Best, Worst Moments from Dave Chappelle's 'SNL'

by Julian Spivey
Dave Chappelle has become the guy who hosts the big episodes of “Saturday Night Live.” Typically, his hosting stints have come after Presidential elections. Chappelle even commented in his monologue that ‘SNL’ producer Lorne Michaels called and asked if he’d host the post-election episode. Chappelle rebuffed and said to give him the one closest to January 6. But this time, it’s the weekend before the second inauguration of Donald Trump.

It was an odd episode, as episodes in which Chappelle hosts typically are, because his monologue is usually two to three times longer than that of most hosts. The 10 segments that appeared on the show on Saturday night (January 18) are the fewest to ever be in an episode in the show’s 50 seasons.

Here are the highs and lows of the 11th episode of season 50… 

Photo: NBC

Best
Dave Chapelle’s nearly 17-minute monologue, the longest in the show’s history (Chappelle has the three longest monologues in ‘SNL’ history), was a mixture of laughs and moments of sincerity. Among the things that Chappelle poked fun at were the reaction from middle Americans to the Los Angeles fires, fame and many Sean “Diddy” Combs jokes.

The funniest joke of the monologue was about how the L.A. fires are the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history because of where they occurred.

“I think that’s because people in L.A. have nice stuff. I could burn 40,000 acres in Mississippi for like six or seven hundred dollars,” he joked.

One of the monologue's sincere, touching moments came when Chappelle remembered something the late Jimmy Carter had done in the Middle East and the humanity he saw in him. He said, “The presidency is no place for petty people.”

Then, he turned his sights on incoming President Trump and pleaded for him to do better this time around than he did the first time. It was a nice sentiment that will no doubt fall on deaf ears.

Chappelle is a controversial figure, and rightfully so. I realize some people do not want to see him on a platform such as SNL, and I have mixed feelings about that myself. But, when he does host you can be assured the monologue is going to be one of the highlights of the evening. 
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Worst
Cold openings can be a problem for ‘SNL’ as this is the one place, other than Weekend Update, where the show will try to shoehorn current events and politics into the show, even if they should probably focus on anything else. The cold opening for this episode featured MSNBC and its personalities, all played by different cast members of the show, the most notably being Sarah Sherman as Rachel Maddow and Andrew Dismukes as Rachel, err, Chris Hayes.

The sketch revolved around the MSNBCers talking about how they’d like to ignore all the idiotic things President Trump says in his next term and focus on real news while being unable to resist the breaking news of his idiotic statements. The only really funny part of the sketch was the repeated referring to Hayes as “Rachel” because of some similarities in looks.

I know this isn’t fair to Sherman, but it’s often hard to see her impersonating famous people because her uniqueness always comes out. I’m not sure she can fade into an impression as others do. 
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Best
My favorite sketch of the evening was the Immigrant Dad Talk Show, a recurring bit that features Marcello Hernandez as an immigrant dad talking to other immigrant dads in his neighborhood. Hernandez previously did this sketch with host Ramy Youssef last season and it was one of my favorite bits of the year. This week, Chappelle joined him. The two essentially mock their sons for the modern-day things they do. Then, they welcome their white neighbor, played by Mikey Day, who is a bit too close to his son. I hope this is a sketch that continues in the future. With all due respect to Hernandez’s new hit, Domingo, this is his best character.   
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