It’s never great when Saturday Night Live’s cold open for the week isn’t too far off from reality. This week found host Benedict Cumberbatch in a Renaissance Faire wig for a sketch set in 13th-century England—where the show suggests Justice Samuel Alito drew inspiration for his medieval beliefs on abortion as the Supreme Court aims to overturn Roe vs. Wade. (In fact, Alito’s inspiration comes from a 17th-century jurist. So progressive!)
In the cold open, Cumberbatch told his cloaked-and-be-wigged friends that while cleaning the sewer, a genius thought occurred to him about abortion: “Don’t you think we ought to make a law against it?” His friends’ replies: “You mean like the law we have against pointy shoes?”
“Or the law that if you hunt deer in the royal forest, they cut off your genitals?”
ADVERTISEMENT
Surely, this law—like those wonderful acts of legislation—will stand the test of time. But perhaps abortion shouldn’t be illegal in the whole country; why not let individual fiefdoms decide so that various rich men’s concubines can still get abortions when necessary in “Old York City”?
You get the idea, right?
Things started to look up when Cecily Strong showed up on screen to burst the men’s bubble with a few questions as someone almost of child bearing age (12 years old). Strong did, after all, give the show one of Weekend Update’s most recent viral moments with her bizarrely clever “clown abortion” routine. In this case, however, appearances from both Strong and Kate McKinnon—here playing a prophetic witch who foresees that the future is a chaotic hell where “all the power comes from a place called Florida”—fell flat.
“And if you think our customs are weird,” McKinnon added as a throwaway joke, “you should watch the trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.”
As for our doomed future? The encouragement feels similarly empty. “Listen, I know it doesn’t sound great,” McKinnon said. “But I guess no matter how many choices they take away from women, we’ve always got the choice to keep fighting!” Yay?
