A modern day heartwarming Christmas classic meets a modern day heartbreaking cultural tragedy when Saturday Night Live spoofed the iconic Love Actually scene where the guy from The Walking Dead with the sexy chunky sweater game (*googles*: Andrew Lincoln) confesses his love to Keira Knightley.
In the scene from the 2003 film that everyone is obsessed with—I myself cry annually along with Emma Thompson and Joni Mitchell—Mark shows up at the door of his recently married friend, Juliet, with a stack of white poster boards with his love letter written on it phrase by phrase. You know the scene. “Because it’s Christmas,” one reads, as he shrugs his shoulder, eventually inducing the nation into a mass swoon as, shivering in the cold, he reveals the clincher: “To me, you are perfect.”
It’s so goddamn charming.
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On this week’s Saturday Night Live, it was Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton’s turn to desperately turn up on the door step of the girl who got away: an elector.
“Let me just say,” one poster reads. “Because it’s Christmas… And at Christmas you tell the truth… I know you’re an elector… And on December 19th… You’re supposed to vote for Donald Trump.”
Then comes Act Two of SNL’s joke.
“But bish…” the next card reads, “He cray…”
The following cards detail his “cray”: a refusal to attend security briefings, provoking China, grievances against his cabinet picks so long that the card unfolds accordion-style.
Clinton then implores her beloved to vote for literally anyone else, not even necessarily her: Tom Hanks, Zendaya, The Rock, a rock… Then she starts quoting The Help: “You is kind, you is smart, you is important,” before admitting that she’s confusing the classic scenes because she’s never seen a movie. (An oldie but goodie: mocking Clinton for being out of touch with culture.)
The whole thing ends with Clinton warning that if the elector doesn’t, Trump “will kill us all.”
How sweet.
In truth, it’s a hilarious holiday-themed punch at Trump’s post-election hubris and Clinton’s own sheepishness.
SNL is notorious for balking at the suggestion that any of their political comedy is partisan, but the last few weeks have been a definitively anti-Trump, Clinton mourning period. The Democratic popular vote winner hasn’t really had her campaign bungles spoofed, but, as this week’s cold open proved, the show is eager to tick-tock every ludicrous and dangerous move the Trump administration has made, going so far as to suggest, albeit cheekily, that he will actually kill us.
Is it delayed guilt for any part the show or NBC played in the rise of Trump, be it by giving him a hosting stint or a cozy platform on The Tonight Show—and still yet, a producer credit on The Apprentice?
Well, because it’s Christmas… and on Christmas you tell the truth… it’s all funny… and admirable even… but we’d have done what Keira Knightley should’ve done if she was sane in that silly movie: shut the door in the kook’s face.
Is now too little, too late?
