen and the brute dynamics of the digital economy. Images, vying for primacy: That’s how information works now. It’s how culture works now. It’s how politics work now. Candidates battle not just to convince voters that their way is the right way but also to simply be there, crowding out the other contenders—undeniable, unavoidable, and ever in the foreground.  

The sketch, in recognition of that, anointed a new scene stealer: Senator-Elect James Talarico, whose victory this week helped turn Texas blue. Operating in another long-standing SNL tradition, Talarico made a surprise cameo, closing out the sketch by upstaging everyone else, literally and symbolically. The lame-duck executive, the leaders of the legislative establishment—for the first time in a long time, they were relegated to the background as the young politician talked about a new day in American politics.

“It’s clear people want something new,” Talarico announced, grinning, as SNL’s live audience whooped in approval. But true change—real transformation—is more easily scripted than done. And before Talarico shouted the customary “Live from New York” tagline, he ended his appearance with a joke that, ironically but perhaps appropriately, upstaged his own message. Americans want something different, he said, before getting to the punch line: “I’m talking, of course, about SNL’s cold opens.”