Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: December 22, 2018

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Saturday Night Live’s run of early winter repeats begins tonight with a “Best Of” SNL hosted by Seth Meyers.

The cast, crew and writers at SNL are all hibernating for the next few weeks while the show is on its mid-season break. So, like a squirrel saving nuts for winter, Lorne Michaels has stored up some Saturday Night Live episodes from the first half of SNL – Season 44 for everyone to enjoy until the show returns in mid-January 2019. Tonight’s repeat SNL is hosted by former Saturday Night Live cast member and head writer and now host of NBC’s “Late Night“, Seth Meyers. When Seth decided to leave SNL, he was the third longest tenured cast member in the series’ history with 13 seasons under his belt. And despite leaving a lasting SNL legacy, it wasn’t until October 13, 2018 that Seth Meyers was finally brought back to host the show.

This show which re-airs tonight at 11:30pm on NBC, was the third episode of SNL – Season 44, but it was also the first time this season that Alec Baldwin had returned to appear as President Donald Trump, a character that he debuted almost two years to the day that this episode aired. Baldwin’s Trump was originally planned for just the 2016 election year, mainly because people weren’t expecting him to win, but it’s really taken on a life of its own since its premiere. You can decide whether that’s good or bad. In tonight’s repeat, Baldwin is back as Donald Trump in the SNL – Cold Open which was a spoof of singer / entrepreneur / controversy machine Kanye West’s meeting at the White House with the President. The SNL opener starts with C-SPAN’s coverage of the meeting which featured cast member Chris Redd as Yeezy and cast member Kenan Thompson as NFL legend Jim Brown all sitting down in the Oval Office. The jokes are par for the course for an SNL Trump opening and are performed by the audience hearing each character’s inner monologue. If you like crazy, you’ll enjoy tonight’s Saturday Night Live Cold Open all over again.

Seth Meyers takes the stage tonight and uses his monologue time to tell a story from when he worked on SNL and Kanye West was appearing that week. As you can see, when Saturday Night Live squeezes a topic for comedy, they don’t stop till they’ve gotten every drop. This could also be considered payback from two weeks prior to when this week’s show went live when Kanye appeared as the musical guest on the SNL -Season 44 Premiere. After the show’s curtain call and good nights, Kanye who was sporting a MAGA hat went on a pro-Donald Trump rant with the cast still on stage. It went on so long after the premiere went off the air that Kenan Thompson compared it to being in a “hostage” situation when he visited Seth Meyers on “Late Night” that next week.

Tonight’s repeat show gets underway with “Movie Talkback“, a sketch about a Q&A session following the screening of an independent film at the IFC Center in New York City. Seth plays the writer and director of an indy film who deals with the bizarre questions from the audience following the screening. Anyone who has actually been to a screening and Q&A at the IFC Center in the Village, knows that this sketch plays way too true to real life. The sketch “Jail Cellmate” is definitely worth a second watch tonight. It features Seth Meyers as a new prison inmate who finds out that he’s sharing a cell with Bill Cosby played by Kenan Thompson. The impression isn’t the best “Cos” in the business, but it’s just good enough to carry some big laughs the sketch.

On the bizarre side, there’s a sketch called “Bayou Benny’s Liberal Lagniappe.” It’s a back-water Cajun talk show on which Seth Meyers finds himself booked. Other guests include cast member Heidi Gardener doing her best Taylor Swift, the “Awnry Gator” that’s been sleeping under Bayou Benny’s house, and a Chili Pepper wearing sunglasses along with cast member Beck Bennett as Bayou Benny who gets credit for keeping his Cajun accent going with almost unintelligible dialogue. There’s also a sketch featuring Seth and Heidi Gardner as an obnoxious couple who have just returned from a trip to “Koo-ba” (Cuba) and have been overly influenced by the Cuban culture and obviously the Spanish language. Watch it again to confirm that everyone knows a couple just like this.

There’s usually a sketch or segment each week on Saturday Night Live that causes a stir on social media. For this episode, it was a sketch called “Traffic Stop” about a cop show featuring two female Baltimore police officers who sexually harass Seth Meyers’ character who gets pulled over by the Charm City cops played by cast members Leslie Jones and new featured cast member Ego Nwodim. They turn every possible police phrase into sexual innuendo as they question Meyers. The group offended by this sketch? You guessed it. The union representing officers in the Baltimore Police Department, which has already had its well-earned share of bad publicity and didn’t need SNL or anyone else to make them look bad. They do just fine on their own.

Three SNL – Digital Shorts are on the bill in tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat. The first is a parody spot for a supplement that counteracts all the other male enhancement supplements men have been taking which turn them into psycho assholes. Next is the short called “A Frightening Tale” about some campers swapping ghost stories and Seth Meyers tells the most frightening tale of them all, about being stuck at lunch with a recently graduated film student. Finally, the third short is a rap video featuring cast members Chris Redd and Pete Davidson doing an environmental hip-hop tribute to trees.

Weekend Update is just as great as ever with anchormen Colin Jost and Michael Che commenting on climate change and the apathy towards it. Michael Che nails this with suggestions on how to get Fox News lovers, black men and white women all more concerned about what’s happening to the planet. The WU news team also take on Melania Trump’s controversial jacket, Taylor Swift telling fans to get out to vote, a new Amazon store, an exhibit at Thomas Jefferson’s home Monticello, and a North Dakota man who defiled a church’s holy water. Weekend Update also got a visit from Heidi Gardner as Baskin Johns who works for Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop. But the highlight of Weekend Update tonight is a return to the desk by former SNL anchorman Seth Meyers who brings back an old segment he used to do on WU called “Really!?! with Seth & Amy“. It’s been retooled for tonight as “Really!?! with Seth, Colin & Michael” and of course, they discuss Kanye West’s meeting with Donald Trump. Really!?! Yes, more Kanye humor on tonight’s repeat.

In the promos for tonight’s rerun which you can watch below, Seth Meyers takes a long ride down a short hall back home to Saturday Night Live. Next, Seth is joined by cast member Aidy Bryant and musical guest Paul Simon who makes his 9th appearance as an SNL musical guest in tonight’s repeat. The three talk about how the more things change, the more they really do stay the same. At least when it comes to SNL promos.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat is hosted by Seth Meyers with musical guest Paul Simon and it happens tonight at 11:30pm on NBC.

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Ernie Tripper
Ernie Tripper