Scot Bertram

Politics Shocks the Show Back to Life, Bayer and Moynihan Say Goodbye

We have said it in prior seasons – sometimes, huge political and cultural shifts push Saturday Night Live to rise to the occasion. It happened with the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the late 1990s. It happened when Sarah Palin joined the Republican presidential ticket in 2008.

And it happened again in 2016, as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battled it out for the presidency. While the show’s cast members and writers were clearly in shock over the rise of Trump as a political force (many of the female cast members silently protested by wearing political t-shirts during the goodnights), Clinton’s loss seemed to inject life into the show.

As a result, Season 42 became one of the greatest seasons in SNL history – virtually every episode is packed with a couple of sketches that rank among the show’s best. We got Kate McKinnon as alien abduction survivor Colleen Rafferty, Tom Hanks in a Black Jeopardy! sketch, Dave Chappelle explaining election night to liberals, Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer, and much, much more.

We cover the whole season, including its complicated politics, on this episode of Wasn’t That Special. We also say goodbye to Vanessa Bayer and Bobby Moynihan, two top-flight cast members. Please subscribe and join us for a trip through every year of SNL, and consider joining at the Executive Producer level, where you get a whole load of extra commentary and clips that will help you become an SNL expert!

Click here for more.