Recap: Hamilton Creator Hosts Saturday Night Live
It’s not every day that a Broadway composer gets to host Saturday Night Live, so one can imagine the excitement from theater fans everywhere when Lin-Manuel Miranda himself announced that he would be doing just that.
The show began with a cold open tackling the week’s biggest political topic: Donald Trump’s leaked tape. Trump was played by Alec Baldwin, who will act as the presidential candidate for the entire season, alongside Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton.
After the opening credits introduced the host and musical guest, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Twenty One Pilots respectively, the former went onstage in front of the SNL Band to give the customary opening monologue. Miranda introduced himself to the audience and acquainted himself with the viewers: “I’m fresh from a long run performing in my musical Hamilton, which fortunately, is one of the biggest hits ever on Broadway so that means most of you watching at home have no idea who I am”. Miranda then encouraged viewers to watch the show if they ever came to New York, speaking of how the show was an escape from ’the craziness in our world’. He chided, “It’s about two famous New York politicians locked in a dirty, ugly, mudslinging optical campaign – escapism!” However, the monologue didn’t go the way of most hosts, but as many hoped and predicted, Miranda launched into a rap in the style of the now iconic My Shot from Hamilton. The rap’s contents ranged from the US presidential elections, to Hamilton, and how he would not throw away his shot at hosting the show.
The sketches in this episode were particularly strong as well, especially those involving one of the show’s biggest star’s: Kate McKinnon. Though the actress usually portrays Hillary Clinton, she put her impression skills to good use and played Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. The sketch revolved around Conway going about her day in suburban America, all while being interrupted by her having to appear on live TV in order to defend Trump’s ridiculous and salacious comments. In Weekend Update, the news segment parody, co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che brought back former co-anchors and SNL alums Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, who played undecided female voters from Pennsylvania.
As one would expect from an episode hosted by a Broadway superstar, there were many musical moments in the episode, including a The Music Man inspired sketch entitled ‘The Wells Fargo Wagon”, an SNL music video about a high school theater group’s cast party called “The Crucible Cast Party”, and a duo of songs performed by musical guest Twenty One Pilots.
This was one of the strongest SNL episodes in a long time, thanks to hilarious sketches, entertaining musical guests, a great host, and tons of material from the US presidential campaign trail.
