Last week, America got the answer to the question: Who would play the presidential and vice-presidential nominees this season on “Saturday Night Live”?
This week, another pressing question arose: How quickly would “S.N.L.” reference Senator JD Vance’s quote, “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check” from Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate?
The answer came late in an opening sketch that parodied the debate, and which featured most of the same players from last weekend’s opening, including Bowen Yang as Vance and Jim Gaffigan as Gov. Tim Walz.
Welcomed to their podiums by Heidi Gardner (as Norah O’Donnell) and Chloe Fineman (as Margaret Brennan), the candidates each made a brief opening statement.
Yang, observing that he wanted to make an appeal to women voters, said, “I understand that both moderators tonight are mothers, and I like that.”
Gaffigan was observed scribbling furiously on a notepad and explained that he was not taking notes for the debate. “I got to grade these papers,” he said. “Got a stack of midterms.”
The two candidates also largely avoided answering a delicate question about war in the Middle East. Yang replied that it was a question “that deserves an answer because it’s important, and it’s a question that you asked of me tonight.”
Gaffigan responded, “I don’t know the answer so I’m going to just say the word ‘fundamental’ a bunch. Because debating is 30 percent fun and 70 percent ‘da mental.’”
The sketch also showed Maya Rudolph (as Vice President Kamala Harris) and Andy Samberg (as Douglas Emhoff) watching television at home, responding uneasily to Gaffigan’s debate performance.
As Rudolph poured herself a glass of wine and wondered if she should have chosen Josh, Samberg asked, “Josh Shapiro?”
“No,” Rudolph answered, “Josh cabernet.”
The two were visited by Dana Carvey, reprising his role as President Biden, who also chided Gaffigan for his responses at the debate.
Carvey argued that Gaffigan should have been emphasizing the current administration’s successes: “Gas prices, down,” Carvey said. “Border crossings, down. Emmys for ‘The Bear,’ down. Everybody get down. Tonight.”
Back on the debate stage, Yang fielded a question about whether he would accept the results of the 2024 election.
“It’s rich to say that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” Yang answered, “when he peacefully gave over power. We said no fact-checking. And willingly — don’t check that — got on his plane without incident — don’t — right after saving Obamacare — don’t check that.”
When Gaffigan asked Yang who won the 2020 election and Yang did not give a straight answer, Rudolph and Samberg celebrated at home.
“Honey, we did it,” Samberg said. “We got the sound bite. What are the pollsters saying?”
Rudolph replied, “This is a huge victory. It made no difference.”
Opening monologue of the week
This weekend’s show was hosted by Nate Bargatze, the laid back Nashville comedian, making his second appearance as an “S.N.L.” emcee. In his opening monologue, Bargatze performed a short standup routine in which he joked about having attended community college, which he described as “college when they’re like, you’re probably staying in your community, so we’re going to show you the ropes around town, give you just a lay of the land.”
Bargatze said that he didn’t know what a raspberry was until he was 40 and described himself as a lover of processed food. (“I’m a farm-factory-table guy,” he said.) He also told a story about ordering fast food deliveries from McDonald’s and Dairy Queen, and fearing that the two delivery drivers would show up at his house simultaneously. “I need one of you to get in a wreck,” Bargatze said. “It happens.”
History lesson sequel of the week
One of the most successful sketches from Bargatze’s first hosting appearance — indeed, from all of last season — was one in which he played George Washington, making a bold but strange pronouncement to his Revolutionary War troops that he yearned to create a nation with a highly irregular system of weights and measurements.
Naturally, a new sketch from this weekend saw Bargatze play Washington again, this time leading his soldiers across the Delaware River as he proclaimed, “I dream that one day our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it a ‘dozen.’”
A soldier played by Yang asked what other numbers would have their own words: “None,” Bargatze replied. “Only 12 shall have its own word, because we are free men.”
Later another soldier played by Kenan Thompson asked, “Sir, do you mean the slaves will be freed after this war?” Bargatze paused and answered, “After a war.”
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the 2024 presidential race and the new jobs report announced earlier in the week.
Jost began:
Well, guys, the election is exactly 30 days away. Just think: In only 30 days, this whole nightmare will be nowhere close to over. Earlier tonight, Donald Trump held a rally at the site of his first assassination attempt, which I have to admit is very brave of him. Though it was interesting that right before Trump spoke, he sent JD Vance out in a long red tie and a blond wig. Elon Musk, seen here trying to jump to Mars, joined Trump onstage at the rally tonight, which may be the last time Trump and Musk will be together, until they co-host our Christmas show.
Che continued:
It was reported that last month, the U.S. added 245,000 new jobs. Unfortunately, they were all Diddy Accuser. It was announced that Sean “P Diddy” Combs’s sex trafficking case has been assigned to a new judge, one that Diddy hopes is cool with rapes.
After hours sketches of the week
If you were watching “S.N.L.” last season, you surely remember a notorious sketch in which Heidi Gardner simply could not keep a straight face in front of the host Ryan Gosling and cast member Mikey Day, who were made up to look like Beavis and Butt-head. Well, this week, it was Gardner’s opportunity to get revenge in a sketch where she played a restaurant patron trying as sloppily as possible to complete a hamburger-eating challenge and Day, as a fellow customer, struggled mightily not burst out laughing while she did so.
If that didn’t cause you to empty the contents of your stomach, we’ll point out that this episode also had a new digital short from the Lonely Island — the first on “S.N.L.” in several years — but one that’s so inherently vulgar we can’t do much more than link to it here. Don’t say you weren’t (very ambiguously) warned.
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