After the unexpected outcome of last week’s presidential election, many people wondered how Saturday Night Live would manage to be funny about a thing that a significant portion of the world’s population doesn’t find very funny in the slightest. Then, just after the election was finally on the books, Sony Music announced that Leonard Cohen had died, just to make the week a little bit worse. Very few people probably could’ve predicted that SNL would tackle both stories at once, and even fewer could’ve predicted that the show would absolutely nail it when doing so. Rather than trot out Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump again, last night’s SNL put Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton behind a piano and had her sing Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
That on its own would be pretty touching, but the fact that McKinnon seems to be on the verge of tears during some of the heavier lyrics solidifies it as one of the most impactful SNL moments in decades—if not ever. And that’s all before she ends the segment by saying, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.” Go ahead and cry, we’re all doing it anyway.