You know it's an exciting week on Saturday Night Live when a new John Mulaney stars Duane Reade at the Port Authority Bus Terminal musical sketch it's just about the fifth most important thing to discuss.

The biggest news, as already reportedwas Vice President Kamala Harris stepping in at the deep end to “stop the drama” and literally mirror Maya Rudolph’s portrayal of her. We'll talk more about this sketch in a moment.

The musical guest was also notable Festival sensation Chappell Roan played their sing-along hit “Pink Pony Club” and debuted a Surprise country song“The Giver.”

Another surprise was that 2016 vice presidential candidate, Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who ran alongside Hillary Clinton, identified himself in “What is this name?” a game show sketch. In it, Mulaney plays a man who claims he cares deeply about Tuesday's presidential election but can't remember Kaine's name.

Maya Rudolph, left, with Vice President Kamala Harris during the cold open.

(Will Heath/NBC)

Mulaney, who hosted “Everybody’s in LA” for Netflix in May and who will host? a weekly live show for the streamer in early 2025managed admirably to hold everything together in a solid blend of sketches. There was an extremely silly video of Mulaney playing a ground control officer trying to do it Help a chimpanzee astronaut Return to Earth at the start of the show. Two skits at the end of the episode that embedded many jokes in simple premises: one was about Little Richard (Kenan Thompson) appears too often in a 1990s sitcom. And Mulaney played on the other Harvey Epstein, a real New York City Council candidatewho admits in a campaign video that his two names are highly problematic.

Even without the Broadway fantasy that it is latest edition by Duane Reade (more on this below), Mulaney's hosting would have been a top performance or at least a head-to-head race in the 50th season so far with Ariana Grande from a few weeks ago.

A title card was presented before the final farewell Teri Garr, who died this week. The actor hosted the show three times in the 1980s.

Rudolph finally faced the real Harris in this week's cold opening, whose smugness about speaking to the Mirror resembled news Jennifer Coolidge sketch. But three days before the national election, there was a lot to talk about, including former President Trump (James Austin Johnson) wearing a large orange vest at a rally because he “wore it in a garbage truck” and ex-Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney joked (“I just said I wanted her to go hunting with her dad”).

JD Vance (Bowen Yang) appeared briefly before we saw the return of Jim Gaffigan as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff and Dana Carvey as President Biden.

But of course it was Kamala Harris got the biggest reactionaccompanied by Rudolph with: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday evening!”

In his sixth appearance as host, Mulaney delivered an extremely quick monologue in which he jumped from topic to topic and was notable for not mentioning the upcoming election at all. Instead, Mulaney began by updating the audience on his family life: He recently married Olivia Munn and now has a 5 week old daughter together with a 2 year old son. He described the relative height of everyone in his life that he is taller, including Munn, his even shorter mother-in-law, and a nanny who is “negative 1 foot tall.” Mulaney talked about his parents, who are aging too slowly for his liking (“They still have brown hair and go on bike rides”) and what it was like to be considering hip replacement surgery at 42.

Best sketch of the night: Bring Beppo home

There's just something about Mulaney and the Monkeys that works on “SNL.” Two years after appearing as a monkey judgeThe host plays a character who goes to great lengths to bring Beppo, America's first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth, home safely. Beppo can communicate with words using a keyboard with symbols, but when mission control loses control of the spacecraft, it's up to Mulaney's character to give the chimp the bad news in words he can understand: “Beppo, don't go home.” .” Beppo goes dark. Beppo is forever zero.” The video sketch takes several dark and absurd turns, includes a reference to “Hidden Figures” and ends triumphantly… somehow. Extra points for making Beppo the doomed chimpanzee look so realistic and adorable.

Also good: Duane Reade milk is organic, not organic

Whenever Mulaney hosts “SNL,” there's always a good chance he'll bring back his musical tribute sketch This takes place at a Duane Reade at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. For this latest version, former cast member Pete Davidson returned to purchase a jug of milk, which, as it turns out, came from a family of possums (Thompson and Ego Nwodim) who turned the play into a “Lion King” number transformed. Marcello Hernández played a sealed shampoo bottle, while New York Mayor Eric Adams (Thompson) parodied “Aladdin” with a nod to his Turkish connections. There was more, much more, but perhaps the standout was Samberg returning to perform “Baby Bear Carcass,” matching the opening number of “Hamilton,” a nod to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s bizarre Central Park story . As the skit shows, the former presidential candidate is still on the ballot in two swing states. Either you love these New York-centric music sketches or you find them completely by accident, but you can't deny that they're ambitious.

Weekend Update Winner: Reba!

Hernandez and new cast member Jane Wickline played “a A couple you can't believe are together,” but it was Heidi Gardner as “The Voice” coach and country music superstar Reba McEntire who won “Weekend Update” this week. In a segment that continued to be the case Enjoy the fascination of the series with McEntire (Why not have her host?), Gardner portrayed the singer as an undecided voter. “Call me Shawn Mendes because I'm still figuring it out” she said. Gardner's arm-waving impression is paired with strange stories about McEntire's hometown of McAlester, Oklahoma, where: “If you think the milk is spoiled, take another drink.” Even more disturbing: Reba says she is the daughter of a Republican mother and of a father who was Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It. “Mom had 59 jobs. Dad only had one thing: children eat.” Was it the most accurate impression of Reba? That wasn't it. Was it the strangest thing? Absolutely. Let's have the real McEntire on the show to do another one of those mirror sketches.