Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: December 26, 2020

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Saturday Night Live is off this Christmas weekend, but SNL is giving the gift of a rerun tonight hosted by Adele!

SNL is on its winter break and won’t be back live until the middle of January with the show’s mid-season premiere. Filling the SNL time slot this evening at 11:30pm et on NBC is Episode #4 of SNL – Season 46 hosted by multiple Grammy Award winner Adele.

Tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat is originally from October 24, 2020 and it was Adele’s very first time hosting the award winning variety series, even though she had been an SNL musical guest on two other occasions before tonight’s show. Knowing the date of when this SNL episode first aired is important to follow along tonight.

When Adele and the SNL cast went live with this show, it was a little over two weeks away from the 2020 Presidential Election and just days after the third and final Presidential debate between incumbent President Donald J. Trump and his challenger then-former Vice-President Joe Biden.

That little tidbit of information takes us to tonight’s repeat SNL Cold Open, the sketch that opens Saturday Night Live each week with no introduction from the announcer that the show is starting. This evening’s cold opener is a parody re-enactment of that third and final Presidential Debate featuring Trump versus Biden. Former SNL cast member Maya Rudolph who had been appearing on the show as Biden’s running-mate Senator Kamala Harris has a different role in this evening’s opening sketch.

Maya Rudolph appeared as NBC News reporter Kristen Welker who was the moderator of the debate. In tonight’s SNL Cold Open she also has another job description. Maya’s Kristen Welker also operated as the debate’s Biden drinking game coordinator.

Some aspects of the SNL version of the debate matched the real thing, like the topic of the Coronavirus pandemic and the threat of the moderator using a mute button which was installed for her to use if either candidate (really just Trump) couldn’t respect the time limits or tried to talk over the other one.

At one point during the debate sketch, Jim Carrey who was playing Joe Biden opposite Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump, morphs his Joe Biden impression into his Clint Eastwood impersonation. That’s about where Jim, Alec and Maya start to lose the live SNL studio audience. About halfway through the SNL Cold Open, you can hear how some punchlines are getting softer and softer laughs from the audience, and then none at all. It will be interesting to see if NBC sweetens the pot tonight  by adding some more enthusiastic laugh responses in post-production.

One saving grace in the opener is that as the Presidential Debate sketch lagged on, cast member Kate McKinnon shows up in the opener doing her impression of Rudy Giuliani and she immediately incorporates the former NYC Mayor’s appearance in the latest “Borat” movie where he was caught with his hand down his pants.

As the show mercifully transitions into the show introductions and the host’s monologue segment, we encounter another problem with this episode of SNL; the host’s British accent. Adele is wonderful and her talent and songs are fabulous. But when she’s speaking with her native accent, she can be really hard to understand and she does not go out of her way to play too many American characters in her sketches tonight and sometimes that British accent comes across pretty thick.

In her monologue, Adele credits Saturday Night Live with giving her career the break it needed to conquer America 12 years ago. The Grammy winning singer was referring to when she was booked as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on Saturday, October 18, 2008. She was booked with host Josh Brolin, but it was another guest appearance on that show that had well over 10 million Americans watching that night. That was then-GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin who appeared on the show with her SNL doppelgänger, former cast member Tina Fey who had returned to the show temporarily to do her dead-on impression of the “Wasilla, Alaska Hockey Mom.”

She’s still working on her newest album, so Adele didn’t have any new music to promote or perform, so since she couldn’t be the musical guest, she accepted the invitation to host. As predicted, Adele also mentioned her recent, fantastic weight loss in her SNL monologue. She said to a strong round of applause, “Actually because of all the Covid restrictions and the travel bans, I had to travel light and only bring half of me. And this is the half I chose.”

Adele also explained a problem she has with performing on live television and that’s her nerves causing her to accidentally swear. A nervous habit that network censors just hate. SNL found a remedy and Adele’s swear jar is being manned in tonight’s repeat by cast member Kenan Thompson.

The sketches in this evening’s Saturday Night Live rerun are mostly ensemble pieces and also take advantage of the host’s talents, especially in an SNL parody sketch of ABC’s hit reality show “The Bachelor” where Adele plays herself as contestant vying for the Bachelor’s affections. If you think there’s a lot heartbreak in Adele’s songs, wait till you see her on “The Bachelor.” Adele more than makes up for not performing as the musical guest in this sketch where we get a medley of her greatest hits. Part of the fun of “The Bachelor” sketch is hearing how disappointed the studio audience gets when Adele quits singing and the goes back to the comedy.

In another sketch, one that will help you laugh at the current pandemic we’re living through, Adele and friends visit a fortune teller named Madame Vivelda played by cast member Kate McKinnon. Be sure to listen to featured cast member Bowen Yang when he mentions what year the sketch is set in at the beginning or else you’ll be lost.

This sketch features a group of friends who thought the upcoming year 2020 was going to be their year. Madame Vivelda sees the future, but can’t explain the meaning of some of her visions of 2020 like why will we be “washing bags of Doritos with soap” in 2020 or why Jeffrey Toobin’s daughter is going to be so embarrassed in the upcoming year. If you don’t remember Jeffrey Toobin, just google Toobin and Zoom.

