Adele Hosted ‘SNL’ For The First Time, But Don’t Worry, She Also Sang Her Hits (And H.E.R. Sang Her Hits, Too)

When they announced Adele as the host, you all wondered why host and not musical guest. Silly SNL watchers. Of course, she’ll sing. Adele must sing. But what else is new?

What’s The Deal With The SNL Cold Open for 10/24/20?

Few of us asked for another presidential debate, and just as many of us asked for another cold open rehashing the debate we either yelled at the screen while being metaphorically muted, or avoided entirely to avoid yelling. And yet. Here we all are.

Maya Rudolph sat in as NBC White House correspondent and debate moderator Kristen Welker, whom Alec Baldwin’s Trump confuses first for a waitress, then for NBC’s Hoda Kotb (American-Egyptian), then for Padma Lakshmi (Indian-born American citizen), then Mindy Kaling (Indian-American). These are just a few of the ways they play with Trump’s baffling assertion during the debate that he was “the least racist person in the room.” Some folks on Twitter during last week’s debate actually had suggested NBC tapping The Office alum Kaling for an SNL cameo, while I would’ve preferred seeing Lakshmi, a New Yorker who’s an avowed comedy fan who put on a stand-up showcase last summer co-hosted by SNL cast member Bowen Yang, since that already makes too much sense. Then I would’ve had them completely reimagine the presidential debate as Top Chef Judge’s Table, so we could remember that our current president prefers to eat fast food or well-done steak, and to be honest, I cannot tell you what Joe Biden likes to eat or cook (I had to look it up, and it turns out he’s a basic B who eats pasta or PBJs), but regardless, Lakshmi could tell one of them to “pack his knives and go home.”

But they didn’t ask me, nor did they invite Lakshmi, so she offered her own live virtual commentary.

What else about the cold open? Oh, right. Jim Carrey is still playing Biden, and aside from too many “C’mon man!”s, and two “malarkey”s to set off Welker’s BINGO drinking game card, the funniest moment came when Carrey mistakenly said “melatonin” instead of “melanin” and then shouted “Damn!”

Kate McKinnon showed up for an aside as Rudy Giuliani, tucking in his shirt gag for anyone who hasn’t heard that the second Borat is out (and on Amazon Prime, and quite audaciously excellent!). But they mostly wasted her here. They could’ve gotten so much more mileage out of her mockery of him by putting this on the Weekend Update desk.

Sigh.

How Did The SNL Guest Host Adele Do?

Adele’s first words after an initial thank you to the crowd and us at home were: “Hello, it’s me.” But she wouldn’t slip into song just yet. Why? She acknowledged the actual reason why she’s not pulling double duty as host and musical guest: “My album’s not finished, and I’m also too scared to do both.” She reminded us her first SNL musical appearance coincided with Sarah Palin’s cameo alongside Tina Fey way back in 2008. She laughed off her recent weight-loss as a COVID-19 travel restriction, and also killed time and air with a bit about her proclivity for swearing on live TV. Turns out neither she nor NBC execs nor parents showing this to their kids would have to worry about that.

She also ended the monologue with a sincere plea, which as a critic, I took to heart: “I really, really hope that you get as much joy out of this as we’ve had putting it together for you.”

Usually, we only hear about how much fun the host had at the end of the show. Here, Adele reminds us that no matter what we think of the individual sketches or the long-running NBC franchise as a whole, the people making the show are getting to do comedy for a living. And that’s a fun gig.

As for Adele as guest host and supporting sketch player?

She won’t win an Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy nomination for it, but she did prove herself willing for just about anything, which allowed her to represent fully or in part in six of the eight sketches that aired (only skipping one pre-taped bit outside of the cold open and Update). Half of these premises played well enough without really busting guts, where Adele played of four friends getting a psychic reading from Madame Vivelda at the end of 2019 hoping for a better 2020 (reverse spoiler alert?), one of four relatives visiting grandma outside her nursing home for a bit of miscommunication, or as the ghost in a haunted house visited by Pete Davidson’s recurring Chad character. Is “Chad” really as popular as SNL believes him to be?

But two other sketches you’ll definitely be talking about and seeing more of on the Internets.

First up, Adele going on The Bachelor as herself, only to find herself, as even she feared midway through the bit, “coming on a bit strong.” But her failing pursuit of a love connection with Beck Bennett’s “Ben K” is our gain, as she repeatedly bursts into song, specifically parts of four of her previous hits, “Someone Like You,” “When We Were Young,” “Hello” and “Rolling in the Deep.”

