Halloween horror: Alec Baldwin returns to ‘SNL’ as Michael Keaton hosts
A ghost of ‘SNL’ past was back to haunt the show.
Lorne Michaels doesn’t know how to quit Alec Baldwin.
After the 2020 election, it looked like the SNL showrunner had learned his lesson. Baldwin was yeeted from the show, his version of Donald Trump banished along with Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden and Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris. For a few seasons, things were good. SNL’s young cast got to shine, and it really felt like they had been given the keys to the franchise.
Then Michaels backslid in a major way, having Rudolph return to play Harris while adding Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz and Dana Carvey as Biden, boxing out SNL’s actual cast from these major roles.
It got even worse this weekend. Alec Baldwin was back.
SNL kicked off the episode with a cold open featuring Baldwin as Fox News’ Bret Baier, pairing him with Rudolph’s Harris.
Why won’t anyone tell Lorne Michaels that this is bad?
It’s 2024. Baldwin isn’t the pop culture darling he was decades ago when he began racking up his record 17 hosting gigs. As I said in December, “Whatever goodwill Baldwin had on SNL was destroyed by his stint as Donald Trump. What began as an interesting experiment (having an outsider play a major SNL role?) derailed SNL for multiple seasons and opened the door to an era of celebrity cameos that robbed the actual cast of countless breakout roles. (And that’s not even counting his real-world controversies.)”
Baldwin popping up at the end of Timothée Chalamet’s stellar episode last season didn’t make sense. And him getting the spotlight at the beginning of Michael Keaton’s episode doesn’t make sense either.
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COLD OPEN
Fox News Kamala Harris Interview
I was delayed watching this episode since I stuck with Game 5 of the ALCS and only switched over to SNL once the Yankees had clinched their first World Series berth since 2009. I knew the cold open was going to be trouble, though, thanks to a friend texting me, “Well, you'll love how they opened SNL.”
Uh oh.
Gonna say it again: Lorne Michaels is out of ideas.
- “Very demure, very mindful”: SNL used the viral phrase twice this episode, with it making an appearance in both the cold open and the “TikTok” sketch later in the episode. It felt really, really forced coming from Rudolph’s Harris.
- “America’s a terrible place full of jerks and idiots”: SNL fans should be so thankful that whatever plans Michaels had for a new Trump fell through and the role remained with James Austin Johnson. There’s no one better.
THE MONOLOGUE
After two great hosting gigs from Nate Bargatze and Ariana Grande, this episode hosted by Michael Keaton felt like a letdown. It didn’t have the same oomph that the past two weeks had, both in the episode’s writing and in the host’s energy.
That was apparent in Keaton’s monologue, which was basically just a meandering intro that’s only purpose was to get us to the moment when Mikey Day and Andy Samberg got to come out in Beetlejuice costumes. With Samberg’s Emhoff being absent from the cold open, I assumed that he wasn’t there this week when Day first came out as Beetlejuice. I can’t remember which episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast it was discussed, but Samberg’s history with Beetlejuice made it inevitable that he would show up here.
