A Supreme Court justice, the Secretary of Defense, and the FBI Director walk into a bar….
That was the premise of Saturday Night Live‘s Cold Open this weekend, as three-time host Matt Damon reprised his September 2018 take on Brett Kavanaugh opposite Colin Jost‘s Pete Hegseth and returning guest Aziz Ansari‘s Kash Patel.
Damon first played Kavanaugh in SNL‘s Season 44 opener, on the heels of the then-SCOTUS nominee’s infamous “I like beer” testimony during his confirmation hearings. Ansari meanwhile served up SNL’s first send-up of Patel just last week, again opposite Jost’s Hegseth.
In this week’s Cold Open, Hegseth rolls into a D.C. watering hole, “fist-bumps” the jukebox off, and orders his “usual “from Kenan Thompson’s bartender: “a shot of beer with a pint of whiskey dropped into it”—or, a “Reverse Irish Car Bomb.”
As Hegseth laments that no one on Trump’s team likes drinking as much as he does, who bellows from the back of the bar but Damon’s Kavanaugh: “Order in the court!” And his order? “I find in favor of six Bud Lights and three shots of Jame-O!”
Kav tells Hegseth he had a feeling he also was at the bar, since “I saw all the women covering their drinks. It’s fun we share that.”
The two get to effusing about how they are both “kicking ass right now” at their respective jobs. “Can you believe I started a war?” marvels Heg. Kav counters, “Can you believe I ended abortion? Your body, my choice!”
The justice asks how the war in Iran is going, and SecDef insists it’s “totally chill. Like me at a DWI checkpoint, it completely blew over.”
Kavanaugh gets serious for a moment, suggesting that “the real war… is the war against male loneliness.” He then gets to missing his old drinking buddies, including “Gang-bang Greg” and “Dr. William Cosby,” saying, “I wIsh more people in this administration could really hang.”
Enter Anzari’s Patel, asking, “Does this bar take Kash?!,” followed by high-fives all around.
“Check this out: I made my own FBI bourbon with my own name on it,” Patel excitedly tells Hegseth and Kavanaugh, remarking, “Somehow this is a real thing, that is real.”
The Supreme Court justice then pulls the guys close to share “top-secret” news….
“We’re gonna let Trump do a third term,” he giddily reveals. When Hegseth lightly questions the legality, Kav explains, “Trump found the original Constitution and at the end he wrote, ‘Syke!'”
Thompson’s barkeep shares some news of his own, and it’s bad—it’s last call.
Hegseth gives it some thought, then says, “I’ll drink a whiskey drink.” Kav? “I’ll drink a vodka drink.” And for Patel: “I’ll drink a lager drink.” At which point they join together for a few bars of “Tubthumping,” before saying, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
Watch the full Cold Open at the top of this post.
