"SNL" Parodies Michigan Hearings in Cold Open

Well, Twitter called it. On Wednesday, at a hearing at the Michigan state legislature on the recent election, a witness called by Rudy Giuliani adopted an argumentative tone that seemed on the verge of self-parody. More than a few people online compared the witness’s manner of speaking to Cecily Strong’s recurring Saturday Night Live character, the Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With.

So when it came time for this week’s SNL to riff on the legislative hearing in question — which the show did in its cold open — it wasn’t shocking that Strong effectively reprised her character, albeit wearing what looked like a massive blonde wig.

Also in the mix? Kate McKinnon as a farting Rudy Giuliani and Pete Davidson as a fossils-obsessed would-be kidnapper, among others. The end result made for one of the better political cold opens the show has done in a while — in part because the event parodied meant the show could bring in a number of characters without any wearing out their welcome, and in part because the bits within the sketch were, by and large, very funny.

Can one sketch successfully encompass incisive satire and fart jokes? This one certainly gives it a shot, and largely pulls it off.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…