John Mulaney hosts best ‘SNL’ of the season as Kamala Harris comes face to face with her doppelganger
The 2024 presidential election is drawing to a close (farewell, celebrity ringers), but ‘SNL’ gets its biggest cameo yet.
Thanks to John Mulaney, we just got what’s easily the best episode of SNL’s fiftieth season.
No shade on what Nate Bargatze and Ariana Grande did as hosts, but Mulaney is a higher tier on SNL host. It helps that this was his sixth time in the role. It also helps that he was previously a writer on SNL. And it also helps that this episode kicked off with the buzz from Kamala Harris showing up during the cold open.
News that Harris had flown to New York for SNL broke before Mulaney’s episode began. My hunch was that she would appear during the cold open, but I wasn’t sure if that would be the case. Hillary Clinton played a bartender during her cameo a few seasons ago. Sarah Palin appeared during Weekend Update once. Barack Obama played himself and pulled off an Obama mask to reveal that he was cameoing in the early days of the 2008 race.
A presidential candidate or nominee appearing on SNL isn’t new. It just didn’t happen in the last cycle, I’m guessing due to a combination of the pandemic and SNL being wary of bringing a candidate in after Donald Trump hosted on Nov. 7, 2015.
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