SNL Return: Is There A New Saturday Night Live Episode This Week?

Saturday Night Live has been on hiatus for more than a month, but it’s finally coming back! SNL season 46 premiered on October 3, 2020, and parodied several events leading up to the U.S. Presidential Election. Alec Baldwin reprised his long-running guest role as former President Donald Trump and the season premiere introduced Jim Carrey’s divisive impression of Joe Biden.

By the time the show went on hiatus, Carrey had left the role and SNL cast member Alex Moffat had taken over, playing Biden as SNL closed out 2020 with host Timothee Chalamet and musical guest Dua Lipa. Now that President Biden is officially in office, SNL will need someone to fill in the role long-term, leading many fans to wonder whether Biden will be re-cast yet again – and that question may be answered as soon as tonight.

After a month-long hiatus and a brief delay due to Covid-19, SNL will air a new episode tonight, January 30, 2021. John Krasinski, whose charisma and comedic talent shone through for 9 years on The Office, will host tonight’s episode with Machine Gun Kelly as the musical guest. Tonight’s episode airs at 11:30 p.m. EST on NBC. As cast member Heidi Gardner emphasized in this week’s SNL promo, “there’s tons of pressure. It’s the first show back, the first show of 2021, the first show since Trump” [via SNL on YouTube].

Though SNL’s ratings have had a bit of a slump in recent years, the show has enjoyed a 2020 election year boost, with the season 46 premiere drawing in more viewers than any episode since 2016, when Dave Chapelle also hosted the first post-election episode. Tonight’s episode will likely see a similar bump in viewership. SNL fans can reasonably expect more political sketches in tonight’s episode, but, as is typical for non-campaign and non-election years, SNL will probably shift away from lengthy political cold-open sketches in the coming months.

Following tonight’s episode, four more consecutive episodes of SNL have been planned for each Saturday in February, though the schedule could obviously shift again if there are more delays, Covid-19 related or otherwise. Dan Levy will host with musical guest Phoebe Bridgers on February 6 and Regina King will host with musical guest Nathaniel Rateliff on February 13. The hosts and musical guests of the remaining two Feburary episodes are TBA.

Tonight will mark both John Krasinski’s and Machine Gun Kelly’s SNLdebuts. MGK might perform a song from, Downfalls High, which is a 49-minute miniature musical that MGK himself has described the video as a “pop-punk Grease.” Krasinski could parody his recent action-thriller roles in Jack Ryan and the upcoming A Quiet Place Part II, but especially after The Office topped streaming views in 2020, a throwback Office sketch featuring John Krasinski as Jim Halpert would be a pleasant surprise.

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