Last week, as it has been for, well, years now, the news was creatively awful. Herschel Walker, a hardline anti-abortion candidate, was accused of once paying for one. Elon Musk may be buying Twitter after all (unless he’s not). Kanye West teamed with far right wacko Candace Owens and wore shirts that read “White Lives Matter.” And our president, though he’s finally been getting a lot of good stuff done, is incredibly old. SNL tried to get it all in this week’s cold open sketch.
SNL doesn’t always have a great track record when it comes to hitting multiple topics in one sketch. But for the second episode of their 48th season, they found an elegant way to do just that. Bowen Yang played the host of a game show called So You Think You Won’t Snap, in which purportedly chill contestants see if they won’t lose their stuff over hearing various news bites.
For instance, Heidi Gardner played a Vermont-based music teacher and “white yoga teacher” who hasn’t touched hooch in 15 years. Yang’s host dared her to guzzle a “Today Show-sized glass of wine” by reciting various factoids about Joe Biden. “Did you know that when Joe Biden was born, we didn’t have highways?” he asked her, adding, “Joe Biden was 53 years old when he got his first home computer.” But it’s a clip of Biden rambling when asked how about his “focus” that sends Gardner over the edge.
Elsewhere, Chloe Fineman played a mom undone by the Herschel Walker news, especially upon learning that the footballer-turned-chaotic Georgia candidate had his best fundraising day ever after it was revealed he may have paid for an abortion with a woman who later had his baby (that he may have asked to have aborted). Kenan Thompson lost it over Elon Musk, while poor newbie Devon Walker struggled to stay cool when hit with multiple terrible Kanye tidbits. And they probably didn’t have time to get to his latest awful news.
You can watch the sketch in the video above.