Saturday Night Live: Aquaman sinks, De Niro fishes for laughs … cast flounders

We open at Trump Tower, as Donald Jr (Mikey Day) tucks Eric (Alex Moffat) into bed, assuaging his baby brother’s worries over rumors of his own pending indictment and finding himself surprised Eric even knows the word “indictment”. After Don Jr steps out to take a call from his lawyer, Eric is visited by his “dad’s friend from work”: Robert Mueller (Robert De Niro).

After a few quick puns about the Trump associates who’ve fallen to the special counsel’s investigation (Paul Manafort, aka Mr Pillow Fort; George Papadopoulos, aka Mr Pappa John’s Pizza; Michael Cohen, aka Federal Inmate #10358), things end abruptly with a line about how getting elected was the worst thing ever to happen to Eric’s dad.

Even by the low standards of this season, this cold open felt rushed. People across the political spectrum have criticized Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of Trump, but at least he’s playing a character. De Niro’s Mueller is all awkward delivery and self-satisfied mugging.

Self-described “SNL super-nerd-dork” Jason Momoa hosts for the first time. Singing, dancing and flexing, the once-and-future Aquaman’s monologue promises a …spirited performance.

Making use of some pretty decent special effects, Elves on Shelves has Santa conversing with his chipmunked-voiced miniature helpers. One of them, Scrabby (Momoa), begs for a new child to watch over now his has turned 13 and “figured out he could do something with his body”. It’s a one-note joke spread thin, but Momoa’s weary performance and some clever innuendo make it work.

Next up is a commercial for GE’s Big Boy Home Appliances that ostensibly aims to poke fun at fragile masculinity but seems more interested in simply placing Momoa, dressed like the Brawny paper towels mascot, around heavy machinery.

Khal Drago’s Ghost Dojo takes what should have been a layup – a Game of Thrones talk-show hosted by the slain Dothraki warlord (Momoa, returning to his breakout role) – and shoots a brick thanks to missed timing, a handful of stilted lines and a bungled Kevin Hart Oscars joke.

Them Trumps is a new show from the creators of Empire that “ax’s the question ‘What if Donald Trump was black?’” The answer? He’d be impeached and arrested. That’s the long and short of the sketch.

English pop-folk band Mumford and Sons, making their third appearance, perform Guiding Light.

Weekend Update runs down the latest about the Mueller investigation (newly titled Trump: Endgame), the president’s daft tweets (“I don’t blame Trump for thinking his tweets have magical power – just this week his tweets about China were able to tank the entire stock market”) and his tapping of William Barr as attorney general. “A reboot of someone with the last name Barr who was big in the early 90s? What could go wrong?”

Jost and Che welcome their first guest: awkward pre-teen Cary Krum (Aidy Bryant), who gives travel advice centered around her own vacation. It’s a bubbly, endearing performance that showcases Bryant’s innate likeability. Che holds court for the second guest feature, extolling the virtues of bidets much to the disgust of his co-host. Essentially a two-minute stand-up, it’s the most energized we’ve seen the Update anchor/co-head writer this season.

A Christmas Carol has Momoa playing an “extra” spirit who visits the newly penitent Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning. Mincing it up to an awkward degree, Momoa performs a Magic Mike-like dance for the confused miser, showing off his physique and earning hoots and hollers in lieu of laughs.

Day of the Dorks is a parody of Revenge of the Nerds, with Momoa in the much-memed Ogre role. It starts out as an interesting deconstruction of this character – his fellow frat brothers grow concerned over his unhinged ferocity as well as his tendency towards violence – but it quickly jettisons any point in favor of letting Momoa break stuff.

Mumford and Sons return to perform Delta. Then Sleigh Ride is a manic sketch that mashes together bizarre characters: Thompson and Jones as a couple with wildly different ideas about their relationship status, Momoa as a horny zip-line instructor, Cecily Strong as a mush-mouthed British singer with a new vagina (you’re guess is as good as mine), and Day as an asexual sleigh driver. Unsurprisingly, it never coalesces into coherence.

The last sketch is a welcomely twisted spin on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, with Pete Davidson in the title role. He uses his newfound cachet to lay into his former bullies, making one of the other reindeers suck his glowing appendage before having Santa put him down with a shotgun. It’s a good bookend with the Elves on the Shelves sketch, even if everything in between has left us wanting.

Over the last few weeks, SNL has shown itself adept at slapstick, so it’s disappointing it wasn’t able to make better use of Momoa’s physicality. Even more disappointing is the inability to produce a memorable sketch from a heavy news week. Hopefully, next week’s episode will right the ship.