Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: December 5, 2020

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Saturday Night Live is back from its break with a new, live SNL tonight hosted by “Ozark” star, Jason Bateman!

Some people will be wondering if tonight’s brand new episode of Saturday Night Live is Jason Bateman’s SNL hosting debut? The answer is no. Bateman has hosted SNL before, but it was 15 years ago in 2005 during SNL – Season 30. The last time Jason Bateman hosted Saturday Night Live, it was Don Pardo who introduced him to the audience. He was there to promote his award winning comedy series “Arrested Development” and his musical guest was singer Kelly Clarkson.

Well, 15 years later, Kelly Clarkson is a daytime talk show host and the SNL announcer is Darrell Hammond, but one thing hasn’t changed. Jason Bateman is still on an award winning series. This time around, instead of “Arrested Development“, it’s “Ozark” on Netflix.

Both of Jason Bateman’s television series have brought him accolades. He’s been nominated four times in all for a Golden Globe award for acting; twice for “Arrested Development” and twice for the series he’s promoting tonight, “Ozark.” It was one of the “Arrested Development” nominations that gave Jason Bateman his lone Golden Globe win for playing Michael Bluth, the glue that holds the insane Bluth family and their company together.

When it comes to the Primetime Emmys, “Ozark” is an academy favorite. In it’s 3 seasons, “Ozark” has piled up 32 Emmy nods, with 2 of those being for Outstanding Dramatic Series. Jason Bateman, our host for tonight, has won one Emmy Award for Outstanding Direction of an episode of “Ozark” and co-star Julia Garner has won back-to-back Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2019 and 2020.

Bateman is an executive producer on “Ozark” as well as starring in the Netflix drama. The story revolves around a family man who’s gotten into trouble with the mob. Now, as part of his deal with the gangsters, Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) and his wife Wendy Byrde have to suddenly relocate themselves and their teenage children from Chicago to the Lake of the Ozarks region in central Missouri. Marty has come to this summer resort town to set up a new money laundering operation to pay off his debt. He’s picked up his family and moved with very little notice or warning to them.

Netflix released the third season of “Ozark” back in March of this year just as the pandemic was forcing the quarantine lockdown across the country. Perfect timing to release a new season, especially for any “Ozark” newbies who had 3 full seasons to binge on during the pandemic shutdown.

A fourth and final season of the drama has been ordered by Netflix. The last season will be 14 episodes long and split into 2 parts with the final half being released in 2022. According to an interview with IndieWire that Jason Bateman did in back in August of this year, production on “Ozark – Season 4” was delayed due to the pandemic like everything else in this world, but was expected to pick back up this past November 9th.

Any one of Jason Bateman’s TV projects could lend itself to the parody treatment on tonight’s all-new SNL. Tonight, we could see the cast spoofing either “Arrested Development“, “Ozark” or even the early 1980s sitcom “Silver Spoons” which co-starred child star Jason Bateman. We might just get a “Silver Spoons” reunion sketch tonight featuring SNL cast members Beck Bennett or Mikey Day as the grown up version of “Silver Spoons” pre-teen star Ricky Schroder who recently made adult headlines by helping the killer vigilante of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse make his bail.

It took Jason Bateman 15 years to come back and host Saturday Night Live for his second time tonight. It’s impressive, but it’s no record. Eddie Murphy had 35 years between his SNL hosting gigs. And at this rate, Jason Bateman won’t be eligible for the Saturday Night Live Five-Timers Club until the year 2065. So he really needs to pick up the pace.

Although, one nice thing about Jason Bateman hosting Saturday Night Live is that we can use a pic of him on SNL from 15 years ago and it still looks recent. You see, Jason suffers from something known in Hollywood as “Paul Rudd Syndrome” where he never seems to age. He still looks the same as he did on his teenage sitcom, “The Hogan Family.”

Here’s some perspective on how long it’s been since the last time Jason Bateman was invited to host Saturday Night Live. When he last hosted, Kenan Thompson was still a featured player on SNL and hadn’t been promoted to the full cast yet. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were handling Weekend Update duties and cast members back then included Rachel Dratch, Seth Meyers, Horatio Sanz, Rob Riggle and Will Forte among others.

Jason Bateman’s 2005 SNL monologue included jokes about Michael Jackson’s child molesting accusations. Something that probably won’t come up in his 2020 SNL monologue this evening. Bateman’s 2005 SNL sketches included him playing the host of a show where monkeys throw poop at celebrities, a sound engineer for A&E true crime host Bill Kurtis and an over-the-top, pathetically predictable and stereotypical gay space commander in a “Gays in Space” sketch where he actually does a “Uranus” joke. Let’s really hope the SNL writers room has evolved since this trite and unimaginative 2005 material.

