Given the propensity of the “SNL” writing staff to use the cold open sketch to lampoon the political happenings of the week, there was really just only one realistic choice for that treatment this week: Donald Trump’s congressional impeachment hearings. And boy was this one quite a doozy.
The sketch took the hearings and, uh, very loosely adapted them into a “Days of Our Lives” parody, dubbed “Days of Our Impeachment.” The opening title crawl for the parody declared that the show was doing this for the sake of those in the media who were dragged this week for having complained that the hearings “lacked pizzazz” or whatever.
The cold open brought out what felt like the entire “SNL” cast, with a bonus in the form of Jon Hamm making a surprise appearance as ambassador Bill Taylor.
But seriously, this sketch had a shockingly large group of performers involved. We had Alex Moffat as House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, Cecily Strong as ousted Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Kate McKinnon as Rudy Giuliani, Beck Bennett as Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kyle Mooney as Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Melissa Villasenor as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Heidi Gardner as a random woman who stood in the background making shocked exclamations whenever something surprising happened.
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) November 17, 2019
And for good measure, we had Pete Davidson as former Stormy Daniels Michael Avenatti, who showed up to try to remind everyone of Trump’s affairs, and Kenan Thompson as Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, who showed up to try to defend himself after he was suspended by the NFL for the season this week for hitting an opposing player with his helmet.
To give you an idea of how the sketch went, I’ll describe the part where Villasenor came on stage as AOC.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Hamm’s Bill Taylor said flirtatiously.
“And I didn’t expect you to be such a low-key daddy,” AOC replied. Then the two of them made out.
No Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump this week, but obviously Trump’s tweets about the hearing did come up. “SNL” mocked the whole furor over the tweets, which were widely interpreted on social media as witness intimidation.