Saturday Night Live: Dave Chappelle returns for a stellar episode | Saturday evening live

SSaturday Night Live returns from a holiday hiatus with MSNBC coverage of the impending presidential inauguration. Rachel Maddow (Sarah Sherman) chairs a panel of liberal pundits – including her doppelganger Chris Hayes (Andrew Dismukes) – essentially “the Avengers for your aunt.”

The panel promises not to let a crazy Trump outburst distract them from the real news like last time, only to breathlessly report on incoming comments and tweets from the president-elect, including a plan to trade Kentucky for Italy, sending Don Jr to buy Wicked’s Emerald City, challenging the Chinese president to a fight in the UFC octagon and declaring war on sharks.

They cut to footage of Trump (James Austin Johnson) ranting on TikTok (“We hated it but, in many ways, it then got me elected”), Mark Zuckerberg (“He looks a lot cooler in terms of permanent and with regard to chaining”), his inauguration (“it will be inside; too many people to fit outside”) and his latest choice within the cabinet, George Santos (Bowen Yang), who will occupy the position of audit secretary facts and ambassador to Sephora. Things end with Trump live-tweeting insults to the MSNBC anchors: “This lineup is like Scooby Doo: Oops, All Velma. »

A fine, if uninspiring, cold open before the dire prospect of Monday’s event. The best moments were the digs on Hayes.

When Saturday Night Live’s post-election November episode aired without Dave Chappelle at the helm, it seemed like the show was intentionally breaking from the tradition it started in 2016. No, according to the comedian, host for the fourth time, which informs us that Lorne Michaels actually asked him to do it, only for Chappelle to pass. Instead, he offered to host the event in January, hoping to avoid any controversy. Alas, “the moment I said yes, Los Angeles caught fire.”

Smoking a cigarette and pulling up a stool, Chappelle reflects on the perfect storm of disaster that caused California’s apocalyptic fires (“You have to at least consider the possibility that God hates these people… Sodomites… no, that’s not true, West Hollywood was unscathed), before relenting and turning its attention to Trump.

An Ohio resident, Chappelle was particularly upset by Trump’s racist attacks against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, just one town away from where he lives, and decided to publicly show his support for the community: “Every day, I drove a few miles to Springfield and had lunch at the Haitian restaurant…and to be honest with you, I don’t know what that meat was. But whatever it was, it fell off the bone, I’ll tell you that.

He also talks about Diddy’s legal troubles, realizing that the only reason he never went to freak-offs was because he was too ugly to attend: “Can you imagine…everyone in Hollywood has had an orgy behind your back…Carl Winslow from Family Matters was there, and I wasn’t invited?

He then concludes with a sincerely moving story about the late Jimmy Carter touring Palestine against warnings from the Secret Service. This leads him to deliver a message to Donald Trump and his viewers about the need to empathize with others, especially displaced people “whether they are in the Palisades or in Palestine.”

The message itself – the strongest statement on Palestine ever released on SNL – is beyond reproach, although it is rich for Chappelle to dole out moral instruction given that he has spent recent years publicly disparaging people transgender.

Still, it was a good performance, less of a monologue and more of a mini-stand-up special. It was certainly funnier than any of his feature-length Netflix specials.

The first sketch of the evening sees the return of the talk show Immigrant Dad. Marcello Hernández’s Latino immigrant invites his black neighbor Richard (Chappelle) to the show. They hold court over their favorite subject: their disappointing sons (“My son diagnosed himself with OCD. I said: Oh? See Deez Nuts!”). Later, they are joined by their neighbor Kevin (Mikey Day), a sensitive idiot who creepily kisses his son on the mouth Tom Brady-style but shakes his wife’s hand. As with almost every sketch about race relations, the writers can’t help but turn to cringey white liberals as the butt of the joke.

A Los Angeles family in one of the fire zones decides to evacuate, only for the father to start tearing down the house (and the family dog) to recover his hidden stash of cash, his fake passports , his guns and his secret French family. There’s no real payoff in all of this, but there is some good blood and some funny moments between Chappelle and Devon Walker as his “sweet as a female dog” son.

Musical guest GloRilla performs her first song of the evening, then we move on to Weekend Update. Colin Jost gets a lot of laughs with a solid dig at Mark Zuckerberg (“He flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump and damn, his knees are tired”) and gets a lot of groans over a joke about the Israel-Palestine Ceasefire Agreement (“their version of Dry January”).

Michael Che invites actor Michael Longfellow to make a final appeal to save TikTok. Longfellow dismisses concerns about Chinese ownership of the app (“You know who else was Chinese? Jesus Christ… I saw it on a Tik Tok”) and data theft (“Oh no, China knows I like thick Latinas – who doesn’t?”), while thinking about how he would live without it: “What do I do at work? What do I even watch during a movie? A very good takedown from the horrible social platform and the best Longfellow in the series, his vocal patterns and line delivery are reminiscent of the late Phil Hartman and Norm McDonald.

Later, Jost welcomes his second guest, the original Nosferatu (Sherman, of course). The OG vampire isn’t happy with the redux of the new movie (“He doesn’t even look like me…the guy is wanked and has a mustache; he looks like shirtless Ned Flanders”), but he’s spending more time getting take on Jost, a coke-addicted sex fiend who is the biggest freak in the office. As always, Jost and Sherman have the best chemistry on the show.

At a police station, a man (Walker) reports his girlfriend missing. He gives a description of her to the cops, only to freeze when asked how much she weighs. A listening janitor (Kenan Thompson) sympathizes with his cause, providing him with answers that will keep him out of trouble should his statements ever come to light. Painfully not funny, it takes forever to run out of steam.

GloRilla performs her second song, then the show ends with the online dating show Pop the Balloon. A group of single women meet with a few single contestants before being introduced to Chappelle Show residents Playa Haters Silky Johnson and Beautiful, and degenerate gambler Ashy Larry (the latter two played by series regular Donnell Rawlings). When asked if he’s some sort of sex trafficker, Silky retorts, “I don’t traffic, I take helicopters, bitch.” They are all popped immediately. It’s great to see these classic characters again, especially those played by Rawlings, a truly great and perpetually underrated actor. I only wish there were more.

The first two episodes of SNL hosted by Chappelle left a bitter taste, but these last two were winners. Even his penchant for preaching landed here since he was on the right side of history for a change. The rest of the episode was also solid.

When SNL returns next week, it will be under a second Trump presidency. Expect the mood to be darker.