“I’m a keg-is-half-full kind of guy.”
The cast of Saturday Night Live “busted their butts” for the 44th season premiere this week, bringing in Matt Damon to play Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in a cold open for the ages.
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The sketch was set in the hearing room during Thursday’s testimonies over allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford while the pair were teenagers. It opened with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversaw the hearing, returning from lunch to hear Kavanaugh speak about the accusations.
To the audience’s surprise, a very outraged Kavanaugh — played by Damon — entered the room.
Damon, as Kavanaugh, began by delivering an opening statement, which, he pointed out, he’d showed to “almost no one” — not his family, not his friends, “not even P.J. or Tobin or Squi.”
“This is my speech,” Damon’s Kavanaugh yelled. “There are others like it but it is mine. I wrote it myself last night while screaming into an empty bag of Doritos.”
He went on to say that the reason he was testifying was because of a sham orchestrated by the Clintons, George Soros, Kathy Griffin, the “gay mafia,” and “Ronan Sinatra.”
“Now, I’m usually an optimist. I’m a keg-is-half-full kind of guy,” Damon, as Kavanaugh, said. “But what I’ve seen from the monsters on this committee makes me want to puke — and not from beer.”
“Dr. Ford has no evidence. None. Meanwhile, I’ve got these,” he continued, bringing himself to (fake) tears. “I’ve got these calendars.”
“These beautiful, creepy calendars. About lifting weights with P.J. and Squi and Donkey Dong Doug,” he continued, mocking Kavanaugh’s own teary soliloquy about his high school calendars.
“But you don’t care about Squi or Donkey Dong Doug, do ya? You just want to humiliate me in front of my wife, my parents, and Alyssa frickin’ Milano.”
That, of course, was a reference to the actor and #MeToo activist who attended Thursday’s hearing, and who was played by a cardboard cutout of herself during Saturday Night Live’s rendition.
Committee members, played by SNL cast members, then began to ask Kavanaugh questions. But as they did during the real hearing, Republicans asked Arizona sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, played by cast member Aidy Bryant, to handle the questioning for them.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to hide behind the female prosecutor who we hired as a human shield,” cast member Beck Bennett, playing Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, said, introducing Bryant’s character.
Bryant, as Mitchell, proceeded to introduce herself, taking a seat at what she referred to as “this weird little baby desk that they set up for me.”
“Although everyone will constantly be referring to me as female prosecutor, you can really just call me straight-up prosecutor, OK,” she said.
Grassley, played by SNL cast member Alex Moffat, then cut her off, moving on to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, played by former SNL cast member Rachel Dratch, who began to ask Kavanaugh about his high school drinking habits.
“Now, Judge Kavanaugh would you say in high school that you were a frequent drinker?” she asked.
“Look, I like beer. OK? I like beer. Boys like beer. Girls like beer. I like beer. I like beer,” Damon, as Kavanaugh, responded.
“Did you ever drink too many beers?” Dratch’s Klobuchar then asked.
“You mean, was I cool? Yeah.”
Eventually, the sketch moved on to Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, played by SNL cast member Chris Redd, who defiantly declined to say words and instead shows a facial expression he called “The Booker Look.”
Later on, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, played by SNL cast member Pete Davidson, asked a series of questions about Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook entries.
“Judge Kavanaugh, what is boofing?” he asked.
“It’s flatulence — I was 16,” Damon’s Kavanaugh replied.
“Could you use boof in a sentence?” Davidson’s Whitehouse followed up.
“Sure. I passed out from drinking, then I boofed so loud I woke myself up.”
Davidson, as Whitehouse, and Damon, as Kavanaugh, continued to go back and forth, with the mock senator asking the mock judge about terms like “devil’s triangle,” “Eskimo brothers,” and “Eiffel Tower with Dougie One Nut.”
“Judge Kavanaugh, my staff just googled all these terms and they’re clearly referring to sex,” Davidson’s Whitehouse said.
“Well that’s impossible because I didn’t have sex for many, many, many years. Many years,” Damon’s Kavanaugh replied, referencing the real judge’s virginity claims.
Before all was said and done, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, played by SNL cast member Kate McKinnon, got a chance to speak.
“This is hell. That’s what it is,” McKinnon, as an excellently made-up Graham, grumbled.
“Is this hell to you, Judge Kavanaugh?”
“Imagine this man in handcuffs like Bill Cosby!”
In closing, Cecily Strong, playing the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, asked SNL’s Kavanaugh if he really had the “right demeanor and temperament to be a Supreme Court justice.”
“I WENT TO YALE,” Kavanaugh yells.
“I worked my butt off to get here. I busted my buns. I lifted weights. Every day with Tobin, P.J., and Squi and Donkey Dong Doug,” he replied. “And yeah, we had a couple thousand beers along the way, especially my good friend Mark Judge who can’t remember huge chunks of his life but is somehow my key witness. So am I angry, you’re damn right.”
It’s (finally) Saturday night!