Dave Chappelle hosted last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, which was easily the best not just of the season but of the past few years. His opening monologue was tremendous, equal parts somber and hilarious, and as perfect a response to last week’s election results as we’ll probably get. Another highlight was the “Walking Dead Chappelle’s Show” sketch, in which the comic resurrected characters from The Chappelle Show, his beloved mid-2000s Comedy Central hit, in a spoof of the gory season premiere of The Walking Dead.
Dressed as Dead villain Negan, Chappelle delivered a monologue as he picked which person to kill with his barbwire-wrapped baseball bat, just as Negan did on the Walking Dead premiere. But instead of Walking Dead characters kneeling to find out who would have their head bashed in, it was crackhead Tyrone Biggums, the white newscaster Chuck Taylor, the blind and black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby, Chappelle’s Lil John, and pimp Silky Johnson.
“Well, well, well, a n**** named Negan,” Johnson says. “You look more like a Stephanie…Them some ugly ass boots you got on there. As the white boys say on the internet, ‘What…are…those?’“
Later, as Taylor begs for his life, you hear Lil Jon/Chappelle’s trademark “What?!” And when Negan confronts the blind and racist Bigsby about the fact he himself is black, Bigsby puts on a Make America Great Again hat and says, “From what I hear this hat says otherwise. This is Trump’s America now!”
The sketch ends with a surreal message of hope. Watch it below:
