Saturday Night Live heard you like Democratic primary candidate cold opens, so they put some Democratic primary candidates on top of some more Democratic primary candidates and shoved them all in a cold open. The sketch hinges on the terrible reality that Mike Pence (Beck Bennett) has been put in charge of the coronavirus task force, despite the fact that, as Bennett puts it, he rejects science because it tests his faith, “like dinosaur bones or Timothée Chalamet. Mmmph.†Kenan Thompson plays Ben Carson, who shows off a diagram of the coronavirus, and that diagram is very much a full-color print-out of Stitch. Then, every Democratic nominee hopeful pops up one by one to spin the public health crisis into a campaign talking point. Mike Bloomberg (Fred Armisen) emerges from the press pool because he does still own an eponymous news outlet, and Liz Warren (Kate McKinnon) is there to bully him. Pete Buttigieg (Colin Jost) is there too, and so is his own personal bully, Amy Klobuchar (Rachel Dratch), who tells him to “stay outta my center lane, bitch!†Larry David is back as Bernie, who outs Pete as a hand cougher and uses those Purell bottle stats to make some jokes about the 99 percent and the one percent. The highlight, though, is John Mulaney as Joe Biden, fresh off his big win in “South Cracker Barrel.†He goes on a rant about spending time with Nelson Mandela “Green Book style†in “the year Nineteen-Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,†or in other words, a bunch of silly word soup floating in the middle of a political impression stew.
SNL’s Coronavirus Cold Open Is Full of Viral Moments
