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buzzsaw | Matthew Gilbert

The 2016 campaign puts the bite back into ‘SNL’

Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon on “SNL.”Ryan Huddle | Globe staff

When Alec Baldwin shows up as Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” you can quickly understand what he’s trying to do with his impression. He’s turning Trump into an ugly joke, finding the humor by transforming the Republican presidential nominee into a full-on grotesque.

The hair isn’t just the swept-back Wisconsin cheddar that every joker including Trump himself has mocked — it’s got a kind of mullet backside. And Baldwin concentrates primarily on the arch-shaped pucker of Trump’s mouth, which we saw often in his debates with Hillary Clinton, the way his lips twist and scowl while he listens as well as talks. Essentially, Baldwin’s Trump is a live-action gargoyle, one of those primitive man-animal sculptures perched on the gutters of ancient buildings.

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And what do you know? Baldwin’s impression — much more aggressive and edgier than Darrell Hammond’s — has helped to nudge “SNL” back into the kind of political relevance it hasn’t enjoyed since Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin premiered in 2008 and became legendary. The NBC show is once again in the toss and turn of the news cycle — exactly where such a comedy show ought to be in the middle of a fierce presidential race. Baldwin’s Trump distortion is compelling — and meme-ready — enough to bring “SNL” the best ratings it has seen in eight years. He amplifies something about the glowering Trump that speaks to audiences in need of cathartic laughs.

Baldwin’s impression is also darkly compelling enough — with icky mispronunciations such as “gina” for “China,” and the creepy whispering of “wrong . . . wrong” — to push Trump’s buttons, inspiring him to tweet that he disapproves of the “SNL” “hit job” and that Baldwin’s portrayal “stinks.” He can’t enjoy hearing someone like Jimmy Kimmel observe that Trump has seemed “as if he was doing an impression of Alec Baldwin doing an impression of him.” And then he may have thought that, given his relationship with NBC on “The Apprentice” and with his hosting gig on “SNL” last year, he would get a free pass.

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It’s a pleasure to watch “SNL” slip back into a political groove. Politics is in the show’s DNA, from Chevy Chase’s klutzy Gerald Ford and Hammond’s lip-biting Bill Clinton to Dana Carvey’s evasive, mumbling George H.W. Bush and Will Ferrell’s dopey W. But there haven’t been a lot of American political players begging quite so much as Trump to be spoofed in recent years. Kate McKinnon works hard to make a point with her crazy, wild-eyed Hillary, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what that point is. She’s amusing, and she plays well with Baldwin in the debate sketches, but her flail has no spikes — perhaps because Clinton isn’t a creature of quirks. You can milk only so many laughs out of a pantsuit.

Larry David caused a sensation as Bernie Sanders, but that had more to do with the uncanny resemblance and similar voices and accents of the two men than anything more barbed about Sanders. It was a more endearing than satirical turn. And no one who tried to make fun of the good-humored President Obama — Fred Armisen, Jay Pharoah — quite managed it. Pharoah’s Ben Carson was wonderfully unsettling, if only briefly germane, but the former “SNL” cast member just couldn’t caricaturize someone who is so stubbornly uncartoonish.

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This season, “Saturday Night Live” has also delivered a number of sharp political sketches without Baldwin — possibly the result of having given Colin Jost’s head writer position to staffers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider. McKinnon may be inexact in her Hillary impression, but her hilarious take on Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in a sketch called “A Day Off” was spot on. Her Conway couldn’t take a minute of time off before she was summoned to cable news to defend yet another extreme Trump statement. An excellent “Black Jeopardy” sketch cleverly linked two black women with a white Trump supporter (played by Tom Hanks) according to their class, not racial, issues. And a goofy piece called “Melanianade” merged Cecily Strong’s Melania Trump with a parody of Beyonce’s “Lemonade.”

It’s pretty hard to distinguish yourself in political comedy on TV these days, which makes the righting of “SNL” more impressive. We’re rich in late-night shows that ridicule politicians as a matter of course, including “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah,” “Real Time With Bill Maher,” and “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” not to mention some biting humor from former “SNL” head writer Seth Meyers on “Late Night.” And, as we know from decades of “SNL” ups and downs, sketch comedy is extremely difficult to do well, especially week after week. You’re not just throwing punch lines at pictures and clips; you’re creating scripted situations that need to behave like jokey, wacky short stories with characters. Some of the best of these political sketches will re-air Monday in a one-hour “2016 SNL Election Special” on NBC.

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So bravo. Yes, the show will get better and worse 10 times between now and the end of the season, as is its wont. What would we do if we didn’t get to complain every year about how bad “SNL” has gotten since 1975? But this season, I’ve been looking forward to each episode, to find out how it will poke holes in a race that has had a long, strange grip on our attention.


Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.