monologue

Because I was like, “This is it. This is the big monologue.”

This week’s cold open mocked president-elect Donald Trump by having the cast pretend to support him, and guest host Bill Burr’s monologue could be viewed from different lenses.

It was hard to tell from Burr’s monologue, which started with a story about getting the flu with a thrown-in ethnic slur: “You’re trying to figure out who gave it to you. You’re going through this Rolodex of people that coughed on you, sniffed near you, walked by an Asian or something.”

The cold open was a somber Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton singing “Hallelujah,” and the monologue and sketch that followed felt like perfectly pitched, smart responses to a shocking outcome.

The show tried a few different tacks, just a week after Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the show, including a cold open that mocked Trump by having the entire cast pretend to support him and a Burr monologue that, depending on how you viewed it, was either wildly insensitive to dejected Harris supporters, particularly women, or provocatively ironic.