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Comic relief is all we have.
Alec Baldwin’s Trump meets Will Ferrell’s Sondland in SNL’s cold open
If you were to describe this week’s impeachment hearings to someone not following politics, there’s a good chance that person would laugh in your face and say, “Nice try, but you’re obviously describing a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch.” Consider the fact that the week’s testimony even included some surprise celebrity guests, with the names A$AP Rocky, Jay Leno and Kim Kardashian West all popping up.
With that in mind, SNL faced what has become an increasingly common challenge during the past few years: How do you satirize a reality that’s so unrealistic it already feels like satire? Last week, the show highlighted our political reality’s ridiculousness by placing it in the context of something even more ridiculous: a soap opera. By reimagining the impeachment hearings as “Days of Our Impeachment,” the show managed to recreate actual moments from the hearings with the addition of swelling music or character fainting upon hearing the president was tweeting. The setup also allowed for insane moments that didn’t occur, such as Melissa Villaseñor’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) swinging by to make out with Jon Hamm’s top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr....
The sketch finds his Trump on the While House lawn, preparing to board Marine One while attempting to duck questions from the press about the hearings. He knows the reporters present want to ask about “this impeachment nonsense,” and he’d love to answer, he says, but “as you can see from this very loud, running helicopter behind me, I’m in a big, big hurry right now, so I don’t really have the time. But everything is perfect.”
....The cold open, clocking in at under four minutes, was also the shortest in recent memory. The reason probably has something to do with Will Ferrell hosting the show and a desire to give him as much time as possible throughout the night. Still, for a week during which so many headlines in mainstream newspapers such as this one felt like they were pulled straight from the Onion, this cold open left us feeling decidedly, well, cold.
If you were to describe this week’s impeachment hearings to someone not following politics, there’s a good chance that person would laugh in your face and say, “Nice try, but you’re obviously describing a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch.” Consider the fact that the week’s testimony even included some surprise celebrity guests, with the names A$AP Rocky, Jay Leno and Kim Kardashian West all popping up.
With that in mind, SNL faced what has become an increasingly common challenge during the past few years: How do you satirize a reality that’s so unrealistic it already feels like satire? Last week, the show highlighted our political reality’s ridiculousness by placing it in the context of something even more ridiculous: a soap opera. By reimagining the impeachment hearings as “Days of Our Impeachment,” the show managed to recreate actual moments from the hearings with the addition of swelling music or character fainting upon hearing the president was tweeting. The setup also allowed for insane moments that didn’t occur, such as Melissa Villaseñor’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) swinging by to make out with Jon Hamm’s top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr....
The sketch finds his Trump on the While House lawn, preparing to board Marine One while attempting to duck questions from the press about the hearings. He knows the reporters present want to ask about “this impeachment nonsense,” and he’d love to answer, he says, but “as you can see from this very loud, running helicopter behind me, I’m in a big, big hurry right now, so I don’t really have the time. But everything is perfect.”
....The cold open, clocking in at under four minutes, was also the shortest in recent memory. The reason probably has something to do with Will Ferrell hosting the show and a desire to give him as much time as possible throughout the night. Still, for a week during which so many headlines in mainstream newspapers such as this one felt like they were pulled straight from the Onion, this cold open left us feeling decidedly, well, cold.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/11/24/alec-baldwins-trump-meets-will-ferrells-sondland-snls-cold-open/
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