It’s a serious time—we get a new president Monday, Hamas hostages are being released as part of their tenuous ceasefire deal with Israel, wildfires have taken out swaths of Los Angeles, and the nation has numerous problems to deal with after four horrendous years under the Biden-Harris regime. 

But there’s always room for comedy. Humor lightens the soul, offers some much-needed perspective, and gives us a moment at least to think of something other than all the issues we as people face both personally and on a national level. 

That is, if the comedy is good.

And it was good on Saturday Night Live this weekend, thanks to the efforts of 51-year old Dave Chappelle. Not only was his 16-minute monologue up to his usual standards—there were no sacred cows for the Emmy winner, who even somehow was able to elicit laughs when talking about the tragic LA wildfires—but his “Evacuation Alert” skit was truly laugh out loud funny. 

Let’s start with the cold open:

Chappelle also mentioned the wildfires during his opening monologue, when he talked about how creator Lorne Michaels was trying to book him to appear on the show for an episode after the election, which he refused to do.

“The moment I said yes, L.A. burst into flames,” Chappelle said while smoking a cigarette. “And it’s a tough one, you know what I mean, because I’m tired of being controversial, I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. And it is way too soon to be doing jokes about a catastrophe like that.”

Chappelle also poked fun at the conspiracy theories about how the fires started.

“There’s just too many factors. If you were a rational-thinking person, you have to at least consider the possibility that God hates these people Sodomites!” he said. “But that’s not true because West Hollywood was unscathed, because how can you burn what is already flaming?”

Oh my. He went there… and there and there. 

Watch:

Dave Chapelle utterly crushed the opening monologue on SNL last night; He showed why he is (still) the best Stand-up working today and one of the greatest of all time. https://t.co/hj1smyxfwB

— Barry Ritholtz (@Ritholtz) January 19, 2025

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The monologue was vintage Chappelle, but this skit made me laugh out loud:

In the sketch, Chappelle plays the dad of a family that receives an alert telling them they have to flee their home due to the blaze.

But Chappelle shocks his wife, played by Ego Nwodim, and their son, played by Devon Walker, when he suddenly takes a sledgehammer to the wall to get $500,000 in cash and a counterfeit passport.

“Don’t worry about where I got my money. Ain’t no time to explain. Let’s just go!” Chappelle franticly tells his family.

Things just get crazier from there, and the blood begins to spurt. It reminded me of a legendary scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where a knight refuses to admit defeat despite blood bursting from his hacked off limbs. I know, it sounds depraved, but when performed in such a silly manner, it’s pretty damn funny.

SNL has shown signs of life in recent months after spending many years acting like an arm of the DNC and as a result being spectacularly unfunny. When they’re at their best, they take on both sides and mock all comers, which is exactly what they should be doing.

It’s going to be extremely interesting to see how they deal with the second round of Trump. Please, we all beg you—no Alec Baldwin this time.