Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: August 22, 2020
You’ll have a designated driver for tonight’s Saturday Night Live rerun, it’s your SNL host, Academy Award nominee Adam Driver!
A long time ago (back on January 25, 2020), in a galaxy far, far away (the Milky Way without the Covid virus), the villain from the latest “Star Wars” trilogy hosted the Saturday Night Live Season 45 mid-season premiere when “The Rise of Skywalker” star Adam Driver returned to host SNL for his third time in 4 years. And that’s the SNL replay that’s airing tonight at 11:30pm on NBC.
At the beginning of 2020, Adam Driver was really showing off his acting chops. He proved himself as an action star at the box office by starring as the Master of the Dark Side, Kylo Ren in episodes 7, 8, & 9 of “Star Wars,” which wrapped up the Skywalker Saga. Then, he showed he could handle drama as well when he received his second Academy Award nomination in two years, for his lead role in “Marriage Story“, co-starring Scarlett Johansson.
Adam Driver also showed that he has a flair for sketch comedy by becoming one of Saturday Night Live‘s most popular hosts over the past 4 years. He first hosted in 2016 when he starred in the SNL – Season 41 mid-season premiere. Driver was such a hit, SNL EP Lorne Michaels brought him back in 2018 to host the premiere of SNL‘s 44th season and of course back, he was back again this past January for the third time.
There was so much trust between Lorne Michaels and Adam Driver when he hosted his third time that Lorne even gave Driver the added pressure of appearing in the SNL – Cold Open in the mid-season premiere. Something that hosts rarely do on Saturday Night Live.
SNL began the second of half its 45th season with an opening sketch about President Trump’s impeachment trial. In the cold opener, Republicans are nervous about Trump’s defense. We get two of SNL‘s best political impressions in the opening sketch. Cast member Beck Bennett is back as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with his jowls-a-flappin’ and cast member Cecily Strong returns as the always-trembling senior Senator from Maine, Susan Collins.
The two GOP senators are meeting with Trumpy’s defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz played to thunderous applause (this show was pre-quarantine and originally shot in front of a live studio audience) by former SNL cast member Jon Lovitz. As you’ll see in the sketch tonight, Dershowitz descends into hell where he meets Satan played by cast member Kate McKinnon. In an ironic twist, it was Lovitz who used to play the Devil when he was part of the Saturday Night Live cast in the 80’s.
There’s plenty of other residents of Hell that Satan introduces to Lovitz’s Dershowitz, including a social media entrepreneur, a couple of commercial mascots, the composer of a song that any young parent will be glad to see in Hell and host Adam Driver as an infamous financial consultant and convicted sex offender. In case you haven’t guess it yet, Driver’s character is in Hell after hanging himself in prison. “Yeah. It was suicide. Sure. That’s the ticket.”
Later in the show, Adam Driver had no problem bringing his most famous big-screen character to television on the Saturday Night Live stage. Back in 2016, Driver starred as his “Star Wars” alter-ego Kylo Ren in an SNL Short which was a parody of the popular CBS reality show, “Undercover Boss“. In the short, called “Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base“, Kylo Ren works in disguise to find out what the Stormtroopers, Imperial officers and other members of the “First Order” under his command, think of his leadership. He’s severely disappointed and unleashes the power of the Dark Side of the Force.
In tonight’s repeat, 4 years later, “Kylo Ren” stars in another SNL Short which is an “Undercover Boss” follow-up called “Undercover Boss: Where Are They Now? Kylo Ren“. It’s an update on everything the Leader of the Knights of the Ren has been up to since the last short. Not much has changed, including his lack of skills in disguising himself from his employees. It’s another bad day for the Dark Side.
Your host Adam Driver brings up his latest “Star Wars” film in his SNL monologue tonight too, or as he calls it “the space one.” Being broadcast in January, Adam Driver was still getting use to the new decade and said he was having trouble saying goodbye to 2019. Listen Adam, none of us knew how good we had it in 2019 compared this virus-filled suck-fest of a year.
We find out how chill Adam Driver is in real life as he compares his real self to some of his most well-known characters. Adam gives us some facts about his life and makes a “Stars Wars” fan’s day. He also promotes his Oscar nominated film “Marriage Story” on Netflix at the expense of his co-star, Scarlett Johansson, the girlfriend of SNL co-head writer Colin Jost.
