Adele Hosts Saturday Night Live: Watch Video Of The Best And Worst Sketches

What, you thought just because Adele wasn't the musical guest that she wouldn't perform on Saturday Night Live?

The 15-time Grammy winner managed to squeeze in four of her greatest hits — "Someone Like You," "When We Were Young," "Hello" and "Rolling in the Deep" — during her SNL hosting debut, playing a heightened version of herself in a parody of ABC's The Bachelor. It was the only instance where she wasn't truly in character... unless you count the handful of times she lost it during a late-in-show tourism sketch.

At times, SNL alum Maya Rudolph felt as much the host as Adele. After she took centerstage in this week's cold open (this time as debate moderator Kristen Welker, not as Sen. Kamala Harris), Rudolph popped up in two more sketches — first as a quarantined nursing home resident (in "Visiting Grandma"), then as a denim-clad spokeswoman in a five-minutes-to-1 digital short (opposite Adele and Beck Bennett).

The second-to-last episode before the presidential election also touched on the Rudy Giuliani scene in Borat 2, Jeffrey Toobin's even more embarrassing Zoom call, and the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency (and what it would do for America's collective psyche).

What sketches stood out this week? And what missed the mark? Grade the episode, then scroll down for all the highlights (including musical guest H.E.R.) and lowlights. (Next week, John Mulaney and The Strokes!)

Of all the sketches this season to reflect on life in the age of coronavirus, this one, which found the titular medium warn a friend group in 2019 about the unprecedented year ahead, has been the best of all. The specificity of her visions — such as Heidi Gardner's boyfriend washing off a bag of Doritos, and Bowen Yang getting ghosted by his friends after he dares to dine out — was quite great (albeit all too real).

The first political ad of the fall was better than the debate-centric cold open because it had a specific point of view. It spoke to a vast swath of the population (including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow) that has been consumed by the Trump presidency over the last four years, and what'll happen to them if Biden gets elected. (As Melissa Villaseñor's character put it, "My entire personality is hating Donald Trump. If he's gone, what am I supposed to do? Focus on my kids again? No thanks!")

For whatever reason, the audience was asleep during Villaseñor's first showcase of the season. The Little Rascals bit was good, but the spot-on Stevie Nicks impression (while singing the recently gone-viral "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac) was even better.

It's really more of a best-worst. While the ad on its own wasn't especially funny, Adele's inability to stay in character made it funny. Her cross-eyed attempt to hold it together (at the 1:36 mark) was priceless, as was her reaction to Gardner, who delivered the filthiest line of the night (at the 2:50 mark).

The two-time Grammy winner kicked things off with the low-key R&B jam "Damage." That was followed by the first performance of her new single "Hold On," which dropped in conjunction with her SNL appearance and featured some killer harmonization with the guitar (watch here).