Kenan Thompson’s David Ortiz Impression Highlighted The Return Of ‘Weekend Update’ On ‘SNL’

Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump impression and a potential impeachment was a huge theme in the return of Saturday Night Live, as season 45 kicked off in style with Woody Harrelson. But while Aidy Bryant’s flub charmed during another political segment, the rest of the show caught up on some important news from the offseason.

That’s where Weekend Update took care of things, with Kenan Thompson showing up with a penciled-on beard to play David Ortiz, the former Red Sox slugger who was shot in the Dominican Republic over the summer. Thompson’s impressions are always a highlight of SNL — the seasoned veteran brings a presence few others in the cast can, and his punch lines always hit. Jost, for example, asked him how his summer was.

“It was bad,” Thompson’s Ortiz said, an obvious answer that still got a laugh because of the delivery. There are some extremely exaggerated pronunciations for Dominican food and a few cracks about the medical care on the island nation, where Ortiz was given immediate treatment for his gunshot wound before the Red Sox moved the former designated hitter to Boston for further surgeries.

The point of the segment with the ever-popular Ortiz was that it morphed into him pitching some ridiculous endorsement deals, including a wig company that sounds suspiciously like Airbnb and a fitness routine that sounds like the recently IPO’d Peloton but is actually just fighting off pelicans. The rest of Weekend Update followed the traditional punchlines of the show. One of the better jokes of the segment was some wordplay — a less sexual version of Placido Domingo is, of course, Flacido Domongo.

The funniest joke just might be a segment about white supremacy symbols, with Che pointing out that Jost giving a thumb’s up is also a potential white power symbol. Overall most of the jokes hit and caught viewers up on some other news the show missed while off for the summer — calling the CEO of Juul “a can of Four Look with a sex addiction” was also good, and a joke about the Newark airport always wins.