Well, here we are again.

The last time an episode of Saturday Night Live followed the election of Donald Trump, it embarrassed itself by having Kate McKinnon perform Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah while dressed as Hilary Clinton and make a tearful promise to keep fighting.

It seems like more of the same at the start of this episode, as the cast has gathered on stage and solemnly addresses the audience about Trump’s return to power and the lack of guardrails preventing him from taking revenge on his enemies.

However, this is all misguided, as evidenced when they collectively address Trump himself: “We… have always been with you. We have never wavered in our support of you, even when others doubted you. Everyone on this stage believes in you. Everyone on this stage voted for you.”

James Austin Johnson shows up and debuts his new creation, “hot, jacked Trump,” while Dana Carvey emerges as the dancing, jumping buffoon Elon Musk, who brags about how he “runs the country now.” (Maya Rudolph is nowhere to be seen, which is probably for the best.)

While this cold open is preferable to the awful one from eight years ago, it’s hard to take the insincerity as sincere: After all, SNL was more than happy to have both Trump and Musk host before it, and long after their despicable characters were in full swing were strength. display.

Bill Burr returns as host for the second time. The comic initially avoids talking about the election and jumps straight into a stand-up routine about the flu and vaccines (“If you get it, you’re siding with the evil pharmaceutical companies; if you don’t, you’re on one line up with people who don’t wear shoes on a plane”). But ultimately he bumps right into the orange elephant in the room, placing the blame for the outcome of the election squarely on women: “You’re 0-2 against this guy…enough with the pantsuit, it’s not working…not you If you win the office on policy, you have to clean it up a bit! I know a lot of ugly women – feminists – don’t want to hear this…’

This is definitely not what a large percentage of the show’s audience wants to hear, and Burr struggles to get the live audience on his side, although he usually shows them around near the end of the monologue. I expect the larger reaction on social media will be less forgiving.

The first sketch takes place in a firehouse, where a mental health expert administers a series of Rorschach tests to a group of macho firefighters. Most boys only see mundane things like trees and butterflies, but Burr’s fireman sees sexualized drawings of cartoon characters, like Monsters Inc’s hero in bridal lingerie “clutching his little green butt”, Olaf from Frozen running away with Elsa’s top, a jacked Snoopy wearing a red speedo and “walking Charlie Brown like he’s his dog”. The drawings of these scenarios are funny, but it’s the specificity of each scenario that gets the most laughs.

In a commercial for Buffalo Wild Wings, football fans have Sunday fun at the chain’s restaurant, with the exception of Burr’s angry, miserable Patriots fan. He complains about his wife (“(she) says I bring tension to the house”) and his lot in life (“I was born white 50 years too late”), before getting into a fist fight with his adult son gets involved. his young granddaughter. A solid portrait of a certain type of douchebag (Dave Portnoy appearing on the guy’s phone screen is a nice touch).

Then Burr’s father teaches his son about ’80s sex rock through a greatest hits CD of his favorite band, Snake Skin, “three mid-’40s Jewish boys from Long Island singing about slamming nah-nah “. The cuts to the band’s live performances and Burr’s stilted delivery give this a janky feel.

The Janitor is a parody of Good Will Hunting. Michael Longfellow’s MIT administrator solves an impossible math problem but can’t figure out how to clean up a giant puddle of vomit. Occasionally funny – like when Kenan Thompson’s angry university president starts beating Longfellow with a belt – it goes on too long. And while there’s nothing wrong with SNL parodying an older movie here and there, would it kill them to send out a new movie every now and then like they used to?

Then two young men (Andrew Dismukes, Devon Walker) call their fathers (Thompson, Burr) to check on them. The emotionally distant fathers can only express their concerns about mortality through football and cars (“I think my car just wants to be closer to your car, because my car’s car broke down around the age your car is now”). As with the previous sketch, this one drags and the alternation between silly comedy and faux sentimentality quickly becomes tiresome.

Musical guest Mk.gee plays his first set, then it’s time for Weekend Update. Colin Jost notes that “we learned on Tuesday that Democrats don’t actually know how to rig the election,” while Michael Che, with a drink in hand, can’t believe he’s being fooled by “white liberals and their crazy confidence.” has been convinced “that rural Pennsylvania would choose the black Indian lady.”

Their first guest is a woman who cannot find anything in her bag (Ego Nwodim). She’s there to talk about active listening skills, even though she’s clearly very distracted as she rummages through a giant handbag containing a dead goldfish, an unarchived election ballet, a gun, and whatever she’s been looking for all along: a smaller bag. Nwodim is good as always, but the audience just isn’t into it (this goes for the show in general, but their silence is more pronounced here).

Later, Che introduces his ex-neighbor Willie (Thompson), an eternal optimist who hopes to cheer everyone up, even though all his life stories – throwing batteries at Jackie Robinson, dog fighting, suicide attempts – are terrible. Like Nwodim, Thompson is fine, but the atmosphere is just not right.

A new couple (Sarah Sherman, Mikey Day) celebrates that nothing strange happened on their first date, until they notice that everyone else in the restaurant is bald. This leads to a surreal musical number in which the proud baldies celebrate their way of life. It is a surprisingly large production that makes good use of almost twenty extras.

At a trauma support group, Bowen Yang’s jerk is throwing things into disarray by belittling everyone else’s stories (even if his are trivial), eating all the donuts, and burning his fellow members with cigarettes. Burr’s turn as a brash grief counselor provides a few chuckles, but Yang and new cast member Ashley Padilla are gone, missing cues and breaking up for no reason.

Mk.gee plays his second song, before the episode ends – like so many lately – with dinner at a restaurant. The jovial atmosphere is completely broken when a member of the table (Padilla) tells and then retells a long, awkward, terribly unfunny joke about “four beautiful dogs” trying to locate the smell of poop in their house. The sketch nicely reflects the overall episode; both are filled with dead air and discomfort.

On the one hand, you can’t really blame the show or Burr for this (even if he had to know his opening material wouldn’t go over well), given how dark the national mood is. But anyone counting on Saturday Night Live to rise to the occasion and deliver some truly scathing satire will be disappointed. On the other hand, I doubt such a person exists. The show’s political material in the run-up to the election was extremely weak, so why should we expect anything different in the aftermath?