The season finale of “Saturday Night Live” capitalized on a tumultuous week in Washington, D.C., with a cold open that poked fun at the scandal-plagued White House and paid homage to the way the show handled the 2016 election results.
Alec Baldwin as President Trump sat at a piano and belted out Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" — a callback to the Nov. 13 episode in which Kate McKinnon's Hillary Clinton sang the somber tune following her shocking loss to Trump.
Baldwin was joined by the whole gang, including McKinnon's Kellyanne Conway, Beck Bennett's Mike Pence, and even Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump.
"I'm not giving up because I didn't do anything wrong," Baldwin-as-Trump said at the end of the song, riffing on a line McKinnon-as-Clinton had delivered just months earlier. "But I can’t speak for these people."
During the opening monologue by host Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Baldwin welcomed Johnson into the “Five-Timers Club" — a hall of fame reserved for stars who have hosted the show five times. (Melissa McCarthy gained entry just last week.)
Johnson then pivoted, bringing up a new Public Policy Polling poll that shows he would beat Trump if he challenged him in 2020.
“I want to put this to rest and just say once and for all — I’m in,” Johnson said, before revealing he had chosen a running mate — Tom Hanks, who was also on set.
“No one can seem to agree on anything anymore except two things," Hanks said.
Johnson said those two things were "pizza and us.”
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Hanks then quipped, “I’ve been in two movies where planes crash and people are still excited to see me on their flights!”
At the end of the monologue, the two stars clasped hands in front of an enormous "JOHNSON-HANKS 2020" banner.
The season finale marked the final show for two of the cast’s repertory players, Bobby Moynihan and Vanessa Bayer.
Bayer announced on Instagram that she would be leaving the show after seven years. Moynihan is leaving to star in a new CBS series called “Me, Myself & I.”
