Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: November 24, 2018

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It’s Thanksgiving weekend, so Saturday Night Live is serving up a leftover SNL repeat hosted by Awkwafina!

So far, SNL – Season 44 is only 6 episodes old and this evening, EP Lorne Michaels is going back to the second show of the new season for tonight’s Saturday Night Live “Best Of” episode. It originally aired October 6, 2018 and was hosted by up and coming comedy star and first-time SNL host, Awkwafina. Not to be confused with the top-selling bottled water, “Aquafina” (which tonight’s host jokes about in her monologue), this Awkwafina is also becoming a household name. She had a breakout year on film with scene stealing parts in both the reboot of “Ocean’s 8” which starred Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway and Mindy Kaling and also the smash hit rom-com “Crazy Rich Asians.”

Tonight’s Saturday Night Live rerun which airs at 11:30pm on NBC, was also one for the history books. When she took the stage, Awkwafina became the first woman of Asian descent to host SNL in nearly two decades. The last Asian-American woman to host Saturday Night Live was Lucy Liu in 2000. Awkwafina also pays tribute to her hero Lucy Liu in her monologue this evening. Awkwafina mentioning her admiration for Liu, also Queens, New York native like our host, is a really heartfelt moment that you’ll want to relive tonight. It’s a feel good moment that will, at the same time, make you want to scream at Lorne Michaels, “why has it taken you so long to book another Asian woman to host the show!?”

Of course, before Awkwafina takes the stage for her monologue, there’s tonight’s SNL – Cold Open. This evening’s opener is a great example of how quickly Saturday Night Live‘s topical humor, while hilarious, feels dated almost immediately. The cold open is set at the Republican victory party after President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had won his confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate and takes place in the GOP locker room. You’ll see Beck Bennett as an extra jowly Mitch McConnell & Alex Moffatt doing a spot-on Chuck Schumer from the losers’ (Dems) locker room. All the impressions are good, but watching this sketch again tonight will feel like it was a hundred Trump political battles ago.

The sketches in tonight’s SNL repeat include a Hip Hop Dance Battle sketch where Awkwafina and her crew dance to popular game show themes. Watch for tonight’s musical guest Travis Scott to join in on the competition. We also get the return of one of cast member Kate McKinnon’s most popular characters in the final sketch of the night. In the return of “Film Panel,” Kate McKinnon is back as aging and retired Hollywood leading lady Debette Goldry for a movie industry discussion group set at the New York Film Festival. It’s a chance for the SNL women to break out their best impressions which includes Cecily Strong as Marion Cotillard, Heidi Gardner as Allison Janney and host Awkwafina as Sandra Oh. Moderator Aidy Bryant discusses that day’s topic “Me Too. Year Two. How We Doin’ Hollywood?”

A couple of sketches miss the mark in tonight’s SNL rerun hosted by Awkwafina. There’s a History Channel sketch called “Hidden Tales of Egypt” with Empress Cleopatra (cast member Cecily Strong) getting a new look from her all too modern beauticians and stylists. It’s a very strange combination of a makeover reality show set in ancient Alexandria. It’s a sketch that will probably leave you scratching your head and saying “What sphinx in here? Oh yeah. That SNL Ancient Egypt sketch!” Another oddball in this night of mind boggling sketches is “Baby Shower” which features Cecily Strong having a breakdown at her friend’s baby shower, while being comforted by her uninvited dog walker friend (Awkwafina) who crashed the party causing chaos among the other guests.

To catch the Sketch of the Night, you’re going to have to stay up late into the show. It came in the final half-hour of tonight’s SNL which is unusual because normally it’s the lesser sketches that end up in the 12:30am to 1:00am zone and this one was a winner featuring much of the cast. It’s a dating show sketch called, “So You’re Willing To Date a Magician” hosted by cast member Leslie Jones. Awkwafina was the woman settling for a date with a magician in a “Love Connection” style game show featuring four very different types of illusionists. The magic men hoping to win her hand were Kenan Thompson as a low-budget slight-of-hand magician hoping to impress the young lady with his magic card tricks, Kyle Mooney as a steampunk era escape artist in the tradition of Houdini, Pete Davidson (who tries to take the sketch down almost immediately by pulling a “Jimmy Fallon” laughing gimmick) as a David Blaine style “body endurance artist,” and Alex Moffat who will remind you a lot of David Copperfield and is a little too friendly with his assistant / sister. Pete’s breaking the 4th wall became contagious when Leslie Jones breaks out laughing, but the sketch is hysterical nonetheless, especially thanks to SNL MVP cast member Kenan Thompson.

