Saturday Night Live Season 42 Episode 6 Dave Chappelle Recap

Saturday Night Live is back with an episode post the 2016 presidential election and it was one of its most powerful episodes yet.

Every week Saturday Night Live works towards making the world laugh and this week, we really needed it. The episode was a pretty great one and gave us everything we love about SNL. With a fantastic musical guest and great sketches, this might have been the best episode in recent years.

The Cold Open

Kate McKinnon singing “Hallelujah” dressed as Hillary Clinton may have been funny if this week hadn’t happened but instead, this cold open made so many of us cry. Last week, everyone was so hopeful after the cold open and this week, it brought us down to reality to see what world we’re living in.

There were no jokes, there was nothing funny happening. Maybe it was meant to be but it came off as somber and see and everything we all needed after the hate-filled week that’s been around us.

“I’m not giving up and neither should you.”

Opening Monologue

They pretty much let Dave Chappelle do a stand up set and that means he had free speech. It’s not really what Lorne Michaels tends to do but it ended up being what the world needed. He talked about how unsurprised he was by the Trump win but he stopped the jokes at the end and spoke to the audience.

“Seemed like Hillary was doing well in the polls but I know the whites.” They let Dave Chappelle just say what he wanted and it was absolutely amazing.

Election Night

When Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle come to your election party, they bring the truth. Election night was hard for a lot of people but most of us forgot that there was a whole middle part of the country who was racist and sexist.

This sketch points out that the white liberal voters didn’t take into consideration have the nation when they thought Hillary was going to win. So Dave and Chris continued to show their pessimism and point out that they knew Hillary was going to lose.

It was a great sketch showing how blind some of us were during this election.

Walking Dead Chappelle’s Show

In one of the greatest surprise twists of Saturday Night Live, he came out to introduce this sketch like it was part of The Chappelle Show. He came out and talked about how everyone was asking him if he was going to do any characters from the show. So, he gave us all our favorites in one go.

Playing Negan from The Walking Dead, Chappelle walked down the line trying to figure out which of his beloved characters he was going to kill off. It was funny and brought up all the work of Dave Chappelle that we know and love.

A Tribe Called Quest

Both songs from A Tribe Called Quest were powerful and moving. They sang “We the People” and “The Space Program”. Including the stylings of Busta Rhymes and Consequence, they brought the fire that was necessary.

Even if you hadn’t heard their music before, you could still appreciate how amazing their two songs were. They gave us a message and wanted us all to hear it loud and clear and it was fantastic.

Weekend Update

This week, Weekend Update was pretty on point, calling out the entire election and going off on the insanity this week has become. It was just a continual call out for what happened on Tuesday and everything that is continuing to happen around the United States. And then, Ruth Bader Ginsburg came in.

Kate McKinnon’s Ginsburg is a fan favorite and she told us that she wasn’t retiring now that Trump was elected. She’d stay on the Supreme Court forever and then just swallowed a bunch of Emergency dry.

Jheri’s Place

At first, this sketch seemed like a hot mess and wasn’t really funny. But then, that was the point. In an “Inside SNL” type sketch, they had a press conference about the sketch and what went wrong.

The sketch ended up being pretty funny. It shamed Kenan for being on the show for as long as he has and asked Dave why he would be a part of something like it (spoiler alert: he was in it for the wig). But overall, it was a pretty funny sketch.

Kids Talk Trump

A lot of this presidential race was set around “the kids are listening” so SNL took their own take on it. Having a sit down talk with kids after the results, Vanessa Bayer listened as they talked about what they knew of Donald Trump.

Most had very kid like responses, saying things about his hair or that he was a bully. And then one sweet little girl talked about him promoting racism, sexism, and xenophobia and talked about her black cat Pussy and how he was going to stop and frisk her.

Last Call With Dave Chappelle

When Kenan breaks, you know something is funny. In typical Kate McKinnon fashion, she plays an outrageous woman who is kissing Chappelle in a bar. They’re just continually touching tongues and then do something called the Bellagio and take the drink dispensers and shoot them in the air.

It honestly didn’t make much sense but that was fine because it was more about the characters anyway. The two are amazing character actors and that was extremely true in this sketch.

Love and Leslie Jones

Honestly, one of the weirdest sketches of recent but also hilarious. It is just an interview with Leslie about her love life and it is discovered that she has a thing for Kyle Mooney. The two are in a relationship but he’s a virgin and is nervous since the world thinks she’s with Colin Jost.

But eventually, she end up sleeping together and making Kyle happy only for it to have been in Dave Chappelle’s dressing room.

Football Party

Basically Leslie Jones is Dave Chappelle’s mother and she still breastfeeds him when he’s 43. The sketch itself wasn’t that funny but it was great watching Kenan and Pete break during it. Kyle Mooney plays a character who doesn’t see anything wrong with what Leslie is doing and keeps a straight face the entire sketch and it makes up for the lack of content in it.

Overal, it was a pretty amazing episode and there wasn’t really any sketch that was bad.

New episodes of Saturday Night Live air every Saturday at 11:30pm Eastern Standard Time. Check back here on Culturess for the recap of each episode after they air!

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