Saturday Night Live Has a Winner Spoof with The White Potus

Whatever your take on The White Lotus finale, I guarantee you’ll love the Saturday Night Live spinoff. The White Potus: An American Horror Story had it all. Chloe Fineman luxuriating in all of Parkey Posey‘s vowels as Melania Trump. James Austin Johnson with the rare chance to play a reflective Donald Trump, bleary-eyed and terrified of the criminal avalanche he’s brought down on his family and country. (“Trump Triggers Worldwide Recession,” his contraband phone warns.) Mikey Day as blowhard big brother Don, Jr and the great Alex Moffatt returned to play human pool noodle Eric. Scarlett Johansson‘s Ivanka Trump looking for redemption at the temple but, alas, like our profane Piper, wedded to her corrupt genes when asked “Am I willing to give up greed and material possessions in order to live an honest and ethical life?” The White Lotus‘s own Jon Gries glowered in the background as kinky voyeur Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick. Host Jon Hamm in unkempt and top buttons of his Hawaiian shirt undone. “I have this syringe full of active measles virus, I just want to stab somebody with it,” his jittery RFK Jr. told Sarah Sherman, who stared at him with doe eyes. “I’m having all these insane ideas. What if we took all the fluoride out of drinking water. What would that do to people’s teeth?” At that, Sherman smiled, her dentures splayed out like the Candy Land board. (You were too good for this world, Chelsea!) The fever dream ended with Trump threatening to shoot Uncle Sam, good old Beck Bennett as a shirtless Vladimir Putin murmuring in the President’s addled ear, and Don, Jr. looking to fondle the club of Kenan Thompson‘s Tiger Woods. It doesn’t get better than this, folks.

It’s been 15 years since Hamm last hosted the show, which doesn’t seem right somehow (though doesn’t count his 14 cameos in the meantime). Time away has only fueled his enthusiasm for the gig. His monologue was perfectly fine, though his wriggly retriever energy felt a little manic. At the mention of how SNL likes to call in reinforcements when “a monologue is feeling aimless and it needs a jolt of energy,” Kieran Culkin joined him on stage, looking like he himself wasn’t sure of what he was doing there. (And this makes two weeks in a row after his crowd shot during Jack Black’s monologue.) Hamm covets Culkin’s Oscar; Culkin called out Hamm’s package. “Whatever dude,” said Hamm, “Mad Men was better than Succession.” Take that debate to Reddit.

Hamm’s best moment came in the Please Don’t Destroy sketch, in which he played a detective working a missing persons case overcome with excitement for office pizza. “You know, I don’t even deserve pizza,” he sulked after being called out for losing the plot. “Maybe I’ll get a soda, maybe I’ll have a soda, and that’s all I’ll have from the pizza party.”

In “Guess! The Correct Answer!,” Hamm’s suburban dentist was desperate not to let his gameshow appearance unravel his otherwise successful everyday life. But when Day fed him “something that’s racist” as a clue for micro-agressions, Hamm’s contestant started shooting off self-incriminations. “Me? My whole family? My groomsmen? My funny accents?…”

Musical guest Lizzo has been off the scene for a minute. She returned with two tracks from her new album “Love in Real Life,” rocking out on a guitar and wearing an excellent “Tariffied” t-shirt. Her t-shirt game stayed strong through goodnights, as she made sure the audience crying about their 401(k) plans could see her “Black Women Were Right” message across her chest.

Speaking of righteous Black women, Ego Nwodim got called out twice on this episode for her triumph last weekend with Miss Eggy. In the cold open, Johnson’s Trump said, “She had a big hit last week, Miss Eggy. ‘‘Cause these men ain’t what?’ Don’t say it, we’ll get in trouble.” Later during Weekend Update, Bowen Yang‘s Chinese Trade Minister Chen Biao followed suit, asking “’Cause these tariffs ain’t what?”

It’s one thing for Twitter to love or hate your stuff on the night of. It’s a whole other to have your cast mates salute you on air a full week later. Happy basking, Miss Eggy.