Bill Burr’s Pre-Taped ‘Saturday Night Live’ Promo Spills Some State Secrets

Lorne Michaels was wise to book Bill Burr to host the first episode of Saturday Night Live following yesterday’s election. It’s almost like he knew (truck full of geese crashes into an oil refinery) would be the biggest story of the cycle.

Every four years, the pivotal post-election Saturday Night Live episode marks an historic moment in comedy as the industry’s most influential institution gathers its thoughts and delivers a humorous (or, more often, darkly sobering) address to the American people during a period of massive change. In 2016, a tearful Kate McKinnon played Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in her full Hillary Clinton get-up. In 2020, Dave Chappelle told the unrealistically optimistic live studio audience, which was presumably full of Joe Biden voters, that the division and the social crises that the country faced both before and during the first Donald Trump administration hadn’t magically disappeared because of his temporary defeat. This Saturday, Burr, with his righteous anger and stubborn refusal of restraint, will have the unenviable task of trying to unify a shocked and fractured comedy world around a handful of punchlines.

But before he does all that, Burr has to get people to actually watch the episode, and SNL has decided to advertise the climactic hosting gig by posting a facetious promo sketch that they shot before the polls closed and filled with some top-secret truths about (entire marching band falls down an open manhole).

Honestly, this SNL election sketch probably isn’t going to pull anyone back from the brink of despair, but it’s a pleasant reminder that classic sound-editing gags will likely survive the upcoming transition of power. There’s also something sickly hilarious about the idea that both Burr and Marcello Hernandez filled in every bubble on their ballots just to make sure that they always came out on top.

But while the promo wisely avoided any outright political statements, there were nuggets of dark truth in it as well. For instance, I absolutely believe that Rudy Giuliani knows who killed Jeffrey Epstein, and that he would absolutely spill the beans on the assassin’s identity in a steam room. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Giuliani nearly pulled out his dick in front of Borat's daughter.