The season finale of Saturday Night Live borrowed from another classic series finale as Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump and his Mueller investigation legal team reunite at a diner in a cold open sketch that reimagined the famed closing scene from The Sopranos.
Trump sits in the booth of a New Jersey diner and waits for his guests to arrive, pumping change into the table’s jukebox to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which also soundtracked the much-debated final moments from the HBO mob drama.
Trump’s legal team then begins fill the diner’s booth: First Kate McKinnon’s Rudy Giuliani, followed by Ben Stiller’s Michael Cohen. “I’m mostly just preparing to go to jail and stuff. They said I might get 20 years unless I give you up,” Cohen tells Trump.
Trump then tells Cohen all the great things about going to prison. “They even have programs in jail where you can get a real law degree,” Giuliani tells Cohen. Mikey Day’s Donald Trump Jr. then bursts in and sits next to his father.
“I couldn’t think of three people I’d rather be with tonight. My best son and two of my 15 lawyers,” Trump says as Alex Moffat’s Eric Trump attempts to parallel park his tricycle outside, a nod to Meadow Soprano’s curb issues in The Sopranos scene. “To a great first year of the Russia investigation,” Cohen says.
Finally, Robert De Niro’s Robert Mueller enters the diner and sits ominously at a distant booth. De Niro, who previously portrayed Mueller in a Meet the Parents riff with Stiller’s Cohen, again taps his character from the comedy to give an “I’m watching you” signal to Trump.
The cold open sketch, like the Sopranos finale, suddenly cuts to black and the Journey stops… before all the actors appear together to announce “And live from New York it’s Saturday Night” for the last time in Season 43.
Compare the SNL cold open to the final Sopranos scene below:
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
