October 10, 2024

Saturday Night Live: College Football delay almost dulls the party, but election energy entertains

In what was the most anticipated Saturday Night Live of the year, a post election edition featuring host Dave Chappelle and musical guest Foo Fighters, managed to entertain an exhausted but excited audience after almost a week of election coverage which culminated hours before the show took the stage.

But they got it over the net.

A cold open starring Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden, Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris, and Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump kept us interested after weeks of striking out, with everyone handling the election results in their own way. The trio didn’t hit any home runs, but they didn’t strike out either.

Dave Chappelle gave a sobering opening monologue with his stand up that talked about the election but also about life in the country today. He did anger the sensitive crowd with a joke about equal pay. The last time the audience got upset was actually with his old Chappelle Show colleague Bill Burr earlier this fall, but he did pull up spirits enough to keep us engaged.

Weekend Update was still bad despite the election fall out. Michael Che and Colin Jost couldn’t piece together a string of funny jokes, and Kate McKinnon’s old Rudy Giuliani bat-like imitation didn’t make us laugh either.

What did make us laugh was Maya Rudolph as Aunt Jemima getting laid off because of politically correct optics and then throwing Keenan Thompson’s Uncle Ben under the bus during the meeting as well. Then Chappelle as the All-State guy really just made the whole skit a win.

The Foo Fighters continued SNL’s string of great musical guests with some strong stuff, old and new. Paired with Chappelle it made for the first overall strong show of the season.

It wasn’t an easy path for viewers to get to though. NBC had a high profile Clemson vs. Notre Dame college football contest go into double overtime, which pushed the start of the show back until about 1230 in the morning.

No new show next week. After a sprint of new programs in the Coronavirus hindered season, the production will take a break.

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