Alec Baldwin says NBC executives killed any chance of 'SNL' endorsing Hillary Clinton

NBC

Kate McKinnon's cold open performance of the late Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on Saturday Night Live this weekend gave mourning voters a brief moment of comfort.

"I'm not giving up, and neither should you," McKinnon, again playing Hillary Clinton, told viewers.

That comfort was eventually derailed with a timely reminder that, just one year earlier, this same show had attempted to make the President-elect a cuddly public figure by tossing him into a cringe-inducing "Hotline Bling" parody.

Like many other disappointed viewers, television critic Daniel D'Addario hasn't forgotten:

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compare/contrast: the mawkish anti-Trump cold open of SNL with the Weekend Update joke in which Che says both candidates were SO unlikeable

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the first was the show putting on a look it knew its viewers would want, the second was a snap back to access-preserving false equivalency

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Thinking again about SNL's weirdly nasty joke (delivered by "RBG," which is a whole other story) about Colin Kaepernick choosing not to vote

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This show chose at every turn to display about as little courage or decisiveness as possible, beginning with having Trump host last Nov.

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Even in their post-election show, they were drawing Clinton-Trump equivalencies. Are they really the ones to be criticizing?

D'Addario was soon spotted by Alec Baldwin himself, whose take on the President-elect was missing from the first post-election episode of SNL.

Baldwin, who's apparently had D'Addario blocked "for years," suggested the show's disappointingly mild political commentary can be attributed to NBC bosses stepping in and squashing any hopes of of an outright endorsement:

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Poor @DPD_
You write about television, yet you know so little about how it really works

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How naive you are, @DPD_
SNL tell people who to vote for?
Don't think that doesn't cross their mind.
But NBC execs kill that

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Oh my god. pic.twitter.com/aMVIa2LCjX

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I can't even respond, because Alec Baldwin has had me blocked for years!

D'Addario certainly has a point. Though McKinnon's cold open "Hallelujah" hit all the right notes, the episode quickly returned to lazy observations about each candidates' likability factor.

Will we see SNL return to the punk rock days of, say, Sinéad O’Connor ripping up Pope photos? Their next chance to do so is this weekend, as SNL veteran Kristen Wiig hosts alongside music from the xx:

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