Saturday Night Live‘s cold open introduced Mikey Day’s Attorney General Merrick Garland in a comic book-esque way.
“He means business. First, he hunted down the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and made them pay,” the intro began. “Now, he’s searching for classified documents, and he’s coming for everyone: Democrat, Republican or whatever Trump is now. You don’t want to be in his crosshairs: Attorney General Merrick Garland.”
The five-minute segment during the Jan. 28 episode featured appearances from seemingly fictional FBI agents played by Kenan Thompson, Ego Nwodim and Bowen Yang, who were spearheading the classified documents search in Mike Pence, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama’s homes.
Thompson’s special agent Conrad Nance kicked off the findings by saying he visited Pence’s Indiana home, and the former vice president “needed a friend.”
“When he opened the door, he said, ‘You came,’ with a big smile, and he offered to make us pancakes,” he said. “Our search turned up no additional classified documents. However, in an envelope marked ‘tax stuff,’ we discovered photographs of the country/pop singer, Shania Twain, cut out from several magazines.”
Thompson continued by saying that when he tried to leave, Pence asked him how he could leave when he’s “it” and tagged him on the shoulder before running away, which the SNL castmember insisted he did not play with him. “I will say, though, that if you know Mr. Pence, if you’re friends with him, check on your people,” he concluded. “That’s all.”
Day’s Garland then kicked things over to Nwodim’s special agent Casey Combs, who had searched Vice President Harris’ house for documents and didn’t find anything. “Joe Biden won’t even give this woman a pen,” Nwodim said. “Do you think she has classified documents? Please.”
Yang’s special agent Derek K ended the cold open, sharing his excitement about being inside Obama’s house.
“Mr. Obama opened the door and said, ‘Are you selling girl scout cookies?’ which had us all totally cracking up and like completely dead,” Yang began. “We then entered the home and were shown a number of things, including 175 letters from Lin-Manuel Miranda, begging the president to attend a performance of Hamilton.”
When the former president was asked about the classified documents, he said that he was “out of the government game and doing the Hollywood thing,” before he went on to ignore a call from Beyoncé.
Before the cold open ended, Thompson returned to the stage with Day’s Garland to ask about their next assignment.
“Hey boss, when we done playing with these little papers, we gonna head down to Memphis and make sure justice is served there too, right?” To which Day said, “I sincerely hope so.” Thompson replied, “Yeah, you damn right. Just making sure.”
Michael B. Jordan hosted the episode, with Lil Baby as the musical guest.
