Saturday Night Live didn’t waste any time before touching on some of the week’s biggest news — Kanye “Ye” West, Herschel Walker and The Super Mario Bros. movie.
The cold open featured a game show called So You Think You Won’t Snap, where host Bowen Yang recited news individually to four SNL castmembers to see how long it would take them to “snap” from the news.
Heidi Gardner went first, snapping after watching a clip of President Joe Biden talking about his mental acuity. Up next was Chloe Fineman, who was prompted with questions about Walker, referencing the announcement that he supports a total abortion ban. Shortly after, a woman came forward, saying Walker urged her to have two abortions.
“Well, I bet that will come back and bite him in the butt,” Fineman told Yang, to which he replied, “That actually led to his best fundraising day ever.”
Yang told Fineman, who was playing a mom in the cold open, that 86% of children want to be influencers, which began triggering her a bit. When Yang showed her a clip from The Super Mario Bros. trailer and told her Chris Pratt was voicing the video game character, she snapped.
“He’s supposed to be Italian!” Fineman said.
Devon Walker, a new featured player on SNL this season, closed out the cold open game show sketch. Yang prompted Walker with the news that 401Ks were down 20% and the Mars company announced the orange M&M now has anxiety, before bringing up West.
“This week Kanye West called Lizzo fans ‘demonic,’” Yang told Walker. “OK. Bringing up Kanye, All right,” Walker responded. When Yang pointed out that West decided to open a private school and has never read a book in his life, Walker got visibly more upset, asking Yang if they could change the topic.
“Let’s switch gears to Tucker Carlson,” Yang said. “Last night Tucker Carlson sat down with Kanye West,” he said, with Walker pleading, “Hey, man, have a heart, come on?!”
Yang responded, “You’re right. You’re right. Let’s go to the world of fashion — with a photo of Kanye,” he said, showing the photo of West and Candace Owens in “White Lives Matters” shirts. Walker snapped.
Brendan Gleeson’s opening monologue featured a surprise appearance from his In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin co-star Colin Farrell, who also guest-starred in other sketches throughout the night. In the monologue, Gleeson addressed how people may recognize him from his long career but not know where they’ve seen him.
Following the opening monologue, Yang, Mikey Day and Andrew Dismukes transformed into the Try Guys for a sketch poking fun at the cheating scandal that they faced recently.
Ego Nwodim asked the Try Guys, visibly confused, “Your friend had a side chick, and you fired him?”
Watch the SNL cold open below.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
