Rob Schneider Proclaims ‘SNL’ Has Been “Over” Since Kate McKinnon’s 2016 ‘Hallelujah’ Performance

Rob Schneider knows Saturday Night Live is long past its glory days. But if you ask him, the exact moment when the show took a turn for the worse came in 2016, when Kate McKinnon took to the piano in Studio 8H and serenaded the crowd with “Hallelujah” while in character as Hillary Clinton.

While McKinnon’s moment — which marked Clinton’s 2016 presidential loss, Donald Trump‘s subsequent win and the death of Leonard Cohen — was widely celebrated online for its emotional departure from the typical SNL cold open, it also had plenty of critics; including, apparently, Schneider.

The former SNL cast member and comedian ripped McKinnon’s performance while speaking to The Blaze’s Glenn Beck, per Mediaite, telling the host, “I hate to crap on my old show,” before doing just that.

He told Beck, “I literally prayed, ‘Please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there.'”

McKinnon didn’t crack any jokes before, during or after her song, and instead faced the camera to say, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you,” before delivering the show’s iconic “live from New York” cue.

The sober tone didn’t strike an emotional chord with Schneider, who was instead ticked off by the lack of humor in the cold open. He told Beck, “And there was no joke at the end, and I went, ‘It’s over. It’s over. It’s not going to come back.'”

McKinnon, who is leaving SNL after a decade on the late night comedy show, reflected on her famous 2016 performance while speaking to Esquire in May. She told the publication that singing “Hallelujah” after Trump’s win changed how she viewed the iconic song.

“It’s about love, and how love is a slog but it’s worth it,” she said. “I suddenly understood it as, like, the love of this idea that is America. That all people are created equal, and that’s the most beautiful idea in the world, but the execution has been long and tough and we’re still just trying to get it right. But that it’s worth it, and that it will always be worth it.”

SNL is currently on a summer hiatus, but the show will return (without McKinnon) for Season 48 this fall.