The only bad thing about Larry David playing Bernie Sanders in the cold open of Saturday Night Live is that it made some people pay insufficient attention to Kate McKinnon‘s maniacal caricature of Hillary Clinton. Or make that Kate McKinnon’s caricature of a maniacal Hillary Clinton. McKinnon is already in the SNL political Hall of Fame for her Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she’s now building her own room in the Hall as the race heats up. A SNL political pairing like David/Sanders McKinnon/Clinton hasn’t been seen since Dana Carvey as Ross Perot tried to ditch Phil Hartman‘s Admiral James Stockdale.
Meanwhile, the Larry David impression was so spot-on it immediately made otherwise rational people think about whether they were indeed the same person. Or at least tweet funny notions that Sanders and David were indistinguishable — and (suspiciously) had never been seen together. Best of all, both McKinnon’s and David’s impressions are sharp-edged and unforgiving. Neither comedian is in danger of doing for their real-life candidate counterparts what Will Ferrell‘s masterful impression of George W. Bush may have done for Bush: soften him and make him lovable.
