By Andrew Sanford | TV | September 1, 2022 |
By Andrew Sanford | TV | September 1, 2022 |
Nothing bad can happen when two former Saturday Night Live writers get together! No. Wait. I meant the opposite of that.
But nothing bad happened in this case! Bob Odenkirk and Al Franken teamed up on a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel: Live (that Franken hosted) to poke fun at the January 6th hearings. The result is dry and hilarious (primarily because of the aforementioned dryness).
The setup is simple, Odenkirk plays a Lieutenant who was with the former president on the day of the insurrection, while Franken plays someone on the committee who is questioning him. It’s a position Franken may have actually been in, had he not resigned at the behest of his Democratic colleagues when faced with accusations of inappropriate behavior (there’s just no way to talk about Franken in this instance without bringing that up).
Franken brings a smug hilarity to the sketch, but Odenkirk makes it sing. His pained, believable delivery is fantastic. Even when detailing a plan to trick Mike Pence into running into a painted tunnel ala a road runner cartoon, he is stone cold. The lines he is given may not be that funny were it not for Bob’s spectacular delivery.
This bit was also a stark reminder that there are more January 6th hearings to come. With the raid of Trump’s Florida shit box still dominating the news cycle, it’s easy to forget that the dude is in trouble for a bunch of other stuff too. It’s almost like a race to see who can drop the hammer on him first. My money is on something we haven’t even heard about yet. Like, we’re just days away from learning that Trump gave Mar-A-Lago visitors temporary tattoos of the country’s nuclear codes.