SNL: Will Heath/NBC(NEW YORK) — Saturday Night Live took aim at the coronavirus, now dubbed CoViD-19, in its cold open sketch this weekend, managing to not only spoof Vice President Mike Pence, who has been put in charge of managing the outbreak, but the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls as well.
The sketch opened with Pence — played by SNL‘s Beck Bennett — updating the press in a White House briefing, even though he doesn’t “believe in science.”
“I have to admit, this disease has been quite the test of my faith,” remarked Bennett, “just like dinosaur bones or Timothee Chalamet.”
“It’s gonna be bad,” warned Kenan Thompson’s Dr. Ben Carson using a picture of Stitch — from the animated feature Lilo & Stitch — to describe what the disease looked like. “He’s a nasty little thing,” said Carson. “He’ll bite you.”
When Bennett’s Pence opened the room to questions, Fred Armisen, as former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, asked, “Doesn’t it seem like a good time to have a president that’s competent and capable, even if that candidate lacks charisma or ability to connect with human beings?”
One-by-one, Pence was interrupted by Kate McKinnon’s Senator Elizabeth Warren, Larry David as Senator Bernie Sanders, Colin Jost as South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, Rachel Dratch as Senator Amy Klobuchar and guest host John Mulaney as former vice president Joe Biden, each using Pence’s briefing as a last-effort pitch for their respective campaigns.
At one point, Jost’s Buttigieg notes that he was the only candidate who wouldn’t lose to CoViD-19 because the others “are all in high-risk demographics.”
“You want to talk high risk?” countered Sanders. “I have it on good authority that Pete Buttigieg is a hand-cougher. America doesn’t need a hand-cougher. They need a president who is old enough to know Typhoid Mary.”
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.