Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: September 16, 2017
Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight?
Tom Hanks is hosting tonight’s repeat episode of Saturday Night Live. That’s Tom Hanks AKA David S. Pumpkins. This encore presentation of SNL airing this evening at 11:30pm on NBC, featured a new and delightful SNL character from Hanks, plus it definitely reflected the times of the day. It was originally recorded on October 22, 2016. So it was not only the Halloween edition of SNL for Season 42, but also, with the Presidential election drawing closer and closer, this episode reflected the country’s fever pitch with the presidential campaign.
This was Tom Hanks’ 9th time hosting Saturday Night Live. This historic episode for Hanks, also brought back multiple-time host Alec Baldwin in his part-time job of playing Republican candidate Donald J. Trump for SNL. The setting this week was another debate sketch between Baldwin’s Trump and SNL MVP Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton. This Trump vs. Clinton exchange has plenty of great lines including how SNL‘s President Trump refers to Mexico’s First Family. This all took place during the show’s cold open, which has been a showcase for Alec Baldwin’s Trump impersonation skills during Season 42.
Tom Hanks hosting duties played to his strengths on SNL, especially with his monologue. This was only the 4th episode of the show’s 42nd season, but at the time, it became the highest rated and led to an increase in Saturday Night Live‘s ratings for the next 3 weeks as the country was headed straight into the Presidential Election results. During his monologue, Hanks played off of Parade Magazine labeling him as a “America’s Dad”. Tom Hanks embraced the label and had a well-written and extremely clever heart-to-heart with the entire country who sat down to listen to him expound on the Presidential race.
Tonight’s repeat episode of Saturday Night Live had its ups and downs, but easily the home-run of the night was the sketch “Black Jeopardy“. This sketch featured game show host Kenan Thompson along with contestants Leslie Jones and Sasheer Zamata. Tom Hanks rounded out the panel of game show players appearing as a redneck, trailer trash contestant who looked completely out of place on this game show. This sketch was brilliantly written and hilariously zigged when you thought it was going to zag. This sketch alone makes it worth hitting record on the DVR to watch this episode again.
Not everything on this SNL hosted by Tom Hanks had a political theme to it. This is the Halloween episode and Tom Hanks created a silly and hilarious character that made absolutely no sense at all. This will always be the known as the SNL episode that gave us….David S. Pumpkins! The character appeared in a sketch about a couple on a haunted elevator ride at a carnival. There’s plenty of spooky stuff on each floor, but nothing as non-spooky and downright ridiculous as David Pumpkins and his dancing skeleton side-kicks played by Bobby Moynihan and new featured player Mikey Day. Watch tonight and get introduced all over again to David Pumpkins.
Another hit from the 2016 Halloween SNL is the digital short titled “A Girl’s Halloween“. The reason this short is so damn funny and absolutely worth watching again tonight is because everyone has lived through this girl’s Halloween. It is spot-on with how much anticipation and excitement there is before a night of Halloween partying and the reality of how it actually turns out. It features Cecily Strong and Vanessa Bayer, but it’s Aidy Bryant who comes along and steals the show in her perfect presentation of a girl who wants to have the cute costume on Halloween and ends up in a puddle of her own over-indulgences.
Weekend Update is as strong as ever in this rerun, but Leslie Jones’ piece on being cyber-hacked is the part of WU that stands out front and center. The backstory is that during Summer ’16, leading up to Season 42, Leslie Jones was the victim of a cyber attack which released nude photos of the SNL cast member as well as other personal information. During Weekend Update, Leslie Jones sat down next to Colin Jost and came roaring back in defiance at this extreme invasion of privacy. Leslie put the world on notice that she cannot be embarrassed and gave examples of that by talking about her El DeBarge fantasy and a humiliating encounter with Prince.
The promos for tonight’s rerun of Saturday Night Live with host Tom Hanks, came in a batch of three.The first is a retrospective of all of Tom Hanks’ hosting appearances that have happened before. Next, we get promos featuring Hanks with Leslie Jones on the roof of 30 Rock. And lastly, Tom Hanks appears with cast member Cecily Strong and musical guest Lady Gaga and we finally find out which one of them is the real glam rocker.
Saturday Night Live, an encore presentation hosted by Tom Hanks with musical guest Lady Gaga airs tonight at 11:30pm on NBC.
