‘Saturday Night Live’ ratings: Benedict Cumberbatch, Solange score season’s second-best ratings

After seeing the ratings for “Saturday Night Live” today, it’s all the more clear why NBC made the decision to really load up on new episodes now prior t the election. They’ve been able to take complete advantage of the Presidential election, and it’s generated some of the biggest ratings for them in years.

While last night’s show hosted by Benedict Cumberbatch and featuring musical guest Solange (read our full review for it over here) drew a 2.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is second only to the Tom Hanks episode (3.0), which also featured two performances from Lady Gaga. This was the highest-rated episode for a November show since a Louis C.K. – fun. collaboration back in 2012 drew a 3.0. Of course, that was also an election year. Noticing a pattern here?

These ratings certainly give more credence to the notion that Americans love Cumberbatch, but we attribute the numbers more to the election than anything else. As a matter of fact, we’d wager that the show as a whole was somewhat of a disappointment. While we love Benedict, at the same time none of the sketches really utilized any of his past work in a way that they could have. Can you imagine the social-media buzz that would have existed around a “Sherlock” parody or a “Doctor Strange” sketch? It feels almost like either someone didn’t want to license the franchises for the show, or that the writers deliberately sabotaged their own ability to have certain things go viral.

Next weekend’s show should prove very interesting given that Dave Chappelle has an enormous cult following. Yet, at the same time much of the ratings could depend on whatever the results of said election are. We figure that either way, we’ve got one more appearance of Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump coming. Either he’ll celebrate his Presidential victory, or we will get a send-off.

For the record, if Trump wins we assume that at some point, the impression will be passed off to a current cast member. We’ve viewed Baldwin coming in as the show hedging its bets on a Hillary win, similar to when they brought in Larry David to be Bernie Sanders. (Photo: NBC.)