“Saturday Night Live” is well-known for its signature sketch, the political cold open, where the long-standing NBC variety show consistently teases the significant happenings of (typically) the person occupying the Oval Office. Therefore, it came as a surprise when they decided to make quite a shift in direction this week.
Unlike the satirical route, like they went with on President-elect Donald Trump winning the election, as my colleague Bob Hogue wrote about, for this week’s elephant in the room–President Joe Biden’s pardoning son Hunter– the writers reached back to resurrect one of the long-running program’s funniest characters–“Church Chat” host, the Church Lady. If you aren’t familiar with it (not every reader is a Gen Xer or older, after all), the school marm-esque, holier-than-thou, Christian talk show host character sits down with several guests from either politics or entertainment/pop culture.
Oh yeah, and by the way (couldn’t resist!), former SNL castmate Dana Carvey, who’s been portraying Biden this season, played the character during the 1986-1990 seasons. (I think the only other appearance was for “Saturday Night Live”s 15th anniversary special in May 2016.)
SNL Alumnus in the Spotlight:
