This Week’s “SNL” Took on the Elon Musk Era of Twitter

The sketch used the cast and host well

SNL on Twitter
This week's "SNL" riffed on Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
NBCUniversal

Elon Musk now owns Twitter, which has made for strange days on the platform in question — with advertisers hitting pause on their relationship with the company and massive numbers of Twitter employees facing layoffs. With Musk having raised the prospect of previously banned accounts being reinstated, that made for an ideal target for Saturday Night Live‘s writers, who explored what such a reinstatement might look like.

The sketch followed the structure of many a politically-minded cold open, giving a number of cast members — plus host Amy Schumer — an opportunity to do quick bits. That included James Austin Johnson with his pitch-perfect Donald Trump impersonation — with a memorable riff on Chevy Chase and Community — and Cecily Strong in full aggrieved mode.

If you’ve watched SNL in recent years, you could get the gist of things pretty easily. Kenan Thompson and Chloe Fineman kept things moving briskly as the Twitter employees in charge of reviewing the accounts, and Schumer’s riff on what a sentient crypto scam might be like also made for memorable viewing.

Was it the most groundbreaking sketch you’ll see this season? No. Did it make good use of several cast members as well as the host? Yes. It felt satirical without being ham-fisted; sometimes, for four minutes of comedy, that’s enough.

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