Remember how it was painfully obvious that this week’s SNL Cold Open should star John Goodman as William Barr? (Although we had other ideas as well.) Well, apparently that didn’t happen. SNL can’t move mountains! So the Adam Sandler-hosted episode kicked off with a tease for Barr, only to lean into another joke: He didn’t show up for Thursday’s Senate hearing, thereby maybe setting himself up for contempt of court. So instead, let’s do some Game of Thrones/Avengers jokes.
Yes, the Cold Open brought last weekend’s — and, frankly, this weekend’s, and probably next weekend’s — two most powerful cultural forces together for an old fashioned game of Family Feud. On one side, you had Alex Moffat’s Thor, Beck Bennett’s Thanos, Ego Wrodim’s Black Panther badass Okoye, and Leslie Jones as basically Leslie Jones with a Groot hat. On the other: Kate McKinnon’s Brienne, Mikey Day’s Tormund, Cecily Strong’s Melisandre, and Kyle Mooney as a reliably eerie Bran.
Introductions ate up most of the time, so there was only room for one round of the Feud. The question was about what’s on their bucket lists, to which Brienne said “Jaime Lannister, one night, three hands, no rules.” The stoic and laser-focsued Okoye admitted she’d like to watch Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club. Arya (Melissa Villeseñor) swooped in by the end to win the game by saying her bucket list pick was something she already achieved: getting some on the last episode of Game of Thrones.
As usual, Keenan Thompson was the MVP, scoring most of the best lines as Steve Harvey. He called Chris Hemsworth’s Thor “Kangaroo Jacked,” called Okoye “Okra,” and said of Bran that “somebody’s got some good weed.”
