SNL to air new episode after the election despite foolishly thinking it could take a week off
It looks like Saturday Night Live has learned a lesson that pop culture news writers picked up a long time ago: When you decide that it’s your job to cover Donald Trump’s political career, it suddenly becomes hard to find time to do anything else. SNL established itself as a major outlet for political satire years ago, so it has had no choice but to dedicate a significant amount of airtime to poking fun at Trump over the last four years, and yet Lorne Michaels seems to have been under the inexplicable impression that he and the rest of the SNL team could take a week off at the beginning of November—you know, right when the presidential election is happening.
SNL has actually been in the middle of a surprisingly unprecedented streak of new shows this season, having already planned to air five new episodes in a row for the first time ever—partially due to the timing of the presidential debates, which couldn’t possibly have gone by without SNL offering its takes. However, that plan to do five episodes in a row would’ve given SNL a week off on November 7, which happens to be just a few days after the presidential election, so those plans have obviously had to change. According to Deadline, SNL is going to air a new episode on November 7 after all, bringing its streak to six episodes in a row without a break (no word on a host or musical guest, but SNL has typically been announcing that stuff the week before this season).
This sounds like a lot of work, certainly, but at least Alec Baldwin’s cold opens tend to (seemingly) write themselves. He just takes whatever dumb shit Trump has said that week, makes that face that the real Trump definitely doesn’t make, and then repeats Trump’s own words in that voice that sounds kind of like the real Trump. Seeing as how this is November 7 we’re talking about, Trump will probably have said a lot of dumb shit worth quoting… or he’ll have said some terrifying shit that’s not worth quoting. We really don’t want to jinx it by making predictions. Either way, SNL will be there on November 7.