Sure, the fact that last night’s Saturday Night Live host, Melissa McCarthy, was going to be driving through Manhattan traffic on a motorized podium-mobile as press secretary Sean Spicer might have been spoiled all week by ubiquitous pictures and articles. (It’s like you can’t even film a bit in busy New York traffic anymore.) But it was still a customary, crowd-pleasing hoot to see McCarthy’s accurately belligerent, truth-twisting Spicer emerging from his hiding place in the White House hedges to unseat seemingly inevitable replacement spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Aidy Bryant).
As ever, Spicer (or “Spicey,” as he likes to be called) responded to questions from the assembled press corps with personal abuse, outright lies, condescendingly explanatory toys (Russian nesting dolls this time out), and, finally, physical assault, here via violently detached press room column. But, in keeping with the increasingly flustered and sweaty Spicer’s situation in the real world, all the yelling, and the transparent mendacity, and the very public humiliation (by SNL, for one) that comes with serving the capricious whims of a hair-trigger megalomaniac head of state has taken a toll.
Setting out on that apparently now street-legal podium on a quest to find his boss, McCarthy’s Spicer (accompanied by the melancholy strains of Simon & Garfunkel) finally tracks down Alec Baldwin’s Trump at one of his many golf properties and pleads for another chance. Unfortunately for Spicey, the Donald’s capriciousness (and his noted lack of sexual boundaries) extends to his once-valued underlings as well. With the actual Spicer rumored to be on the way out the door despite his willingness to flat-out deny reality on a daily basis, McCarthy’s Spicey can only succumb to the fate of all those who’ll eventually learn what serving Donald Trump really entails. Remember, in Donald’s Trump’s mind, when you’re famous, they let you do it.