Why Dave Chappelle was the best ‘Saturday Night Live’ host in 2016
If you are a longtime viewer of “Saturday Night Live,” then odds are, you’ve been subjected to much of the same belly-aching from various casual viewers year after year that the show is “not funny anymore” and that the writers need to come up with new material. From one vantage point, we understand why this sentiment is out there — we do live in a society that has at this point become rather pessimistic, and with that, it is probably easier to be negative about something to get attention than to actually praise it.
Yet, the past year for “SNL” has been a very good one, and not just because of Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. We tend to rank episodes into different clusters: Amazing, very good, decent, bad, and atrocious. In 2016, the only episode we’d classify in “atrocious” was the one hosted by Russell Crowe; maybe you can say there are three or four others that were bad, but most had some sort of redeeming quality. On the flip side, we’ve had two or three amazing episodes, and then a good 80% of the rest we’d classify as either “very good” or “decent.” There’s been some little nugget of joy to be found in most installments that we’ve seen.
We’re not here so much to spotlight the best overall episode of the year — though we do have an article out there about the best sketch. Instead, the question that we’re wondering about is this: Which show had the best host, the one who managed to lift everything around them to new heights and stand out in a way that few others did? There are a few different candidates for this in our mind: Tom Hanks and Larry David were both fantastic, and Ariana Grande, despite us having fairly low expectations, managed to come out and do a very exceptional job.
Still, to us Dave Chappelle stands head and shoulders above the rest in 2016, and for a few different reasons.
1. Timing – Consider the moment in history — It was right after the Presidential Election, a tine when so many people were emotional, afraid, or even angry. Sure, there were also many happy people, but not all of them may have been watching. Chappelle offered up some hope in a stellar opening monologue, and then proceeded to provide many wonderful distractions, bringing back some previous “Chappelle’s Show” characters for a “Walking Dead” parody or doing the famous “Last Call” sketch with Kate McKinnon. He rose to the occasion rather than the moment swallowing him up.
2. The best opening monologue of the year – As we just mentioned, this was great, and was both funny and meaningful at the same time. Lesser hosts do something cheesy and gimmicky here, but as a stand-up comic this is where Dave really shined.
3. An openness to various ideas – There were so many different wacky things that he did, whether it be the adult breastfeeding sketch at the end or providing an election sketch that actually made fun of just about everyone. We don’t know what role he played in the Chris Rock cameo, but having the two of them together in one room was a delight.
4. A consistent show – He was used well in almost every sketch, and there were very few duds. While the David and Hanks shows were great, they fell off a little more after “Weekend Update” than Dave’s ultimately did.
For the record, this is also our favorite episode of 2016 — hence why it would have been repetitive to do another article about that, as well.
To you, who was the best host of “Saturday Night Live” in 2016, and what was the best overall episode? Be sure to let us know in the comments below! (Photo: NBC.)