The first “Saturday Night Live” since Donald Trump’s election victory began with the most somber of tones as a group of plainly dressed cast members, primarily women and minorities, described their new reality.
“To many people, including many people watching right now, the results were shocking and even horrifying,” Ego Nwodim soberly said.
“Donald Trump, who forcibly tried to overturn the results of the last election, was returned to office,” Heidi Gardner said.
“And now,” Bowen Yang added, “thanks to the Supreme Court, there are no guardrails.”
Then came the swerve from the liberal-leaning show.
“That is why we at ‘SNL’ would like to say to Donald Trump, we have been with you all along,” Keenan Thompson said.
Yang chimed in, “We have never wavered in our support for you, even when others doubted you.”
“Every single person on this stage believed in you,” Sarah Sherman said.
Marcello Hernández added, “Every single person on this stage voted for you.”
The cast members went on to effusively declare their reverence for, and obedience to, the former and future president, introducing a new character, “Hot, Jacked Trump.”
Cast member James Austin Johnson, who plays a dead-on Trump and was virtually guaranteed a long-term job by the election, came out as an Adonis-bodied president-elect.
“From now on we’re going to do a very flattering portrayal of Trump, because frankly he’s my hero,” Johnson said in his Trump voice but speaking as himself. “He’s going to make an incredible president and eventually king.”
The episode, hosted by standup comic and actor Bill Burr, was the first all season that did not begin with former cast member Maya Rudolph, who played Vice President Kamala Harris in a giddy five-week run culminating with an appearance last week of Harris herself that began the show’s 50th season and brought a ratings spike.
After Trump’s first election victory in 2016, the opening was serious and stayed that way with Kate McKinnon, who played Hillary Clinton on the show, appearing as the losing candidate sitting at the piano and singing a somber version 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.
After finishing, McKinnon said in 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 and the first post-election episode of 2020, but this time the honor went 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.”
Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
