There was only one way for the final episode of the milestone 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” to begin: with Lorne Michaels announcing that his chosen successor will be — nah, come on, it was another sketch with James Austin Johnson playing President Trump.
This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Scarlett Johansson and featuring the musical guest Bad Bunny, began with a sendup of President Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East.
Sharing the stage with Emil Wakim (who was playing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia), Johnson said that he’d been enjoying their meals together, “sitting on the floor, dipping our fingers straight into various goops and spreads that I politely scrape under the rug and go eat at a mobile McDonald’s that you built for me.”
He added that he was a “big fan of everything that Saudi Arabia has to offer, from the oil to the money to end of list.”
Johnson vowed that he didn’t make this trip for his own benefit. “I want to make that clear,” he said. “I did this for the American people and, in many ways, myself. My personal enrichment. I did that too.”
Despite the controversy surrounding his plan to accept a 747 jet as a gift from the nation of Qatar, Johnson said he would resist demands to fly an American plane. “Uh, no thanks, honey,” he said. “Have you seen what’s going on with our planes? The radar is down and the screen is blank. Newark!”
He also wondered why he hadn’t seen any women on this trip (“The women are all hiding,” Johnson said. “It’s like a nation of Melanias”) and worked in one last reference to the country musician Morgan Wallen’s hasty exit from the “S.N.L.” stage in March, announcing, “Get me to Allah’s country.”
Finally, Johnson stepped out of the sketch and into the “S.N.L.” studio audience while remaining in character. He told viewers that, though his version of Trump would be going away for the summer, “The real one will still be omnipresent. You can’t escape me, right? I’m everywhere. Even in your dreams — even in your dreams like the late great Freddy Krueger.”
“So,” Johnson said, “see you again in the fall. If we still have a country, right? It’s a coin toss.”
Self-references of the week
With a well-deserved summer break in sight, “S.N.L.” went slightly easier on its performers this week by giving them several sketches in which they were cast as themselves: there was Johansson in a Please Don’t Destroy music video about air travel in the United States and its, uh, rapid decline; and several cast members as themselves in a filmed piece about Johansson being seduced by Bowen Yang.
But the best of these may have been a guest appearance by the “S.N.L.” alum Mike Myers, playing himself in a sketch where he is uncomfortably reunited on a stuck elevator with Ye (Kenan Thompson), nearly 20 years after they awkwardly shared a stage together during a TV benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
“I get really claustrophobic,” Myers said in the sketch.
“Oh, trust me,” Thompson replied. “I understand. I’m a few phobics myself.”
Language lesson of the week
With Marcello Hernández and Bad Bunny reunited on tonight’s show, “S.N.L.” put their bilingual abilities to deft use in this sketch, which initially appeared to be about two couples (Hernández and Ego Nwodim; and Bad Bunny and Johansson) feuding in a bar over a favorite table. But as the fight progressed and the two men seemed on the verge of exchanging blows, they slipped into Spanish to confess their relationship woes to each other. (The ingenuous ladies, of course, believe that their men are exchanging Spanish-language insults and defending their honor.)
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, continued to riff on President Trump’s visit to the Middle East.
Jost began:
President Trump traveled to the Middle East this week. If I were him, I would have just stayed there because it looked awesome. Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia where he was greeting with a lavender carpet which matched the color of his tie. And also the length. They also rolled out a mobile McDonald’s truck for President Trump’s visit, featuring Saudi Arabia’s most popular new burger, the McJournalist.
Che continued:
President Trump, while on his trip, said that Iran had “sort of” agreed to terms for a nuclear deal, in the same way Trump has sort of agreed to uphold the Constitution. Many people in Saudi Arabia were very happy with President Trump’s visit to the country. Because rich Saudis love to fly out thick blondes.
Weekend Update desk segment of the week
Both of the Weekend Update desk pieces this week were callbacks to segments from earlier in the season. And, since we can’t fully explain in a way that’s appropriate for a family newspaper why Che was apologizing to Johansson for a previous joke about her, we’ll talk about Nwodim instead.
Nwodim was back to play her stand-up persona, Miss Eggy — you know, the one who caused a mild stir in April, when the “S.N.L.” studio audience responded to one of her call-and-response bits with an obscene word. No such naughtiness this time — just more of Miss Eggy’s jokes about menopause and airplane food. (“Flight attendant came around asking me if I want some butternut squash ravioli,” she said. “More like, butter not offer me that mess till you put some meat in it.”) Nwodim did again ask the audience members to chime in at various moments, but we noticed that she was much quicker to pull her microphone away from them and bring it back to herself this time around.
Dave Itzkoff is a former Times culture reporter.
The post ‘S.N.L.’: A Lucrative Middle East Trip appeared first on New York Times.
