'Saturday Night Live' to take on a second Trump term after focusing on Harris

[November 09, 2024]  By ANDREW DALTON

“Saturday Night Live" is likely to strike a new tone as it looks toward a second term for Donald Trump in its first episode since his election victory.

Standup comic and actor Bill Burr will host for the second time with Mk.gee as musical guest.

But most eyes will be on the NBC sketch institution's cold open, and the signal it gives about what four more years will mean for the generally liberal-leaning show, other than steady employment for cast member James Austin Johnson, who does a Trump impression that has become definitive.

In the first five episodes of its 50th season, which has seen a ratings spike, the show openings made Vice President Kamala Harris — played by returning cast member Maya Rudolph — the central star, culminating last week in an appearance by Harris herself, with a giddy pre-election energy in the air.

This Saturday night could be a little less live.

After Trump's first election victory in 2016, Kate McKinnon, who played Hillary Clinton on the show, appeared as the losing candidate sitting at the piano and sang an almost entirely somber-and-serious version of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah,” changing only one verse from the best-known versions of the song.

“And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but ‘Hallelujah,” McKinnon sang in what became a national moment of catharsis for those on the losing side.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris appears on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," with Maya Rudolph, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024 in New York. Harris has made an unannounced trip to New York to appear briefly stepping away from the battleground states she's been campaigning in with just three days to go before the election. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

After finishing, McKinnon said, with a shaky voice, “I'm not giving up and neither should you" before delivering the obligatory "live from New York, it's Saturday night!"

Standup comic Dave Chappelle hosted that episode. One sketch featured him and another Black comic-actor, Chris Rock, watching election returns with white liberals, who are shocked by the results, unlike their Black guests.

“This is the most shameful thing America has ever done,” white cast member Beck Bennett says at the end. Rock and Chappelle then look at each other and break into laughter.

Chappelle also hosted the post-election “SNL” in 2020, but this time that honor goes to another comic, Burr, who is currently on a major standup tour and is set to join Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk on Broadway this spring on a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,”

Burr's politics, at least as expressed through his comedy and frequent guesting on podcasts and talk shows, may be best described as angrily centrist. But other than the fake news of “Weekend Update,” the show tends to turn away from politics after the opening.

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