Go on and live your best life, Elizabeth Warren. The senator and former Democratic front-runner—the woman with a plan for that; the reason Mike Bloomberg wakes up every night screaming—lit this weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open on fire.
If candid shots of Hillary Clinton walking in the woods were a balm after the 2016 election, so too was seeing Warren herself on SNL, landing zinger after zinger. When Kate McKinnon’s Laura Ingraham asked her about mopping the floor with Bloomberg at the debate, the fake Fox News host showed Warren that viral picture of good boy Bailey sneaking a burrito shortly after she dropped out of the race. “So, were you the dog or the burrito?” asked McKinnon. Warren grinned and answered, “I was the dog.” Then, when asked whether Biden or Sanders will win her much sought-after endorsement, Warren replied, “Maybe I’ll just pull a New York Times and endorse them both.”
If the visual of Warren recuperating from a hard-fought run by drag-racing Subarus and avoiding Twitter wasn’t joyful enough, we then got a quick change from McKinnon—and the gorgeous vision of two Warrens in bright blue, sensible blazers holding each other up to fight another day.
The rest of SNL this week was largely given over to the literal risk and existential dread of COVID-19. First there was the cold open’s Fox News report about “the liberal fan fiction that is the coronavirus.” The global health crisis is an urban legend, McKinnon’s Ingraham swore. A hoax. “A gay campaign against President Trump.” Enough with the cruise quarantines and the rising tide of positive tests! She demanded her viewers refocus on the real wolves at the door: Women who keep their maiden names! Montessori schools! Mexican teenagers rehearsing their dance performances for their upcoming quinceaneras in public parks!
If there’s one person who doesn’t appear to be suffering from respiratory breakdown, it’s this week’s host, Daniel Craig. The strapping man in black, his button-down fly glinting under Studio 8H’s lights, had the rather thankless task of hosting the show despite No Time to Die, his big Bond movie, getting shoved from its release date because of villainous COVID-19. Later, in “Weekend Update,” Colin Jost suggested that the film’s studio should’ve stuck to its original April release, and simply tweaked the movie poster so that the title would read Time To Die. In what was better digital short than monologue material, Craig offered up a “sneak peek” from the studio to whet the audience’s appetite. It actually wouldn’t be awful to see Bond loose at a craps table, gulping down a vodka and Red Bull and demanding the crowd call him Simba.
The best skit of the night was “The Sands of Modesto,” a soap opera forced to reckon with sexy shenanigans in the era of social distancing. Kenan Thompson’s makeup artist applied gloss with a selfie stick. Doors were opened with tissues, phones answered only after being doused with Lysol. Long-lost daughters were caressed with elbows, while bitches applied hand sanitizer before throwing down. When Craig’s lothario showed up to smolder and swoon, he kissed McKinnon through a glass plane and then swathed her in Saran wrap before going in for a dry hump.
Just in case anyone got the idea that Coronavirus was hilarious, Debbie Downer was also on hand to remind us of our likely fates. (Admittedly, when Rachel Dratch first removed her mask in that sketch, my mind went right to her Amy Klobuchar impression; I hoped Pete Buttigieg would show up as her wedding date.)
“Weekend Update” did go back to politics, bemoaning the dinosaurs left in the Democratic primary. Get ready for the first debates that have to be moderated by a Jamaican nurse, as well as the only debates to air on the Turner Classics Movies channel. You want a real one for President? Colin Jost suggested asking Trump, Biden, and Sanders to do the next debate on that cruise ship; whichever one of them can beat coronavirus becomes our next President. (Reader, the person who could’ve done that dropped out last week.) Jost was also right that the clip of Trump bragging at the Center for Disease Control that he has a natural ability to defeat coronavirus is proof that we’re all going to die. Maybe It’s Brain Disease.