Saturday Night Liveâs sometime Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin, took another week off, leaving the show to make its satirical bones elsewhere. Kate McKinnon was a suspiciously Forrest Gump-ian Jeff Sessions, and Weekend Update continued to come hard at the Trump administration, (plus McKinnonâs KellyAnne Conway kept turning up with her feet on all the furniture). But the sharpest political material came in the form of a movie that has never existedâand might never exist.
Impeccably crafted as one of those âbased on a true storyâ movies about a principled, defiant, real-life figure who bucks tradition, fights the odds, and does whatâs right, dammit!, the necessarily untitled movie about the first Republican lawmaker to take a stand against what the sketch presents in stark terms as Trumpâs racist, divisive, compromised, and crooked administration centers on⌠no one. (The drawn-out reveal of just who this brave soul turns out to be stops right below the face.) Meanwhile, the suitably sonorous narrator must interrupt his mellifluous flow for a hastily ADR-ed âTBDâ every time the so-far nonexistent personâs nameâor any specific, courageous action they will takeâis mentioned.
âSo you want to speak out against the president? Arenât you scared?â asks Kyle Mooneyâs congressional colleague, to which the unseen Republican responds⌠something. (âBrave response TBD,â explains the voice-over.) Adoring, worshipful, multi-ethnic crowds gather to stare at an electronic billboard flashing âRallying cry that speaks to all people TBD.â Cheering throngs hold up blank placards with handy green squares so their theoretical heroâs name can be added in later. Glowing reviews (including one from The A.V. Club) extol the virtues of, as our unnamed reviewer puts it âwhoever it ends up being about.â (Rolling Stone makes it clear that it will not be Paul Ryan.) And, in the end, episode host Octavia Spencer shows her granddaughter the statue of the great manâincluding the block of unchiseled granite that will form his head. You know, should a single Republican ever step forward to pose for it.