As usual, Driver shines in all of his sketch work tonight on SNL. He plays everything from a father who must deal with one of his teenage daughter’s friends destroying his plumbing by clogging up the toilet with a feminine hygiene product to a community college theater student who takes his role as a knight at Medieval Times way too seriously.
In other sketches in this evening’s SNL repeat, host Adam Driver plays a cheerleader coach in a sketch about the Netflix reality series, “Cheer” and in a sketch that heads deep into silly territory, he plays a bottle of ketchup getting ready to marry another bottle in a condiment wedding ceremony.
Adam Driver fans will be glad to see the return of one of his more popular SNL sketch characters. Tonight, the PBS Kids’ show sketch “The Science Room” with Professor Zachary Adams (host Adam Driver) is back. As usual, Professor Adams’ patience wears really thin with his kid assistants played by cast members Mikey Day and Cecily Strong. It’s a science show where you wonder what will explode first, the experiment or the Professor’s temper.
There’s one other SNL Short on tonight’s Saturday Night Live encore episode. It’s a music video called “Slow” featuring tonight’s musical guest Halsey. Cast members Kenan Thompson and Chris Redd sing along with Adam Driver about how it’s smooth to take it “slow” in a romance. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s too slow for women.
Weekend Update was concentrating on one lead story in tonight’s edition of the SNL newscast and that’s the start of Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. Anchorman Colin Jost focused on how bored the Senators were listening to testimony. Some were even playing with fidget spinners. Jost commented, “I assume this symbolized how the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.”
Anchor Michael Che couldn’t resist pointing out how Donald Trump and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein used the same lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. Che said, “Talk about credibility. Who’s his character witness? R. Kelly??”
Jost and Che go full-on Trump with their news commentary tonight. The Weekend Update anchor team talk about the President being bored during his own trial, along with more rambling footage from a Trump news interview. They also talk about Joe Biden saying he wanted no part of testifying at the impeachment trial, a secret recording of Trump saying he wanted the Ambassador to the Ukraine fired, Rudy Giuliani’s new podcast, and Michael Che has his own theory on why the Democrats might want Trump to remain in the White House.
Things that don’t deal with the President and his impeachment that Weekend Update covers this evening include the New York Yankee Derek Jeter’s Hall of Fame induction being just one vote shy of being unanimous, the Navy naming an aircraft carrier after an African-American sailor for the first time, a porn site data breach, equal pay issues, Planters Peanuts killing off their Mr. Peanut mascot, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty being accused of punching a kid, and a goat with a human face.
The Weekend Update news desk gets two visitors in tonight’s repeat. First up, cast member Aidy Bryant brings back her little kid recurring character, “7th Grade Travel Expert, Carrie Krum.” The middle-schooler talks about places where you can escape to from the cold winter weather. Most of Carrie’s destinations are her relatives’ homes.
Cast member Melissa Villaseñor brings her musical skills to Weekend Update to talk about the then-upcoming Academy Awards ceremony and perform original songs she wrote for all the Best Picture nominees. It’s a pretty impressive performance and definitely worth a second watch tonight.
SNL also pays tribute to one of its founding supporters in this evening’s replay who had passed away during the show’s January hiatus. There’s a Saturday Night Live bumper photo memorial for Buck Henry who hosted Saturday Night Live 10 times during the show’s first 5 seasons.
Not only did he hold the SNL record for hosting for quite some time, but Buck Henry was also a two-time Academy Award nominee for his screenplays for “The Graduate” (1967) and “Heaven Can Wait” (1978). He also collaborated with the great Mel Brooks to write the hit sitcom “Get Smart” which earned Buck an Emmy Award.
For your convenience, the promos for this evening’s repeat episode of Saturday Night Live have been gathered together below. In the first one, it’s a “Best Of Adam Driver” highlight reel from his previous hosting experiences on SNL. It also acts as a refresher for that “Undercover Boss” – “Star Wars” mash-up gimmick starring Adam Driver.
In the next promo, Adam Driver learns the hard way that there’s more to hosting than just starring in sketches, doing characters and handling the monologue. If you’re the first host of the new year, you’ve also got some cleaning up to do. Starting with that tree.
The final set of promos features host Adam Driver, musical guest Halsey and cast member Kenan Thompson. The trio discuss how “wild” the mid-season premiere is going to be. Get ready for indoor fireworks and oh yeah, some nudity. Somebody should let the host know about that.
Academy Award nominee Adam Driver hosts this encore presentation of Saturday Night Live tonight with musical guest Halsey. It begins at 11:30pm et on NBC!
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