Saturday Night Live was at its best this week with a cold open featuring newly engaged love bugs and Morning Joe cohosts Mika Brzezinski (Kate McKinnon) and Joe Scarborough (Alex Moffat).
The real Brzezinski and Scarborough announced to Vanity Fair on Thursday that they are getting married, nearly a decade after the show debuted and two years since they’ve both been divorced from their former spouses (Scarborough since 2013, Brzezinski since 2015). Rumors had swirled for a while that the two were an item, but the couple never made their relationship public until they announced the engagement this week.
I liked this sketch in particular because—unlike most of SNL’s interpretations of D.C. politicians and media, which take a depressing reality and turn it into something palatably funny—McKinnon and Moffat have transformed a boring story into a scintillating one. The image of McKinnon’s Brzezinksi nibbling upon Mr. Morning Joe’s nose live on air was seared into my brain at 3 a.m. this morning and has yet to dissipate (leave, please!). The visual sent me hunting through Youtube, through bygone Morning Joe episodes, trying to eke out hints of sexual tension I’d missed, having never been interested in the show before or watched more than ten minutes of an episode since high school.
The other highlight is, of course, McKinnon’s performance. Her magic is in making Brzezinski seem endearing, powerful, and hot while simpering: “am I a baaaad journalist?” To which Joe replies, “You’re not a bad journalist, you’re a bad kitty.”
And here’s the clip that SNL skit is based on, in which the Morning Joe hosts coyly deal with insinuating congratulations on their impending engagement, in matching outfits.