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Saturday Night Live goes through the motions with its final debate sketch

Saturday Night Live goes through the motions with its final debate sketch

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'You don’t really want to watch, but hey, you’ve come this far'

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Tom Hanks hosted this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, and took on the role of Chris Wallace as the show skewered the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. "Tonight is going to be a lot like the third Lord of the Rings movie: you don’t really want to watch, but hey, you’ve come this far."

This was pretty much the tone of the entire sketch: a sort of resignation that it will all be over soon. The cold open hit all of the highlights of the final debate, from Trump’s bad hombre and nasty woman soundbites to Clinton’s puppets and ability to spin her record. Kate McKinnon’s Clinton held up a completed Trump bingo card, while Hanks admonished the entire planet from laughing after Alec Baldwin’s Trump said he respects women.

As we’ve said about the first and second SNL debate sketches, the fact that these debates pretty much handed SNL its material shows just how ridiculous this campaign has been. This was a victory lap, and as my colleague Kwame Opam noted, Trump essentially played right into their hands.

Clinton’s trio of debate wins over Trump has provided some solid comedic material and a good boost of momentum for her campaign. Clinton has a solid lead in most polls, which allowed SNL to pretty much coast along on the assumption that this is that we’re all going through the motions at this point.