Even “SNL” is all about the mood

Last night's episode Saturday Night LiveThe premiere of the comedy juggernaut's 50th season began with a battle of sentiments. The long, cold opening alternated between the campaign rallies of the two main presidential candidates, first addressing Vice President Kamala Harris (played by Maya Rudolph). “Well, well, well. Look who fell out of that coconut tree,” Rudolph said at the start of her speech, referring to the viral meme that boosted Harris' candidacy after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July. The actress continued with a nod to the comedic persona she first developed for the politician half a decade ago. “Your funny aunt has returned,” said Rudolph. “The 'fun' has been restarted. 2 Fun 2 Furious.”

Back when Harris was best known as Biden's 2020 running mate, Rudolph's decision to play the politician – a former prosecutor – as a free spirit opened up an unexpected dimension to her character. In the meantime, SNL Viewers are familiar with the “funny” antics, partly because Harris himself got involved in them. Rudolph's latest portrayal of the vice president acknowledged Harris' newfound prominence on the political and cultural stage and the shift in the way many Americans now seem to see her — and what they want to see more of. “My campaign is like the song 'Espresso' by Sabrina Carpenter,” Rudolph's Harris said at the start of the skit. “The lyrics are vague, but the mood is striking.”

Harris' speech was the first of many moments in which SNL highlighted the strangeness of the current political environment, in which intangible “vibes” are perhaps the single most valuable currency. Throughout the premiere, while the show pointed out some concrete political differences between its political characters – Rudolph's Harris prefaced her “Espresso” joke with an assurance that she would protect reproductive rights – more time was spent exploring theirs depict opposing behaviors. “If we win together, we can end the drama. And the trauma,” Harris promised. “And relax in our pajamas.” Meanwhile, the show portrayed former President Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, as seemingly more motivated by racial resentment than a desire for peace or concrete plans for the country. “They say “I blame Democrats for inciting violence, that's the pot that blackens the kettle,” he said at his rally, skewering Trump's real-life obsession with Harris' racial background (and his apparent inability to understand). that mixed-race people exist). “But to be honest, I didn’t know the kettle was black until recently. I thought the cauldron was Indian, but then it decided to become Black.”

SNL's sentiment-based satire also extended to the treatment of the vice presidential candidates. In his debut as Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, Harris' running mate, guest actor Jim Gaffigan seized on a rhetorical slogan that Walz had popularized over the summer. “Trump and Vance are weird, okay? They want the government to control what you do in your bedroom and what books you read,” he said as Rudolph’s Harris nodded behind him. Gaffigan gave a rougher, more energetic edge to Walz's familiar seriousness and otherwise leaned more into the governor's folksy demeanor rather than undermining it: “In Minnesota we have a saying: Mind your damn business. There is another saying in Minnesota: My nuts are frozen to the park benchIn contrast to Rudolph's Harris, who happily lets her vice president pick the floor, Johnson's Trump rather reluctantly appointed his vice president JD Vance (played by an amusingly cast Bowen Yang). SNL called the GOP meeting lackluster compared to the Democrats' (almost) hip soirée, a decision the show also underscored in a later skit led by Yang.

On “The Talk Talk Show With Charli XCX,” Yang played the British pop singer whose early endorsement from Harris helped propel the vice president to meme-fueled popularity among younger voters. In the retro-feeling sketch, in which Sarah Sherman played Australian musician Troye Sivan, Yang's Charli CNN News anchor Kaitlan Collins (Chloe Fineman) and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (Ego Nwodim). Instead of using her access to one of Washington's better-known political journalists, Yang's Charli XCX posed all her hard-hitting questions to Smart's Bartsch and bypassed Fineman's Collins. And she used her time with Nwodim's Crockett to largely search for potential discourse bait. “I have a song on my album called 'Mean Girls,' and you went viral this summer for what you called Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Charli said of Yang, referring to a verbal argument between the two Politicians during a House committee meeting in May. “I want to hear how you show up at everything, so this is 'Jasmine Crockett's Mean-Girl Cam.'” The piece tasked Crockett with delivering sharp political commentary in a concise, quotable manner. When asked about gerrymandering, she called it a “crazy, crooked bitch.” Something, Crockett suggested, simple feels incorrect: “Why is this county shaped like a tapeworm in a hat?”

“Weekend Update” best expressed the show’s approach to satire of our current moment: mood-driven, with a dose of sharper insight when appropriate. Yang stepped into the spotlight while channeling a figure that has become surprisingly relevant to political conversations. Playing the viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng, Yang reprized his role as an overwhelmed young starlet in the style of pop musician Chappell Roan, who has publicly struggled with the burden of fame in recent months. Roan's fears stem in part from how both her ardent fans and commentators across the political spectrum have responded to recent videos in which she has expressed reservations about supporting Harris. Yang's angry, Roan-coded “Muh Deng” was a wild contrast to Devon Walker's swaggering portrayal of embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Where Moo Deng begged for privacy and emphasized her youth, SNL's Adams stopped by “Weekend Update” and bragged that he was “the first mayor to leave his office and get into the VIP section of nightclubs.” Part of what has gotten the mayor in trouble, according to the post, is his obsession with “bringing swagger back to the city.” The worst thing Adams says of Walker begins with a positive self-assessment: “What was once a landfill is now a trash metropolis.” After a pause, he added that New York also had “significantly more crime than before” because of his time in office have. As it turns out, vibes aren't Strictly speaking everything. SNLseemed to recognize this at times. Politicians should probably do the same.