Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: August 19, 2017

Who is hosting SNL tonight?

Who’s hosting Saturday Night Live tonight? The name will be very familiar to late night comedy fans. It’s Jimmy Fallon. The host of the Tonight Show and former SNL cast member returns to Studio 8-H tonight at 11:30pm on NBC in an encore presentation of Saturday Night Live from April 15, 2017. Lorne Michaels went out of his way to make this return to Saturday Night Live a very special homecoming for Jimmy Fallon. This episode from last April was the very first time SNL went live across all four time zones of the continental United States. Yeah, that’s pretty special.

One thing that wasn’t so special about this episode, which was the 3rd highest rated of Season 42, was Jimmy Fallon’s monologue. It wasn’t really a monologue, but instead, it was a flash mob-type song and dance number done to David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance“. Fallon’s attempt to channel the late Rock and Roll Hall of Famer got mixed reviews including everything from being fun to being self-indulgent and confusing to simply asking the question, “Why now?”. As for the rest of the show, momentum seemed to build for the show, the later into the night that it got, producing a solid episode of Saturday Night Live.

Alec Baldwin returned to play President Donald Trump in the cold open. It was again passable with no new cleverness or takes added to Baldwin’s popular impression. The jokes were there as usual with the only new wrinkle being host Jimmy Fallon appearing as Trump adviser / son-in-law Jared Kushner complete with his suit with a flak jacket fashion statement.

This SNL repeat is worth a second viewing for another look at Melissa McCarthy playing White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer with her impression which will definitely be a comedy highlight of 2017. McCarthy had Spicer returning to his previous West Wing job as White House Easter Bunny which the real Spicy appeared as during the George W. Bush years. In the sketch, Spicer attempts to clarify his embarrassing real life statements about Hitler and the Holocaust. The actual Sean Spicer must have hoped this faux pas would fade away after he left the White House. Unfortunately for Sean, SNL is back with a repeat to jog everyone’s memories.

Other memorable sketches from tonight’s Saturday Night Live rerun include “Civil War Soldier” which put Fallon’s musical talents to better use, and “Celebrity Family Feud: Time Travel Edition” with great celebrity impressions from Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon and Melissa Villaseñor, plus Fallon as both 1977 and 2017 John Travolta and musical guest Harry Styles as Mick Jagger. Plus, fans of Saturday Night Live who go back to Jimmy Fallon’s cast member days, had to love the return of “Sully and Denise“, Boston’s wicked pisser of a couple played by Jimmy Fallon and Rachel Dratch who dropped in on the show as a surprise guest. In an updated version of themselves, Sully and Denise now have a daughter who’s off to Harvard. Their daughter, Little Denise who was played by Kate McKinnon, was a perfect addition to a classic SNL sketch.

On Weekend Update, the strongest part in this episode (as in all episodes) is the anchor team of Colin Jost and Michael Che. The weak parts of this week’s WU segment came from the recurring characters visiting the news desk. The word “recurring” may actually be the problem with these characters. Jost and Che got visits from Vanessa Bayer as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy and a return from the struggling comedian whose material is ripped from the headlines, Bruce Chandling played by Kyle Mooney. Both these characters keep finding their way back to Weekend Update and in this episode they both leave the audience wanting something more, like a purpose and some laughs.

In the promos for Jimmy Fallon’s return to Saturday Night Live, we get a montage of Jimmy’s SNL years and Fallon with musical guest, One Direction’s Harry Styles (as a solo act) getting jazzy and snappy while promoting the news that Saturday Night Live is going live coast-to-coast.

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