Saturday Night Live 'SNL' Jimmy Fallon Plays Jared Kushner In "Elimination Night" With Baldwin Trump

Saturday Night Live 'SNL' Jimmy Fallon Plays Jared Kushner In "Elimination Night" With Baldwin Trump

'SNL' brings out Fallon's Kushner and McCarthy's Spicer as the Easter Bunny. Fallon, who was Saturday night's host, joined the "SNL" Trump administration as Trump son-in-law and adviser, Kushner, while McCarthy returned as Spicer to give a special Easter apology. S.N.L.: How Jimmy Fallon Sneakily Avoided Making a Single Political Statement. Wiith Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump and Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer as its two most popular characters, it would be incredibly odd for Saturday Night Live to side-step politics entirely in any given episode. In fact, its inarguably S.N.L.’s seven-month mea culpa for allowing Trump to host in the first place that has injected new life into the show and earned the once-edgy late-night staple a place right back at the top of the pop cultural and political zeitgeist. How, then, does perennial nice guy and political fence-sitter Jimmy Fallon now fit in to the show he once called home? The answer: by nimbly side-stepping the issue altogether.

Fallon’s famously controversial glad-handing of Donald Trump continues to haunt The Tonight Show host. He even let S.N.L. and his old colleague Tina Fey publicly mock him for it last October. But Fallon’s fun-loving, late-night party vibe continues to lag in the ratings behind contemporaries like Stephen Colbert who, following S.N.L.’s example, has struck ratings gold by throwing Trump firmly under the bus. And while Fallon—perhaps feeling the pressure of this falling ratings—recently started to get a little meaner about Trump, he still remains a relative pussycat.

So it should come as no surprise that even though Fallon participated in the episode’s political cold open starring as presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner opposite Baldwin’s Trump, he somehow managed to not say a word against the president. . .literally. In the sketch itself, Trump makes reference to the fact that unlike other White House advisers jockeying for power, Kushner has not been eager to be seen in the media spotlight. Trump lovingly calls him “a little Jewish Amelie” in reference the French film moppet’s silent ways. Fallon managed to get through the pointedly anti-Trump sketch without saying a word until he joined Baldwin in a boisterous “live from New York it’s Saturday night!” Whether or not that silence was the S.N.L. writers lampshading Fallon’s political neutrality or not, it was a clever way for the host to participate without verbally committing himself to any edgy humor. Next to the political cold open, the best chance for S.N.L. hosts to make their most pointed political statement comes in the episode’s monologue. In fact, though usually written by the staff, the monologue provides any given host the opportunity to but a very personal spin on the episode. Recent hosts like Aziz Ansari and Kristen Stewart have taken full advantage of the platform to apply their personal experiences as non-white or female or gay to make a commentary on Trump’s America. Certainly not all hosts go political in their monologues but Fallon went one step further by once again avoiding speaking as much as possible. Instead, he sang a tribute to David Bowie and, leaning into his life’s-a-party persona, led the cast and musical guest Harry Styles in a dance party. And though recent hosts like Louis C.K., Scarlett Johansson, and more have used the show’s pre-recording digital shorts to make some of their most searing political statements, Fallon’s pair of digital shorts both just explored The Tonight Show host’s awkward and clumsy white guy schtick. Then Fallon understandably sat out the most confrontationally political sketch of the night: Melissa McCarthy’s one-woman tour-de-force takedown of Sean Spicer. But though firmly a-political, the rest of the sketches of the episode did take full advantage of what Fallon does best. Flexing his impression muscle, Fallon one-upped Baldwin’s pre-recorded double act from last week by nimbly playing two versions of John Travolta.

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