2017

After building the hype with some wonderful, weird promos, Melissa McCarthy returned as Sean Spicer for Saturday Night Live, and she did not disappoint.

In the skit, she reads out her bank routing number, hides in the bushes, illustrates the Russia investigation using matryoshka dolls, and, of course, throws props and insults at the press corps. The skit culminates with Spicey on a soul-searching roadtrip to find Trump, after the journalists’ questions hit too close to home.

“I am being straight with you!” Spicey tells the press corps. “I’m telling you exactly what President Trump told me.”

“But what if he’s lying to you?” asks one of the journalists.

“He…B-but he wouldn’t do that,” sputters McCarthy, choking up. “He’s my friend.”

While I didn’t love the skit’s treatment of mental health (The “he’s crazy” jokes aren’t funny!), I’ll never get tired of McCarthy’s amazing physical comedy. She just embodies Spicer’s smallness, frustration, and bluster with every line and gesture.

However, the Cold Open featuring Alec Baldwin as Trump and Michael Che as Lester Holt, took home the prize for this night’s most brutal skit. Trump can’t remember Holt’s name, a chipper Paul Ryan comes in to serve Trump ice cream, and Baldwin’s Trump says, “Do you think I care about optics? I sit on every chair like it’s a toilet.”

However, the skit really gets really…let’s say, honest when they hit the topic of James Comey. Che’s Holt says, “Your staff has been insisting all week that you didn’t fire him because of his Russian investigation.”

“No, I did,” says Baldwin’s Trump.

“Wait, what?”

“I fired him because of Russia. I thought, ‘He’s investigating Russia, I don’t like that, I should fire him’.”

“And you’re just admitting that? But that’s obstruction of justice.”

“Sure, okay.”

Then Che’s Holt, shocked, asks into his headpiece: “Wait, so, did I get him? Is this all over? Oh…no, I didn’t? Nothing matters? Absolutely nothing matters anymore? Fine.”

When it comes to this administration’s routine ethical violations, “absolutely nothing matters anymore” just about sums it up, doesn’t it?

(Via Pajiba and The Hollywood Reporter; image via screengrab)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

What if an alien invasion could be done remotely, ordering humans to do all the dirty work for you from the comfort of your alien spaceship? A new scifi short is about humans achieving First Contact, but the signal basically turns you into one of The Infected from The Last of Us.

Read more...

The HBCU said it considered the students’ desires when making the decision to cancel the senator’s speech.

It’s become an annual tradition for A Christmas Story to be endlessly rerun on TV every December. But this year, Fox is giving A Christmas Story fans a new reason to celebrate: a live-action adaptation of the stage musical!

Via CNN, Fox has announced that A Christmas Story: The Musical will be a three-hour special on the network this December. The original production of A Christmas Story: The Musical was scored by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who recently won an Oscar for their work on La La Land; Pasek and Paul are also slated to write several new songs for the Fox production. The original movie was based upon Jean Shepherd’s books In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, and it’s previously been adapted as a non-musical stage play.

The movie chronicled Ralphie Parker’s Christmas time quest for a BB gun, and it has proven to be an endearing classic for almost 35 years. The expanded musical could potentially draw upon more material from the original story. The first stage production reincorporated a hilarious subplot about Ralphie mailing ads for the BB gun to his parents. Ralphie even had a love interest in that version, which was entirely left out of the movie. However, the new original songs are what we’re most excited about. There’s a lot of material to draw upon for those!

Are you excited to see A Christmas Story: The Musical on TV? Don’t put your eye out in the comment section below!

Image: MGM

Maybe this Christmas Story should be next?