Season 51 (2025-26): Weathering the Half-Century Hangover

About this episode

The episode critiques the creative direction of SNL Season 51, highlighting both the shortcomings of the cold opens and the standout performance of Ashley Padilla.

The defining image of Saturday Night Live Season 51 is James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, standing at yet another press conference podium. Johnson played Trump in roughly 14 of the season’s 20 episodes, almost always anchoring the cold open in the same format. The frustration isn’t with the impression itself — Johnson’s Trump remains sharp, and the wig was even subtly updated to reflect a more current look — but with the creative laziness surrounding it. A writers’ room stocked with professional comedians ought to be able to find more imaginative entry points into the political moment than a recurring White House briefing. The cold open, which should set the tone and energy for the entire show, became instead a weekly anchor dragging things down before the first commercial break. If the cold opens represent the season’s most glaring structural problem, Ashley Padilla represents its one unambiguous triumph. She is not just the best performer on the current cast — she’s actively transforming mediocre material into something worth watching, a feat very few cast members in the show’s history have managed so consistently. What New York Times critic Jason Zinoman called the “Padilla…

People in this episode

Host: Wasn't That Special

Topics covered

• SNL Season 51
• political satire
• comedy performance
• impression
• cast dynamics

Keywords

• SNL
• James Austin Johnson
• Donald Trump
• Ashley Padilla
• comedy
• cold open
• impression
• political comedy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: New York Times

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