‘SNL’’s cold open depicts Loughlin, Avenatti, Assange as cellmates
IN A rare turn (well, at least rare these days), “Saturday Night Live” took a break this weekend from hammering President Donald Trump in its cold open. Instead, the show turned its eye to the series of recent, headline-garnering arrests that has resulted in Mad Lib-esque news stories about random celebrities and celebrity-adjacent people (such as, for example, Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky in ‘Full House’, being arrested in the college admissions scandal).
Turns out Loughlin (brilliantly portrayed by Kate McKinnon) is faring pretty well - it doesn’t hurt that she keeps bribing her way to success - but she has some interesting cellmates.
The sketch kicks with off an MSNBC title screen and a voiceover proclaiming, “Now that the Mueller report turned out to be a big, fat zero, we’re back to prison shows. Right now, it’s ‘Lockup.’”
It begins innocuously enough, with Chris Redd walking into his new cell for “a little armed robbery.” He quickly meets two other inmates: an overly aggressive Kyle Mooney (who is in for assault) and a calm but terrifying Kenan Thompson (who “stabbed my neighbour to death and ate his fingers so they could not ID the body.”)
Craziest lawyer
When someone calls Thompson’s crime insane, McKinnon’s Loughlin appears.
“You think that’s insane? I paid 500 grand to get my daughter into USC,” she says. “I paid 500 grand to a women’s crew coach to say my daughter was good at rowing. I’m loco.”
“Man, you won’t survive in here more than a week,” Thompson’s finger-eating murderer tells her.
“Oh really?” McKinnon’s Loughlin laughs. “I have done 68 Hallmark movies. I’ve seen hell, man. And in half those Hallmark movies, I marry Santa’s son, so I have lost all sense of reality. I’m going to take your heart, and I’m going to cut it out.” (Plus she bought her way into the Nation of Islam for 100 grand. With another 100 grand to get them to stop calling her the “White Devil.”)
“Damn, yo, I think being on a sitcom for 12 years drove her crazy,” another inmate remarks.
In walks Pete Davidson as Michael Avenatti saying in his deep voice, “Did somebody say ‘crazy’? ... I’m accused of crimes you can’t even conceive of, like blackmailing a sneaker company and stealing taxes from a coffee shop to fund a racecar team. And I’m so shady that a porn star once said she needed to distance herself from me. And you know what the worst part is? I might still run for president. AvenattiBaldwin, 2020.”
Even the show’s Loughlin decides to give it up at this point, admitting that the incarcerated lawyer is indeed the craziest.
Not to be outdone, however, Julian Assange (played by a moonlighting Michael Keaton) pops in to say, “Is he, though?”
“Oh my God, is that Julian Assange?” Redd says.
“Oh, that makes sense. I was going to say Santa’s back on crack,” Thompson’s lovable cannibal responds.
Keaton’s Assange begins boasting, calling himself the “architect of anarchy,” “king of chaos” and “scourge of the cleaning staff at the Ecuadoran embassy.” But Mooney’s convict wants to start trouble anyway, getting in his face, saying “he doesn’t look so tough.”
“You want to throw down, amigo?” asks the shows Assange. “You want to? I hope you’re proud of every single photo in your iCloud, because boom, all your ding-dong pics just went on the internet. Oh, and you remember that ‘Notes’ folder you had? What was it called? ‘Ideas for Shark Tank’?”
“How’d you know about that?” Mooney’s inmate wonders. “My password has letters and numbers!”
Assange then makes his case: “Y’all wanna know how crazy I am? Here’s how crazy I am. I’m wanted in the US and Sweden. I’m from Australia. I live in London in Ecuador. You try figuring that one out. Yeah, you cheat your schools, and you rob your companies. That’s cute. It is. I’ve attacked the US military ... because I’m an actual James Bond supervillain, and I’m one step away from destroying the godd--- moon. So you wanna get nuts, so let’s get nuts.”
Added the show’s Assange,” “Is there a bathroom around here? Because I gotta take a Wikileak.”
That’s when they see Tekashi 6ix9ine (Melissa Villaseor) standing in the corner with wild rainbow hair, waving his arms around and telling everyone he’s in for “robbery and gun stuff. It’s the best!”
“Well, we may both regret this. But Tekashi, do you need a lawyer?” Davidson’s Avenatti asks, adding “See, prison’s fun!”
For once, he’s not wrong. In “SNL’s” hands, it kind of is. — The Washington Post