One interesting aspect of tonight’s brand new Saturday Night Live will be if Jim Carrey decides to stay on as the show’s resident President-Elect Joe Biden impersonator. Much like Alec Baldwin has done for almost 5 years now playing Donald Trump, Carrey may find himself locked in the role. The difference would be that Jim Carrey wouldn’t stay with Saturday Night Live just to try to make Biden’s life miserable, like Baldwin has done with Trump. Carrey’s Biden impression definitely didn’t get a lot of praise in the press or on social media, and as far as anyone knows, the Jim Carrey – SNL agreement may be a done deal now that the November election is over and decided.

We’re not even sure how much longer we’ll see Alec Baldwin on SNL playing Trump. That arrangement could be over after the inauguration on January 20, 2021. However, it’s pretty easy to imagine the SNL writers churning out sketch ideas about Trump barricading himself in a White House bunker, refusing to leave or in bed in a deep, blue funk in his East Wing bedroom, depressed and surrounded by empty KFC buckets while watching emotional Christmas rom-coms on the Hallmark Channel.

There’s been plenty in the news about our lame duck president as of late to inspire the SNL scribes too. We could see an SNL Cold Open tonight about Donald Trump and his continuing losing streak with the courts and state officials as he tries to overturn the will of the people and steal the election from President-Elect Biden. The newest star in the Trump galaxy of Mensa members is Melissa Carone, an IT worker who testified on Trump’s behalf in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee. Her insane rants conjured up memories of former SNL cast member Victoria Jackson for an endless number of people on social media.

Plus, we’ve also got Trump’s top Justice Department flunky, Bill Barr doing a face-turn on Trump this past week when the Attorney General told AP, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” That little gem could get Barr fired before tonight’s SNL episode even starts.

Another news item for SNL and Weekend Update to cover is Joe Biden breaking his foot while playing with the family dog. Let’s hope SNL‘s wardrobe department has a walking boot in Jim Carrey’s size.

There’s a politician we expect Saturday Night Live to honor this evening instead of lampooning. The Honorable Mayor David Dinkins who served as Mayor of NYC from 1990 through 1993 passed away November 23rd at the age of 93. Mayor Dinkins was an SNL fan who even made an appearance on the 1993 Saturday Night Live Mother’s Day Special, dressing up as a magic genie and taking the moms of the SNL cast on a magic carpet ride around New York while lip-syncing the song “A Whole New World” from the Disney animated feature “Aladdin.”

Mayor Dinkins was also portrayed on SNL by cast member Tim Meadows who played him in a sketch opposite of Kevin Nealon’s Rudy Giuliani and Chris Farley’s brutal impression of Mayor Giuliani’s hyperactive son Andrew Giuliani.

Colin Jost and Michael Che will have plenty to cover on Weekend Update tonight including the still raging Coronavirus claiming American lives across the continent (when it’s put like that, it doesn’t sound that funny), along with the promise of as many as 4 vaccines reportedly on their way. Plus, there’s the constant positive Covid-19 tests in the NFL (looking at you, Baltimore Ravens), Evander Holyfield wanting a rematch with Iron Mike Tyson 23 years after the infamous ear-biting incident, the Oscars saying their “in-person” ceremony is still a go in April, Tim Tebow announcing he’s going to attempt an MLB career (again), and Starbucks offering free java to front-line responders. That should get a lot of people to go into nursing.

And with the holiday season underway, Saturday Night Live may have some material about our annual American traditions including Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday (we had off), Cyber Monday and the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Also, with Christmas quickly approaching, it wouldn’t be out of the question to have a Santa sketch or two on tonight’s brand new SNL.

Feel free to watch the promo released for tonight’s brand spanking new SNL episode at your leisure below. The promo finds our host Jason Bateman with musical guest Morgan Wallen and cast member Heidi Gardner discussing what they want for Christmas this year. Looks like world peace is a little further down the list. Also, we may have stumbled upon Jason Bateman’s secret identity. Get the cape!

SNL fans will remember that country star Morgan Wallen was scheduled as the Saturday Night Live musical guest earlier in the season. Executive producer Lorne Michaels had penciled in Morgan as the musical guest for episode #2 of SNL – Season 46, hosted by Bill Burr which aired October 10th. Unfortunately, TikTok videos surfaced of Morgan Wallen, without a protective mask, partying hard in a bar after attending a University of Alabama Crimson Tide football game. After breaking these NBC Covid-19 guidelines, Wallen was removed from the show.

Fortunately, SNL found a fill-in musical guest for the show when Jack White was booked on only a couple days’ notice. Morgan Wallen was contrite in his apology and Lorne Michaels was gracious in his rescheduling and now the country superstar is back on the show this evening. That is if he can stay out of any ‘Bama bars until showtime tonight.

Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner Jason Bateman hosts an all new Saturday Night Live tonight with musical guest Morgan Wallen, live from coast-to-coast starting at 11:30pm et on NBC!

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Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper