The Other <em>SNL</em> Election Sketch

Contrary to what Lorne Michaels said about not having political candidates guest on Saturday Night Live before the polls close Tuesday, the biggest surprise of the show’s final preelection episode was … a cameo by the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. Appearing in the final minutes of the cold open, using an oft-trodden mirror premise, Harris sat opposite Maya Rudolph (who has been portraying the vice president since 2019) and exchanged a winking dialogue that added “-ala” to the ends of words. “The American people want to stop the chaos,” Rudolph began, before Harris rejoined “and end the dram-ala.”

The light—and relatively straightforward—moment contrasted James Austin Johnson’s burned-out take on Donald Trump that kicked off the cold open. Satirizing the former president’s speech from his Wednesday rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Johnson briefly cast aside his impersonation, which regularly consists of Trump leaping topic to topic without any firm footing. He instead seemed to break the fourth wall: “Get me out of here,” he said, slumping over the podium. “Make it stop.” It was hard to tell how much of the sentiment was coming from the comedian’s Trump character and how much from Johnson himself.

But another sketch last night more crisply underscored the exhaustion of the current political moment—and the way high-stakes rhetoric can repeat from election cycle to election cycle. The recurring game-show segment “What’s That Name?,” which derides contestants’ ability to remember minor celebrities’ names but not those of the people they encounter daily, returned for an election edition. Airing not long after Harris stopped by, the bit felt culturally savvier and came with an unexpected political guest star of its own.

The episode’s host, John Mulaney, played a news junkie who was quizzed about the more obscure 2024 general-election players, such as Special Counsel Jack Smith. The contestant was well informed about the goings-on—and clearly quite proud of it—because, as he put it preachily, “This is the most important election in American history. Democracy is on the line.” In contrast to the roaring excitement that Harris’s guest turn provoked among the audience mere moments earlier—cheering that lasted nearly 30 seconds and kept Harris and Rudolph from launching into the scene—Mulaney’s character’s line elicited a weak smattering of applause that barely registered as “clapter.”

The sketch coyly upped the ante of such all-or-nothing verbiage—important, but also familiar— when the game’s host (played by Michael Longfellow, following Bill Hader’s original turn) brought out Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Recalling his time as Hillary Clinton’s running mate during the 2016 campaign, Kaine recited a fine-tuned setup: “At the time, you said it was the most important election in American history, and that democracy was on the line. It’s been less than eight years. What’s my name?” Mulaney’s contestant stretched to find a response that would allow him to save face, finally landing on a chance to blame Kaine for not being as memorable as the current vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz. Longfellow’s game-show host, taking joy in watching Mulaney’s in-the-know smugness crumble, placed a photo of Kaine side by side with Walz to demonstrate how they not only look alike but also share the same name. “Really? His name was Tim?” Mulaney asked, to which Kaine delivered the pitch-perfect retort: “My name is still Tim. I exist.”

The sketch seemed to be SNL’s attempt to balance the cold open’s levity with a more biting tone about the wearying stakes of deciding the nation’s leadership. The show appears to understand those stakes more clearly than it did in 2016, when, in a widely criticized move, it invited Trump to host an episode. (Hillary Clinton cameoed one month before Trump, playing a bartender named Val who listened as Kate McKinnon’s caricature of Clinton shared her concerns about the upcoming election.) In having Harris but not Trump on the show (albeit for a much smaller guest spot than her competitor once received), SNL seems to be staking at least a slightly larger political claim than it’s made in the past—and in a way that has already drawn flak from one of the Republican commissioners of the FCC for possibly violating the equal-time rule. But with its longer view, “What’s That Name?” landed the evening’s subtler, more stringent point.