Is ‘Saturday Night Live’ new tonight? Relive Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Hamilton’-inspired monologue

There is no new episode of “Saturday Night Live” on NBC tonight, and in some ways it’s strange to say that just because we’ve had seven episodes for the past eight weeks. We’ve gotten used to the show being on!

Tonight, what “SNL” is doing is replaying the episode from earlier this year hosted by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and we’ll be honest in saying that it’s probably #5 right now overall on our list of shows this season. (For those wondering, Tom Hanks and Dave Chappelle are #1 and #2, respectively.) We found that a lot of the sketches in it were relatively inconsistent, but we also have a disadvantage given that we’ve never seen “Hamilton,” and to be fair we are not much of a personal patron of Broadway and not all of the sketchers were therefore in our wheelhouse.

With that being said, the opening monologue below is certainly worth watching even if you are not much of a fan of Lin-Manuel’s stage work — sure, it’s an extended reference to the music of “Hamilton,” but it shows just how talented and intelligent of a performer he is. Plus, it’s really funny and it gives us one of our favorite “SNL” traditions: A studio tour, which includes a lot of wacky stuff behind the scenes and a cameo from Lorne Michaels to go along with it.

Of course, it’s also pretty awkward at times to see some of the references about Donald Trump in here given the way in which the election went in November, but given all of the recount talk today this may be a little bit more relevant than it would’ve been had it aired a week ago.

Next week, “SNL” will return with an all-new episode that will be hosted by “La La Land” star and potential Oscar favorite Emma Stone. Given her affection for the show, we imagine that this will be a really funny edition of the program. (Photo: NBC.)