‘SNL': Cecily Strong Brings Giuliani’s Drunk Fraud Witness to Fart-Filled Cold Open
After nearly a month off, “Saturday Night Live” returned with a brand new episode hosted by Jason Bateman and as usual, it kicked things off with a cold open ripped straight from current events.
Of course, given that right now there’s only one big current event of any note (aside of course from the deadly, still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic) — Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to steal the 2020 election from winner Joe Biden — you won’t be shocked to learn that the sketch was all about that. In this case a parody of Rudy Giuliani’s excruciatingly embarrassing hearing in the Michigan legislature earlier this week as part of the Trump campaign’s continually failing attempts to steal the election despite losing to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes.
Kate McKinnon once again played Rudy, and of course the sketch made numerous jokes about how IRL Rudy audibly farted during the hearing. Then, living up to the express wishes of the Internet, Cecily Strong made an appearance as Giuliani witness Melissa Carone, who made headlines her incoherent testimony — and for slurring her words as though she was extremely drunk.
Beck Bennett also showed up as Mike Lindell of My Pillow, as well as “Nicole Kidman’s character from ‘The Undoing.'”
But the sketch didn’t go in the direction everyone probably expected, as regular “SNL” guest stars Jim Carrey, Maya Rudolph and Alec Baldwin didn’t show up to play Biden, Kamala Harris and Trump as they did during the first six episodes of season.
Carrey’s performance as the Democratic president-elect has been all over the map this season. He started out in a parody of the insane first presidential debate playing Biden as a sort of doddering weirdo. Then the next week during a parody of the sole vice presidential debate he basically did Biden as a combination of Ace Ventura and Jeff Goldblum. And the week after that, when parodying the dueling Biden and Trump townhalls, he played the former VP as a gentle, rambling senile.
But a whole lot of “SNL” viewers really didn’t like any of that, largely because of how little resemblance it had to the Biden people watched during the debates and town halls. So late in October for Carrey’s fourth outing, a parody of the second and final presidential debate, he rolled out a total reboot, playing Biden as an amped-up oldster who, sort of like the real Biden, swaggers awkwardly and drops catch phrases with about 50/50 success. Basically, competent yet sort of ridiculous, serving as something of a surrogate for the audience dealing with the constant raving bad faith, lies and bullying from Trump.
Carrey largely stuck with that version for his next two outings. And now, back after a month of Trump’s attempts to steal the election despite losing to Biden by more than 7 million votes, Carrey…
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