Kaine's "Saturday Night Live" stop pokes fun at voters' short memories

On a special edition of "What's That Name?" the sketch show poked at "most important election of our lives"

Published November 3, 2024 12:40PM (EST)

Michael Longfellow, Sarah Sherman as Margaret Atwood, senator Tim Kaine, and host John Mulaney during the “What’s That Name: Election Edition” sketch on Saturday, November 2, 2024. (Will Heath/NBC)
Michael Longfellow, Sarah Sherman as Margaret Atwood, senator Tim Kaine, and host John Mulaney during the “What’s That Name: Election Edition” sketch on Saturday, November 2, 2024. (Will Heath/NBC)

You can't blame voters for getting a little overheated in their rhetoric during the election season and moving on with their lives in the interregnum.

Still, it is a little funny that every election for the last decade has been the "most important in our lifetimes," a framework that the recurring "Saturday Night Live" sketch "What's That Name?" is perfectly set up to exploit. 

For the uninitiated, the game show sketch mocks just how much memory we save for current trends and pop culture, getting contestants on a roll with influencers and reality TV stars, giving them enough rope before asking them to recall the name of someone whose name you should know (the friend of your spouse, a third-grade teacher, your neighbor).

On its last episode before Election Day, the long-running comedy show had host John Mulaney quickly identify current hot topics in politics like Jack Smith and Doug Emhoff before bringing out Hillary Clinton running mate and current senator from Virginia Tim Kaine

Kaine noted that the 2016 election was also sold as the most important one to date and acted incredulous when Mulaney couldn't bring his name to mind. When Mulaney countered that Kaine was not a memorable guy like Tim Walz, the show cruelly put up a side-by-side comparison of the two remarkably similar men. 

The sketch twisted the knife by asking Mulaney to remember the names of any of the people killed by police that his character had shared along with the hashtag #RememberTheirNames in 2020. It capped off the sketch by bringing Kaine back out and having Mulaney try and remember his name yet again. 

Watch the entire sketch below:


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