After a month’s break, Saturday Night Live returned with a cold open that covered a number of news topics that took place while the show was on vacation, including the controversy surrounding Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GameStop situation, social media censorship and Tom Brady’s return to the Super Bowl.
In the segment called “What’s Still Working?” Kate McKinnon discussed some aspects of society – such as government, the economy, sports and the introduction of vaccines – to see if they “still work.” Her first guest was Rep. Greene (Cicely Strong), who, like the real-life representative from Georgia, began spouting conspiracy theories about the Parkland school shooting and wildfire-causing “ Jewish space lasers. ”
“And when your colleagues found out about these hateful and psychotic things you said, what did they do?” McKinnon asked.
“I was promoted to the education committee,” said Strong’s Greene.
After realizing that the government was no longer working, McKinnon discussed the stock market with Pete Davidson’s new GameStop majority shareholder “Derrick Boner,” who helped establish that the stock market was no longer working either.
Next was social media – Alex Moffat’s Mark Zuckerberg and Mikey Day’s Jack Dorsey – and then the introduction of vaccines, where McKinnon wondered how a country that vaccinated only a small percentage of its population could have one available to OJ Simpson ( Kenan Thompson).
Teachers can’t get the vaccine, but you can? People with long-term lung disease, but you? Asked McKinnon. “So among the first 3 percent of all Americans who got the vaccine, was OJ Simpson?”
“Hey, charged guilty,” Thompson’s Simpson joked.
To conclude the segment, McKinnon welcomed the only thing that seems to work, Tom Brady (played by SNL John Krasinski), who will return to the Super Bowl next weekend, this time as the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“You still work. You should win football games and you just keep winning football games. You might be the only one in America that still works,” said McKinnon. “So I guess everyone should be rooting for you, right?”
“Hardly anyone,” said Brady of Krasinski.