Matt Damon plays ‘keg-half-full’ Brett Kavanaugh on SNL

A complaint often made about Saturday Night Live over the past year or so is that, in its signature political sketches, the comedy show essentially treats its cast as bench warmers while giving the key roles to an expanding roster of celebrity guests.

It's a roster that started, more or less, with Alec Baldwin as President Donald Trump, and it has grown to include Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump, Ben Stiller as Michael Cohen and Robert De Niro as Robert Mueller, among many others.

So as SNL began its 44th season this weekend, was there any evidence that the show had taken any of this criticism to heart? In a word: Nope.

For its first opening sketch, SNL brought in Matt Damon to play Judge Brett Kavanaugh in a recreation of Thursday's contentious testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Damon portrayed Kavanaugh as defiant, opening his remarks by saying: “I’m going to start at an 11. I’m going to take it to about a 15 real quick.”

He was maudlin, breaking into tears whenever mentioning his former classmates and his notorious calendar, and constantly swigging from glasses of water.

In character, Damon described himself as an optimist — "a keg-is-half-full kind of guy" — but also as someone who would fight for his nomination: "I don't know the meaning of the word 'stop,'" he said. "To quote my hero, Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino, 'Get the hell off my lawn.'"

SNL alumna Rachel Dratch made a cameo as Sen Amy Klobuchar, to recreate a testy exchange between her and Kavanaugh. When she asked Damon about his drinking habits, he fired back: "Look, I like beer. OK? I like beer. Boys like beer. Girls like beer. I like beer. I like beer."

She later asked, “Did you ever drink too many beers?”

He answered: “You mean was I cool? Yeah.”

Still, the sketch was largely a tour de force for Damon, who ended it by saying: “Am I angry? You’re damn right. But if you think I’m angry now, you just wait till I get on that Supreme Court, ‘cause then you’re all going to pay.” And then he shotgunned a can of water.

This weekend's episode was hosted by Adam Driver and featured Kanye West as its musical guest. – New York Times