‘Saturday Night Live’: Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton opens with ‘Hallelujah’ – Leonard Cohen tribute

There was a giant elephant in the room (hey, the elephant is the symbol for the Republican Party) going into this weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” and that was how quickly the show was going to bring up the Presidential election and, specifically, the victory of Donald Trump. They’ve really relished in some of his miscues over the past few months, with one of the running jokes being that Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton loves competing with him since it raises her own odds of winning.

Did the show embrace more Alec Baldwin as Donald, or go the other way with a little bit of a break? We could understand either direction all things considered. In the end, the show actually decided to do something a little bit different in paying tribute to Leonard Cohen. It was a shocking move in some ways, especially when we saw Kate McKinnon sitting there at the piano. We actually thought that we were getting a really funny Hillary Clinton sketch at first, but then we realized that she was actually performing “Hallelujah” in a pretty straight fashion. It was a little distracting that Kate was obviously Hillary, but this move was meant to be two-pronged.

We do think that the primary intention here was to tell “SNL” viewers that despite their political preferences (this show has a very Democratic audience), the country is going to be okay. We do think that had Clinton won, we probably wouldn’t have this to start off the show.

Yet, we do think that the second intention here was to pay tribute to Cohen, a visionary performer who was taken from us over the course of the past week. There was a moment when we forgot about the Hillary / Trump of it all and this was genuinely moving in a way we didn’t expect.

We’re not reviewing this particularly opening as entertainment. Head over here to read the rest of our review.

For some other news and highlights on “SNL,” including our take on A Tribe Called Quest, head over to the link here! (Photo: NBC.)