--- title: Saturday Night Live Has Been Energized by Donald Trump description: Saturday Night Live is compelling right now because it is using the tools the President himself favors: caricature, irreverence, hyperbole. canonical: https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-02-16T12:11:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:54:37.617Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Uncanny Catharsis of 'Saturday Night Live' og:description: The show is using the tools that the President himself favors: caricature, irreverence, hyperbole. og:url: https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3bfedbd99ceaea76/6988ba8f86f68e58476e38a8/snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Uncanny Catharsis of 'Saturday Night Live' twitter:description: The show is using the tools that the President himself favors: caricature, irreverence, hyperbole. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3bfedbd99ceaea76/6988ba8f86f68e58476e38a8/snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Uncanny Catharsis of _Saturday Night Live_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Watch How the Real Sean Spicer Compares to Saturday Night Live's Parody [Watch (HLS stream): Watch How the Real Sean Spicer Compares to Saturday Night Live's Parody](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/frexRAn4.m3u8) (2:00)  _Published 2017-02-14. Melissa McCarthy as Press Secretary Sean Spicer on SNL_  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Feb 16, 2017 12:11 PM UTC  McCarthy’s Spicer, an irate pitchman, praised his Ivanka Trump–brand heels to SNL viewers. McCarthy’s Spicer, an irate pitchman, praised his Ivanka Trump–brand heels to SNL viewers.Will Heath—NBC  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Feb 16, 2017 12:11 PM UTC Even before his inauguration in January, President Trump faced sustained criticism from predictable quarters, including celebrities like [Meryl Streep](http://time.com/4628147/read-meryl-streeps-powerful-golden-globes-speech/), commentariat on both the left and the right, groups of protesters around the world and the news media. Yet in a turn fittingly strange for our times, the most stinging critique of the new Administration has come from NBC’s[ _Saturday Night Live_](http://time.com/4669781/saturday-night-live-sean-spicer-melissa-mccarthy-supercut/). The show is in its 42nd season, and its sketch format may as well be prehistoric. But its Trump skewering has been captivating, depicting the President (Alec Baldwin) as a buffoon seeking to litigate his Executive Order on immigration on The People’s Court, counselor Kellyanne Conway (Kate McKinnon) as a crazed monster desperate to get on the news and press secretary Sean “Spicey” Spicer (Melissa McCarthy) as thuggishly incompetent. This is vaudeville comedy for a vaudeville presidency. And it’s allowed the show to break through in a way that few other modes of critiquing Trump have. The Feb. 11 episode hosted by Baldwin was _SNL_‘s most-watched episode in six years. Among the key demographic of 18-to-49-year-olds, it scored higher ratings than any prime-time programming that week. More than that, it has helped crystallize the public images of various players in Trump’s Administration, so much so that begging to appear as a Cabinet member or adviser has become de rigueur for celebrities. Comedy responds to its time not only in subject matter but in format too. Barack Obama’s low-drama, just-the-facts presidency coincided with the late-night ascendancy of the puffily fun-loving Jimmy Fallon. During the George W. Bush presidency, Jon Stewart’s ironic presentation of carefully sourced information on The Daily Show countered the Administration’s shaky arguments for war. Because Trump’s appeal is largely removed from the world of logic and because he’s moved so rapidly since Jan. 20, that won’t work anymore. _SNL_ is compelling right now because it is using the tools the President himself favors: caricature, irreverence, hyperbole. For those outraged by its spin on Spicer or Conway, _Saturday Night Live_ is harder to dismiss than a consistent liberal critic like TBS’s Samantha Bee or John Oliver on HBO. _SNL_, like all of us, is trying to keep up with and make sense of the news. The show is about personality, not policy. “The mission of the show is to be funny, relevant, and be a big part of the national conversation. That doesn’t mean the show is trying to take down Trump,” says James Andrew Miller, co-author of Live From New York, an expansive oral history of the series. _SNL_ doesn’t have a call to action so much as it just wants you to keep watching. It’s sketch comedy, not op-ed. But it strikes close to home, offering viewers catharsis, because it opens up ways to understand figures in the news. The oddity and extremity of _SNL_‘s characterizations–when was the last time a White House press secretary was a continued source of mirth?–take their inspiration from how unlike their predecessors Trump and his advisers are. McCarthy’s Spicer impression, says Miller, can exist only “because this Administration gave her and the _SNL_ writers the runway to do it.” Then there’s the President himself, who has long presented himself as an untouchable celebrity in order to bulldoze over critiques of his ideas, outrages and hypocrisies. To criticize his policies is to miss that many Americans voted for him precisely to put a disrupter in the White House. But cutting him down, using the format he pays attention to and cares about most, hurts his legitimacy. His image is his greatest asset, and _SNL_ is capable of redefining it weekly. _Saturday Night Live_, which has waxed and waned over the decades, may wane again. Its most recent episode introduced a second and third Trump caricature (Leslie Jones and Vanessa Bayer), signaling how far it will have to go to stay relevant. But in this moment, _SNL_ combines star power, stagecraft, live-wire spectacle and a willingness to offend. Those are weapons in the President’s arsenal too. He’s tweeted that the show is “biased,” “unwatchable” and “always a complete hit job.” In other words, it’s a hit. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/"},"headline":"The Uncanny Catharsis of Saturday Night Live","datePublished":"2017-02-16T12:11:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:54:37.617Z","description":"Saturday Night Live is compelling right now because it is using the tools the President himself favors: caricature, irreverence, hyperbole.","url":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/","keywords":["Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3bfedbd99ceaea76/6988ba8f86f68e58476e38a8/snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3bfedbd99ceaea76/6988ba8f86f68e58476e38a8/snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc","caption":"snl-uncanny-catharsis-melissa-mccarthy-politics-nbc","creditText":"Will Heath—NBC","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/","name":"The Uncanny Catharsis of Saturday Night Live"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Watch How the Real Sean Spicer Compares to Saturday Night Live's Parody","description":"Melissa McCarthy as Press Secretary Sean Spicer on SNL","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/frexRAn4/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2017-02-14T18:31:49.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/frexRAn4.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/","duration":"PT2M","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4673000/the-uncanny-catharsis-of-saturday-night-live/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```