Two of the three SNL – Digital Shorts shown in tonight’s repeat feature topics pulled from that week’s headlines. The first, “Emergency Alert” is about Donald Trump’s Presidential Alert system that didn’t quite reach all of the country when it sent out a test, even though all of the nation should have received it. It shows the emergency alert system being abused by President Trump who uses it to send out texts that are much like his tweets discussing whatever topic he’s got stuck in his orange wig at the moment. Next up is a short called “Ted Cruz Rally“, which takes place at a campaign rally for the Frank Burns of the U.S. Senate, Teddy Cruz. Campaign workers try their best to make the uncool Cruz look cool. But he’s the candidate in this highly contested mid-term election battle who no amount of hype can help his sad image. Everything his aids try ends up with a Charlie Brown type result. There’s a word for Ted Cruz way down in Texas and it’s “El Lame-O.” The final SNL – Digital Short of the night is called “Pumpkin Patch.” This short will definitely end up on an updated Saturday Night Live Halloween compilation. Mikey Day plays the owner of Pat’s Pumpkin Patch, a country farm where hipsters can buy their holiday pumpkins and feel rustic at the same time. The good feelings are over though, when Pat finds out his dimwitted employees played by Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney have been using the pumpkins for sexual gratification as told in a flashback, narrated by co-worker Awkwafina who defends their actions while the pumpkins are giving the boys some come hither looks. “Happy Halloween from SNL!”

Tonight’s edition of Weekend Update hilariously anchored by Colin Jost and Michael Che was dominated by the top story of the day, Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Jost mentions that Kavanaugh squeaked by with the lowest confirmation vote in U.S. history, 50 Yes – 48 No. He added, “It’s also the most yeses, Kavanaugh has ever heard.” The WU anchors covered the Kavanaugh confirmation thoroughly with lines about Kavanaugh’s apology letter he wrote in the Wall Street Journal for his outrageous and false testimony in front of the Senate, the very limited and pathetic scope of the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct allegations back in the 80s, the piss-poor way the Democrats handled their opposition to Trump’s nominee and the President’s reaction to the investigation.

Other topics covered on Weekend Update included the then-upcoming mid-term elections and the many, many, many issues that the Democrats could run on, the New York Times report that proved that Trump lied about his start in business including that his father gave him almost half a billion dollars to get started and not the measly one million that Trump always brags about, also JOst & Che cover Florida’s campaign to restore voting rights to convicted felons who had served their time and whose punishment is up, a fire at an Arizona gender reveal party, the new L.A. trend of having goats at parties to jump on party-goers’ backs, a new line of “Game of Thrones” whiskeys, a gay penguin couple in Norway kidnapping a baby penguin and Starbucks having to deal with drug users’ hypodermic needles in their store bathrooms.

Stopping by the Weekend Update news desk tonight will be President Trump’s sons Donny Jr. (Mikey Day) and Eric (Alex Moffat) sharing the good news that Eric passed his swimming lessons certification while talking about the Republican mid-term campaigns. Also, Pete Davidson sat down to put into perspective the pro-Trump political rant that musical guest Kanye West had go into on the previous week’s show after SNL had gone off the air.

In the promos which you can see below for tonight’s SNL encore presentation, Awkwafina is ready to host and make it rain, while cast member Beck Bennett is not quite up to her speed. In the next set, Awkwafina and musical guest Travis Scott are joined by cast member Cecily Strong who struggles with her rap skills as well as her political correctness.

Tonight, Awkwafina hosts a repeat episode of Saturday Night Live with musical guest Travis Scott at 11:30pm on NBC.

Next week, SNL returns live with a host first announced on Twitter, Claire Foy (“The Girl in the Spider’s Web“, “First Man“) with musical guest Anderson .Paak. Yes, he does have an intentional dot in front of his last name. More on this next week.

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Ernie Tripper
Ernie Tripper