Later in the show, Adele breaks not into song but into the giggles by both McKinnon and Heidi Gardner in a live ad promoting travel to Africa. Why is the “Tourism Board of Africa” choosing three white women with British accents as spokespeople all named Joanne? Why does a continent have a tourism board? Why ask questions? Instead, allow McKinnon’s “tribesmen” mantra to seep into your brain and see if you crack as Adele did. SNL fans love when cast members or hosts crack on SNL. Just like how they used to crack on The Carol Burnett Show. It shows how much fun they’re having, and it’s contagious. Tribesmen.

How Relevant Was The Musical Guest?

When you’re not Adele, it’s tough not to be overshadowed by Adele. Nevertheless, H.E.R. persisted, and the 23-year-old performed two smooth selections that both sound like winners, immediate hits. Just like Justin Bieber last week, H.E.R. dropped her two newest singles on us. She only released the official music video for “Damage” a few days ago on YouTube.

And she hadn’t released “Hold On” on YouTube before SNL.

Which Sketch Will We Be Sharing?

It’s so close to the election (and actually, more than 57 million Americans already have voted in person or by mail ballots as of Saturday night), that those of us still watching TV on TV are getting bombarded by election ads.

So this fake ad for Biden will get your attention. Even though it’s still more about Trump, and how we (we meaning the SNL crew) cannot stop talking about Trump, so what happens if he’s gone?

Similarly, there’s another Trump-based bit during Weekend Update that’ll get a lot of shares, but we can get to that in the next section…

Who Stopped By Weekend Update?

Melissa Villaseñor stopped by to offer tips on self-quarantining alone during the pandemic, which thankfully when you’re as skilled of an impersonator as Villaseñor, that means showing off some new voices! Among them: a medley of kids from the old The Little Rascals shorts, the surprising way she found out she could sound like Link from “The Legend of Zelda” video game, a little bit of Stevie Nicks in her own ad-libbed tribute to the skateboarding dude from Idaho on TikTok, and finally a little bit of Sia, just because.

Everyone loves The Village People. Even Trump! Wait. Even Trump? Yes, if you’ve been paying attention, recent Trump rallies have featured the president “dancing” or more like dead-man arm-waving to the 1978 disco hit that’s an ode to hanging out with young men.

This close to Halloween, it’s an early treat to see Kenan Thompson, Bowen Yang, Beck Bennett, Mikey Day and Chris Redd in costume as, respectively, the Cop, the Leather Man, the Construction Worker, the Cowboy, and the GI. They substituted new lyrics to “Y.M.C.A.” that served as legal and other threats to Trump and Ivanka, with Jost interrupting them to suggest that might not be legit. Thompson’s Cop retorts: “Everything’s legal if you sing it in a song!”

What Sketch Filled The “10-to-1” Slot?

My boss has changed this subhead before to 10-to-1, and I’ve allowed it previously because he’s the boss, but I refuse to allow Vulture and The A.V. Club and whomever else is pushing this 10-to-1 nonsense to continue, because it’s categorically and statistically incorrect. The final sketch on SNL almost always airs in the final FIVE minutes, which on the Eastern time zone is 12:55, or five minutes to 1, or 5-to-1. Tonight, the final piece aired at 12:57 a.m.; last week’s final sketch aired at 12:58 a.m. Anyhow, the point we all agree upon is that Lorne Michaels allows his writers and performers to weird it out the most during the final sketch of the night.

Here’s this week’s final sketch:

We’re going back in time to feel the 1980s vibe in this fake ad for Ass Angel Perfume Jeans. Adele and Rudolph model the jeans, designed to cover up her “secret little lady scents” so she smells like “cinnamon sugar squirrel” instead. Sounds squirrelly! While Bennett sings the jeans jingle, our ladies discover some side effects, such as bleaching furniture you sit on, or stinging while you pee. The warnings almost veered into Happy Fun Ball territory, but alas, did not go quite there.

Who Was The Episode’s MVP?

Maya Rudolph somehow bookended the episode and starred as the central character in the nursing home grandma sketch, which only reminds all of us that Cecily Strong and Aidy Bryant have left the 30 Rock reservation for a while (Strong’s filming an Apple TV+ musical series, while Bryant has a third season of Hulu’s Shrill on her agenda). Weird that they haven’t used their actual cast members in those roles. Very weird.

So if you want an actual cast member as your MVP, then you gotta go with Kate McKinnon this week. She got Giuliani good (though coulda woulda shoulda been greater), starred as the pandemic psychic Madame Vivelda (the only thing holding that sketch together was her big-eyed boasting about 2020 weirdness), and made Adele crack on live TV.

Next week, it’s John Mulaney returning to host for the fourth time, with musical guest The Strokes, and maybe also David S. Pumpkins????? We’ll have to tune in to find out, people.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch SNL Season 46 Episode 4 (Adele + H.E.R.) on YouTube