It was YouTube’s Crime Stories with Nancy Grace tonight all over Saturday Night Live’s cold open featuring “health care assassin” Luigi Mangione, as Sarah Sherman and the NBC late-night show took on the fan club the killer of UnitedHealthCare’s CEO has attracted since his arrest this week.
Or, on a week where Donald Trump again provided a whole season’s worth of material, did they?
Mocking the former prosecutor’s long fall or big leap depending on your POV (from HLN to internet posting over the decades), Sherman’s near impeccable impression of the grating Grace proclaimed: “And of course, everyone online celebrated the hard work of law enforcement in apprehending this dangerous criminal. Just kidding. Y’all, suckers made him a sex symbol!”
“That’s right, the health care assassin Luigi Mangione has got women and gay guys alike all hot and bothered,” Sherman’s Grace declared in not at all untrue outrage. “I mean, seriously. This guy looks like Dave Franco with Eugene Levy’s eyebrows. What is going on in this country? Y’all, this man is not a sex icon, okay. This man is, and I cannot say this any clearer, a murderer!” — with the last word garbled.
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Sad to say, with more of the “sexy slayer” jokes, this is where tonight’s cold open went from sizzling to down the drain – as you can determined for yourself by watching the sketch above.
Replicating Grace’s self-obsession, which seems so 1990s, the sketch turned to the usual SNL fallback of roping in a bunch of other cast members as warm props.
After nearly a week on the run, Mangione was arrested in a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on December 9 after an employee recognized the 26-year-old from the security footage of him taking his mask down to flirt with a NYC store employee. That widely distributed footage and the fawning over Mangoine’s look almost overshadowed his fatal shooting of health insurance boss Brian Thompson at point-blank range outside the executive’s New York hotel on the morning of December 4. The masked Mangoine cycled away after shooting Thompson, and for days it looked like he had successfully evaded a near nationwide manhunt, until he didn’t.
Mangione is fighting extradition from the Keystone State to the Empire State, where he has been charged with murder.
While the thirst trap aspect of this murder is an affront to almost everyone, SNL seemed to lose focus in the sketch over and over.
The irritating reality of YouTube channels being ” interrupted at any second by an insanely loud ad” (which the skit itself was repeatedly) seemed like a revelation to the middle-aged SNL, even with Sherman in the captain’s seat and a rather good Mangione take from featured player Emil Wakim (I mean, kinda uncanny).
Maybe that was the point with one of the great comedians of all time front and center tonight.
Chris Rock is back hosting for the fourth time tonight with Gracie Adams making her musical guest debut for the ninth episode of SNL’s 50th season. Throwing back to another past cast member in this anniversary season, Martin Short will be hosting next week in the last SNL of a crazy 2024 with Hozier as the musical gues; tthe Only Murders in the Building star and SNL Season 10 cast member has fronted SNL three times before on his own and, back in December 2022, one time with OMITB pal Steven Martin.
Created by Lorne Michaels in 1975, as the film Saturday Night details, the NBC sketch comedy show will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a primetime special February 16 with cast past, present and maybe even future.