SNL Stuns With a Moving Cold Open, Dave Chappelle Scores the Best Episode of the Season

Congratulations to Saturday Night Live for pulling out the best episode of the season so far.  A flawless cold open, a monologue that will be an instant SNL classic, great sketches and one of the stronger Weekend Update episodes of the Che/Jost tenure. SNL’s overall commentary this week acknowledged white liberal America’s wounds while simultaneously calling out those surprised to find out where the rest of the country stands. And that is SNL at its very best.

Last night leading up to the 11:30pm, we were all making prop bets about SNL. Will Chappelle hold the mic stand up style, will he be pro-Trump, and will there be a reference to David S. Pumpkins? But at the top of the prop bet list was, will Alec Baldwin and Hillary Clinton make one more appearance as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton or would SNL take a break from the bit?  The cold open to last night’s episode did not include Alec Baldwin– he took the night off. Instead, Kate McKinnon sat alone on stage, as Hillary Clinton, seated at a piano, and delivered an incredibly touching rendition of Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece, Hallelujah.  It was a brilliant way to address two painful losses this week and another reason for us to sing Kate McKinnon’s endless praises. Whether this will smooth over the anger many felt towards Lorne Michaels for allowing Trump to host the show last season remains to be seen.  But it was truly a touching nod to a brilliant artist, a true genius who passed this week, and to the millions of hopefuls who supported Clinton’s campaign for President. Not everyone loved the cold open. Some found it “weird” or even “creepy”, but the overwhelming response was positive on social media and among our staff. Watch it here.

Dave Chappelle hosted this week and he came out swinging with a strong eleven-minute stand-up set/monologue that covered many aspects of the election as well as a year full of gun violence, race issues, the Black Lives Matter campaign and his own personal gentrification.  Chappelle is clearly no fan of Trump despite an article in the Observer earlier this week suggesting that Dave delivered a pro-Trump set in New York. But he says Trump’s win was no surprise to him, a theme that comes up again in an election-themed sketch that immediately followed the cold open. Chappelle’s set was powerful, full of surprises, self-deprecating, smart and really funny. He gave a nod to Obama who he said did a good job. “I think we’ll all miss him when he’s gone,” Chappelle said before ending his set with a story about a recent visit to the White House for a BET party. He said being in the White House for such a beautiful night made him feel hopeful, proud to be an American and very happy about the prospects of our country. “So in that spirit,” he said, “I’m wishing Donald Trump luck, and I’m going to give him a chance. And we the historically disenfranchised demand…that he give us one too.”

Right off a hot monologue came the sharpest sketch of the night- a sketch that looks pretty familiar to a lot of people who sat down to watch election returns Tuesday night with the expectation of a resounding Hillary win. But the sketch had one thing most of those houses didn’t have- Dave Chappelle- the only one in the room who wasn’t surprised to see that America is racist. Well, he was the only one in the room seeing that until Chris Rock showed up for a surprise guest appearance and backed him up. While the white party guests complain, “Do you even know what it’s like to be a white woman in this country where you can’t get ahead no matter what you do?” and “This is the most shameful thing that America has ever done,” Rock and Chappelle tell everyone they should get to bed early because they have a big day of moping and writing on Facebook ahead of them.

If you think the election is the most divisive thing covered on Saturday Night Live this week, guess again, because if there’s one thing more uncomfortable than politics for mainstream America, it’s breast feeding. And the sketch that will have most disagreeing over whether it was a hit or miss was a sketch called Football Party.  It’s one of the best kinds of SNL sketches– a resounding hit that causes the cast to break, and then also upsets people who find it tasteless. In this segment, Chappelle is watching the game with his buddies, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Kenan Thompson, and Pete Davidson, when they find out he still lives with his mom. He and his mom are really close.  REALLY close. Chappelle Show fans enjoyed the nod back to a Chappelle show favorite. #youmakemyda-ay.

All of Chappelle’s sketches were great this week. Chappelle Show fans will want to watch Dave play all his old characters in a Walking Dead Themed bit, and Last Call Dave Chappelle pairs up lonely hearts Sheila Sovange and Corey Dipshits. But we gotta give love next to this week’s Weekend Update. Michael Che and Colin Jost give their take on the election, with Che wondering how this happened? “Did Hillary hit a voodoo priestess with her car?” while Jost pointed out that “a 70 year old with no experience couldn’t get a job at Target.” Best line goes back to Che who said he also didn’t think Trump would win, but he also didn’t think “a Madea Halloween would be the number one movie in America.” Stick around to watch Che recover, multiple times, from one flubbed joke and make sure to watch at least the beginning of the second clip, as Jost pays tribute to the record number of female minorities elected to the Senate this year. Don’t blink.

Finally, SNL went self-aware this week, doing a press conference after a sketch in the style of a post-sports-game loss press conference reflecting on what went wrong and taking questions. It was awkward, and we’re still undecided as to whether this bit “worked” but the concept was really funny- funny enough to want to share it. Chappelle took responsibility for bad wigs, Leslie Jones denied screwing up, and Aidy Bryant dodged questions. Are they laughing at themselves or post-game press conferences? Hopefully a little big of both. And for anyone who had “one more David S. Pumpkins callback” in their SNL prop bets this week, you just won big.

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