A Weepy Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton: ‘I’m Not Giving Up’

“Saturday Night Live” started with a somber opening — there was no biting Alec Baldwin impersonation of President-Elect Donald Trump.

The show opted to combine a nod to the passing of Leonard Cohen with the results of the presidential election by having a piano-playing Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton sing Cohen’s “Hallelujah”:

I did my best
It wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya
Even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but “hallelujah.”

McKinnon then turned to the cameras and said, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.” (Yes, she had tears in her eyes at the end of the cold open.)

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Comedian Dave Chappelle was the host of the first post-election special, which included jokes all throughout the show about Trump, Clinton, the Supreme Court, and voting. A Tribe Called Quest was the musical guest.

In his opening monologue, Chappelle tackled the events of the week, saying, “I didn’t know that Donald Trump was going to win the election. I did suspect it. Seemed like Hillary was doing well in the polls — and yet, I know the whites. You guys [are] about as full of surprises as you used to be. I think I speak for all America when I say we were all pranked by Omarosa. I don’t even know what she’s doing in the news.”

He went on to say, “But America’s better. We’ve actually elected an internet troll as president. Whites were furious. I’ve never seen anything like it. I haven’t seen whites this mad since the O.J. verdict.”

“I’ve never seen this. I watched a white riot in Portland, Oregon, the other night. They said they did a million dollars’ worth of damage. Every black person was watching like: amateurs!”

He wisecracked about the Black Lives Matter slogan not being that great. “But McDonald’s already took ‘You Deserve a Break Today.'”

And he also joked about sticking around, while his friends were vowing to leave the country under Trump. “Nah, I’m going to stay here and get this tax break,” said Chappelle.

He got serious at the end, saying, “I’m wishing Donald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one, too.”

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In a sketch later on, it was election night and Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were sitting with four white people listening to them deal with Hillary’s slow and steady loss.

When one of the partygoers said, “Oh my God, I think America is racist,” Chappelle’s character mocked her, saying, “Oh my God, I remember my great-great grandpa told me something like that once, but he was a slave or something.”

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When one woman pondered why Hillary didn’t get the vote as Obama did, Rock said, “Maybe because you’re replacing a charismatic 40-year-old black guy with a 70-year-old white woman. That’s like the Knicks replacing Patrick Ewing with Neil Patrick Harris.”

During “Weekend Update,” Michael Che said, “How did this happen? Either Donald Trump is actually a genius or Hillary Clinton hit a voodoo priest with her car.”