In the end, the anticipation far outpaced — trumped, you might say — the reality.

For weeks, people had fretted about Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, despoiler of a Chicago skyscraper and former NBC reality star, being given a chance to host “Saturday Night Live.” Free advertising, they said. Unfair!

But the show that aired Saturday was one of the genuine duds in the recent history of the NBC late-night warhorse, and that’s saying something. “SNL” didn’t seem to know what to do with Trump beyond, mostly, a string of late appearances in sketches that sapped whatever meager power they had managed to muster.

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Here are five thoughts on Trump, the candidate, hosting “SNL,” the show that is now officially more interested in an extra few ratings points than in comedy:

1. Larry David as Bernie Sanders should have been the host. There was more life in David’s brief caricature of the Vermont socialist seeking the Democratic presidential nomination than in all of Trump’s onstage moments combined. “I’m not talking about fancy coins like dimes and quarters,” David/Sanders said in a plea for donations found in a household cleaning device. “I’m Bernie Sanders, and I want your vacuum pennies.” Unfortunately, the David moments came early, and the rest of the show went on like, for instance, a presidential campaign being fought months in advance of the calendar year of the actual election.

2. The monologue, which sets the mood for a host’s evening, was a snooze. Not even Taran Killam and Darrell Hammond doing their versions of Trump beside Trump could save this TV moment. At least there was a laugh in cast member Aidy Bryant feigning exasperation at Trump mistaking her for his long-time nemesis Rosie O’Donnell.

3. Trump walks away unscathed. He didn’t particularly help himself in his apparent quest to become president, but the “short-fingered vulgarian,” as Spy Magazine used to call Trump in the 1980s, didn’t hurt himself either. He poked just enough fun his own way to seem a good sport but, whether playing the laser harpist in a low-rent band or a sleazy record producer, he stayed mostly above the proceedings, reading his lines with a smirk that suggested he thought he was getting the better of this deal.

4. So why did “SNL” bring him on? The show took its shots at Trump in the first sketch after the monologue, which imagined the year as 2018, Trump in the White House, and the many unlikely things he’s promised on the campaign trail having come true. But even having a “president of Mexico” giving President Trump a check to help pay for the border wall between Mexico and the U.S. didn’t land particularly hard.

5. This was in no way worth the controversy. The essence of people’s beef with NBC and “SNL” is that they gave free image-polishing airtime to a leading presidential candidate. They did, and they’ll be hard pressed to offer anything like the equivalent to that still massive group of Republican hopefuls, although I think we all look forward to walk ons from Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham. Meanwhile, the only time Trump’s presence boosted the show a notch was in a better than average Drunk Uncle sketch, which hinged on Bobby Moynihan’s character being a Trump supporter. Getting a line about Trump and Drunk Uncle both loving white Russians hardly seems worth the fuss.

(c)2015 Chicago Tribune

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