A cut-for-time Halloween-themed “Weekend Update” sketch on Saturday Night Live was crawling with pop culture references, spoofing everything from the Menendez brothers (the subject of Ryan Murphy’s much-discussed Monsters anthology on Netflix) to The Golden Bachelorette.
In the sketch, co-host Colin Jost introduces Michael Longfellow and Marcello Hernández dressed as two doctors. But instead of being perceived as such by partygoers and passersby, the two are mistaken for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who have long been imprisoned for the 1989 shooting of their parents and could be looking at an early release due to renewed conversations around the siblings’ decades-long abuse at the hands of their father.
“We thought people would see two doctors and start banging pots and pans together for us, like during the pandemic,” Longfellow said, with Hernández adding, “Instead, people keep yelling things like, ‘You’re innocent’ and ‘You’re so hot.’”
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Turns out, the duo joked, the Menendez brothers have higher social cachet than doctors and have become “sex symbols” as a result of the Netflix series — itself slammed by the Menendez family — and TikTok.
“We’ve been straight-up telling women we are the Menendez brothers,” Hernández said.
Eventually, the skit turned to other Halloween costuming mishaps, like a John Travolta outfit from Saturday Night Fever being mistaken for “Guy on his way to a Diddy white party,” E.T. being mistaken for “Kamala’s border policy” or the Crypt Keeper being mistaken for The Golden Bachelorette.
One final joke took aim at Jost and co-host Michael Che, featuring two children dressed in their “Weekend Update” suits. Too bad it’s actually a costume for “two secret Trump voters.”