Saturday Night Live cold open: Ben Stiller plays Michael Cohen!

We’ll be honest here: The Saturday Night Live cold open for this week was absolutely to us very much a mystery going in. Typically, Alec Baldwin doesn’t appear for two straight weeks so we were not expecting an appearance from Donald Trump. Meanwhile, there were so many different headlines from the news the past week that it could be hard trying to pick one out from the crowd.

So what did the writers choose to go with in order to start John Mulaney’s episode this weekend? Think in terms of another recurring character in Kate McKinnon’s Jeff Sessions and Beck Bennett’s Mike Pence. These two are familiar characters on the show this season, so featuring the two characters within the Department of Justice was no surprise.

Do you know what was? Getting Ben Stiller to play Michael Cohen. The second surprise? Getting Robert de Niro in order to play Robert Mueller. This was the Meet the Parents reunion we didn’t know that we needed and we were SO happy that we had it. There were so many references to that movie, including the whole “milk” bit from the original movie including the line “you can milk anything with nipples line.”

This was funny, surprisingly close to the movie, and we didn’t even miss McKinnon playing Mueller for the week. There were also so many great quotes in this episode, including Stiller claiming that he has a whole folder in his office just marked “yikes!” containing some serious Trump material.

Next to maybe the The Bachelor spoof earlier this year, we’d say that this was probably the most brilliant tie-in we’ve seen in a while. These sorts of sketches are so much more interesting and creative than what SNL often does just by throwing Baldwin out there — he’s great, but we’ve seen it so many times.

Related – Check out our full review for this weekend’s new episode

Be sure to check out our video take on tonight’s SNL below — for more, be sure to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube.

What did you think about this particular Saturday Night Live cold open? Be sure to share right now in the comments!

Meanwhile, be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook to get some other news, including reviews from other SNL episodes, videos, and more. (Photo: NBC.)