Walter White lives!
Well, at least he did for a few minutes on Saturday Night Live.
Emmy winner Bryan Cranston revived his high school science teacher-drug lord character from the now-defunct Breaking Bad during Saturday’s show.
Imagine if Walter White was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to be the new head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. That was the basis of SNL’s latest cold open, poking fun at several of Trump’s real-life cabinet picks that have left many political pundits befuddled.
The sketch, which introduced the December 10 show hosted by wrestler-actor John Cena, featured cast member Beck Bennett as CNN’s Jake Tapper along with Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway, played by Kate McKinnon. The two discussed a number of Trump’s “unconventional” appointments, including those of Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a climate change denier, to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Andrew Puzder, the CEO of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s, who has argued against minimum wage increases, as secretary of Labor.
“It’s almost like Mr Trump appoints these people specifically to undermine the very agencies they head,” Bennett’s Tapper said. “Are these bad picks?”
McKinnon’s Conway responded: “No, they are not bad. They are alt-good.”
Then, the two announced the selection of White as head of the DEA who Conway says came “highly recommended by Steve Bannon,” referring to the president-elect’s chief political strategist, who is known for his work as chairman of the controversial conservative website Breitbart News.
“Steve’s the best. We’ve had some times,” Cranston’s White said, adding that Bannon found him in “the comment section at Breitbart.”
The SNL writers worked in several references to the acclaimed series including having Cranston as White proclaim “Trust me, I know the DEA better than anyone, inside and out” and reprise his famous line “I am the one who knocks” and adding that he faked his own death, noting “I’m only the third person in the Trump cabinet to do that.”
Cranston next appears on the big screen as an uptight dad in the James Franco comedy Why Him?.