Maya Rudolph sticks around to bring back her old lady character from her days as a cast member on SNL. She stars in sketch about some young people visiting their Grandma at the nursing home. They have to shout to her from the courtyard while Grandma stands on her balcony trying to hear them. They try to explain the circumstances of being in quarantine, like unemployment and broken relationships, but Grandma doesn’t quite get it until it’s been put in its simplest and most blunt terms. Oddly enough, this is the second sketch in this episode of SNL where the main character’s catchphrase is “Okay.”

There’s a sketch towards the end of the show that caused some controversy on social media when it first aired. It’s been awhile since Saturday Night Live upset the straights and caused some righteous indignation, but a sketch called “Africa Tourism” brought that all back.

It’s a tourism commercial where divorced white women played by Adele, Kate McKinnon and Heidi Gardner, talk about the magic of their post-marriage trips to Africa and how the beautiful landscapes, sandy beaches, wildlife and the “tribesmen” turned their lives around. As the trio mention the wonderful “tribesmen”, tall shirtless black men walk through the scene in the background. Yeah, they went there and the next day, social media was hollering about stereotyping. “The #1 destination for divorcees of a certain age. Africa.”

Also, if you like sketches where the host breaks character, this one’s for you. If you think that Adele is hard to understand with her British accent, try to figure out what the hell she’s saying while laughing.

The top story on this evening’s repeat edition of Weekend Update with Colin Jost & Michael Che is the third and final Presidential debate which happened earlier in the week when this show originally aired. Jost talks about how he was screaming out lines at his television that he wished Joe Biden would have used as a slam dunk against Donald Trump during the debate. And co-anchor Michael Che has some great comments tonight about Donald Trump’s claim at the debate that he is the “least racist person in this room.”

The Weekend Update news duo also report on headline-grabbing stories like Rudy Giuliani caught with his hand down his pants in the new “Borat” movie, another peak in the Coronavirus outbreak, former President Obama on the campaign trail for Joe Biden, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin and his obscene Zoom call, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s possible health problems, Popeye’s bringing back Cajun Style Turkeys for Thanksgiving, an Elton John “Barbie” doll, Phil Collins’ ugly divorce proceedings, Hip-Hop artist Nelly endorsing Budweiser, and a wild boar getting killed on a playground near the Vatican. As for that last story mentioned, if you wonder where’s the comedy in that, Che turns it into gold.

The adorably funny cast member Melissa Villaseñor drops by the Weekend Update news desk as herself to talk about self-quarantining and being alone throughout the months of the pandemic. She does an amazing impression of “The Little Rascals“. Not one in particular. Just “The Little Rascals” in general which makes it so amazing. We also get incredible impressions from Melissa of Link from “The Legend of Zelda“, Stevie Nicks and Sia. SNL needs to quit hiding this mighty talent and give Melissa Villaseñor more outlets to show it off.

And in response to President Donald Trump using music by the Village People at his campaign rallies and then having the nerve to dance to the songs, the Village People (played the male cast members of SNL led by Kenan Thompson as the Cop) have a musical rebuttal for Trump on Weekend Update. The SNL Village People also make some claims they can’t prove. Get ready to dance and sing along to the new Village People hit, “Cease & Desist.”

There are three SNL Shorts on the schedule during tonight’s Saturday Night Live rerun. We were getting close to Halloween when this episode originally aired and the first SNL Short in tonight’s repeat brings back cast member Pete Davidson’s character Chad. We find Chad in an old mansion haunted by a glamorous ghost played by Adele. But of course, no matter how scary the ghosts are, nothing fazes Chad. “Oh-kay.”

The next SNL Short is called “Political Ad” and it begins as an anti-Donald Trump political commercial. However, it takes a drastic turn when the voters in the short start to worry about an America without Trump. One where there’s nothing to rant about and no super-villain to hate. How dull will the country and our lives be when Donald Trump is out of office? The good news is that we’ll soon find out.

Saturday Night Live wraps up the night with one final short which is a combination parody spot and 80’s music video. It’s a commercial for “Ass Angel Perfume Jeans“. Maya Rudolph co-stars with Adele as the jeans models. “Sweet smellin’ booty! These jeans are from heaven above.” Ass Angel Jeans are the only jeans that cover your “secret little lady scents.” And as cast member Beck Bennett sings “she’s got the ass of an angel and you can smell that it’s true.”

In the set of promos released by SNL for this evening’s best of show, your host Adele is joined by musical guest H.E.R. and cast member Kate McKinnon. The ladies try to figure out which one of them is the musical guest this evening. Kate is convinced it’s her. Adele thinks it might be her. And H.E.R. knows for a fact that it’s H.E.R. If you’re still not convinced, tune in tonight to find out. Also, we get to meet Kate the Brit and Adele the Yank in this SNL promo.

Hit recording artist and 15 time Grammy Award winner, (that’s not a typo, it’s really 15,) Adele hosts an encore presentation of Saturday Night Live tonight with musical guest H.E.R. This evening’s SNL repeat begins tonight at 11:30pm et on NBC!

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Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper