Is ‘Saturday Night Live’ new tonight? Re-live Kate McKinnon’s Leonard Cohen tribute, Dave Chappelle highlights
Let’s be honest: The past two weeks for “Saturday Night Live,” when you combine the quality of the sketches and the timeliness of the greatest hits, may be one of the best two-week runs we’ve ever seen. We’re not going to say that Kristen Stewart was an amazing host, but she did fine enough and the material around her elevated much of what she did. Alec Baldwin was incredibly hit-or-miss, but these shows brought you great Donald Trump pieces, Melissa McCarthy twice as Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon as the Grim Reaper, and some really great pre-tape pieces from start to finish.
It’s a shame that now, we gotta get a break. There is no new episode of the show tonight. We repeat: There is no new episode of the show tonight. The next one is on March 4, which is going to be hosted by Octavia Spencer.
Tonight, the show is repeating the episode hosted by Dave Chappelle featuring A Tribe Called Quest as the musical guest. This is probably regarded as the best episode of the season, and for good reason given that most of the content in it was pretty top-notch.
There are a couple of things about this episode that are worth revisiting for a moment here, and they start with the cold open of Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon) singing “Hallelujah.” It was a strange choice when it happened, given that it was one part about the election and another part a tribute to the late Leonard Cohen. In retrospect, this is still a beautiful performance, but, we do still think that Kate didn’t need to dress up as Hillary to deliver it. The message would’ve been the same, and it wouldn’t have been as mixed.
Still, it’s a message of hope — we ALL need a little bit of hope these days.
As for Chappelle, he did some really great stuff over the course of the show — a brilliant monologue, a wonderful “Walking Dead” – Chappelle’s Show mashup, and then two fantastic sketches we’ve got for you below in the Election Night montage coupled with the opportunity to see him do a “Last Call” with McKinnon near the end of the show. We think the monologue and the Negan parody both lose a little steam upon a re-watch, but there’s still a lot of funny in these others ones — and Dave is amazing. He’s such an elusive guy that it still feels fantastic that the show managed to get him on board in the first place.
Want to get some more news right away when it comes to “Saturday Night Live”? Then be sure to head over to the link here! Rest assured, we’re going to have a whole lot more news when it comes to Spencer’s episode as it gets closer to coming on the air. (Photo: NBC.)