John Mulaney Saves the Season From the Mueller Report Doldrums
Never has any television show wanted anything more than Saturday Night Live wanted to see President Donald Trump imprisoned over his alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. In sketch after sketch this season, SNL writers pleaded with Special Investigator Robert Mueller to recommend criminal charges against Trump – and yet when none came, the show just moved on as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. The show’s myopic focus on Trump and Mueller effectively wrecked large portions of the season, centering on Alec Baldwin’s terrible Trump impression and Kate McKinnon’s bad impersonations of virtually every Trump cabinet member.
There were highlights, of course, primarily the John Mulaney episode two-thirds of the way through the season. It was an all-time great episode followed by two very good episodes hosted by Idris Elba and Sandrah Oh.
And there were some great individual sketches peppered throughout the season, most of which were written by first-year writers. Adam Driver’s portrayal of an oil baron at his son’s school career day and McKinnon’s role in “Teacher Fell Down” stood out as particularly good, as did Matt Damon’s part in a sketch debating the merits of the band Weezer.
We cover all this and much more in this episode of Wasn’t That Special. Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL, and consider joining at the Executive Producer level, where you get a whole load of extra commentary and clips that will help you become an SNL expert!
Scot Bertram 
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