| by Victoria A Brownworth

Kristen Stewart Heats Up SNL

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Kristen Stewart Heats Up SNL while Melissa McCarthy rips the White House.

Kristen Stewart Heats Up SNL while Melissa McCarthy rips the White House.

Saturday night is date night for me and The Wife. Dinner, a movie, lots of love.

So-called President Trump had put us in the mood for comedy, so we watched Bridesmaids, which we’d never seen. There’s nothing like a film about women and friendship with a lot of great women comedians to put the fall of civilization out of your mind for a few hours.

The film ended just in time for the local news and SNL.

Since the election cycle began, SNL has been must-see TV for the first time since, well, maybe the Clinton Administration when the late Jan Hooks and late Phil Hartman were the best Hillary and Bill ever.

This particular Saturday proved to be more than we ever could have hoped: Alec Baldwin reprising his Trump, Kristen Stewart being the first out lesbian host in – we don’t even know, because Google couldn’t tell us. And then there was a surprise treat — Melissa McCarthy, who we’d just seen in Bridesmaids and who is a fave of ours, playing White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Perfect.

Within minutes after Baldwin’s fabulous cold open with the Grim Reaper playing the role of Trump’s chief strategist and white nationalist Steve Bannon, Kristen Stewart, overly excited at being on THE SNL had managed to slip and say “f*cking” on live TV during her opening monologue while a not-that-shocked Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant stood by.

We were having a really good time.

Stewart told a strange and kinda creepy story about our so-called president, who, in 2012, decided to weigh in on her then-affair with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson. According to Stewart, Trump tweeted about her rumored cheating on Pattinson over the course of days as is his usual behavior when he fixates on something. Eleven times, she said.

Eleven times.

About a then-21 year old Stewart and then-25 year old Pattinson.

Trump tweeted: “Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again–just watch. He can do much better!” In a different tweet, Trump said–and this Trump stand-by will sound familiar– “Everyone knows I am right that Robert Pattinson should dump Kristen Stewart. In a couple of years, he will thank me. Be smart, Robert.”

Stewart asserted Trump was obsessed with Pattinson, who he later asked to join him for a pageant. In her monologue she said, “I’m a little nervous to be hosting because I know the president is probably watching and I don’t think he likes me that much. Here’s how I know. A few years ago I was dating this guy called Robert, and we broke up and then we got back together, and for some reason it made Donald Trump go insane.”

Stewart read the “dog” tweet, and then said, “I know what you’re thinking, right? That’s so crazy, the President tweeted about you once. No, no, the President tweeted about me 11 times.”

Stewart continued,”To be fair, I don’t think Donald Trump hated me, I think he was in love with my boyfriend.”

She added, “The President is not a huge fan of me, but that is so OK. And Donald, if you didn’t like me then, you’re really probably not going to like me now, because I’m hosting SNL and I’m, like, so gay dude!”

Wild, wild applause.

You know how they are always telling us it gets better?

It did.

SNL regular Vanessa Bayer has been doing a faux ad for Totino’s pizza rolls for a couple of years now on the pre-Super Bowl SNL show. It’s always hilarious as she talks about feeding her “hungry guys” as her unnamed character’s husband and friends yell at the TV and demand snacks.

But on the Feb. 4 episode, one of the hungry guys brings his sexy sister, Sabine, played by Stewart, to help in the kitchen.

Oh.

Stewart is shot through a gauzy lens and everything changes for Bayer as Sabine entrances her. “I’m Sabine,” she says and asks Bayer’s character her name, “I’ve never had one,” she replies.

It’s everything you could hope for.

“What are you hungry for?” Sabine asks her, when she says, “What about my hungry guys?”

“Every game before this one, I’ve been asleep,” she says as the two reprise a combination of the “paint me like your French women” scene from Titanic with some Blue Is the Warmest Color thrown in.

They kiss, they get wet together, they get naked, they stroke each other with pizza rolls.

It was fabulous.

It ends with “This spring, find your Totino.” Now the official lesbian snack food.

How could this episode of “SNL” get better?

With Melissa McCarthy as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. There are a lot of visuals in this one, as Spicer uses props all the time in his press briefings. At one point McCarthy pulls out a couple of boxes and the props describe what Spicer is telling the press corps. When the stuffed moose and lamb came out to “radical Moose-lambs,” The Wife and I were crying, we were laughing so hard.

There was really nothing to top McCarthy. It was pure comedic genius and deserving of an instant Emmy. At one point a stunned looking Kate KcKinnon is dragged out as Betsy DeVos, Trump’s beleaguered and utterly unqualified nominee for Education Secretary. McKinnon had already been in the monologue as a grunge biker and in the cold open as Angela Merkel. McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway is brilliant. Hand her an Emmy, too.

A few people didn’t appreciate either McCarthy or Stewart. One person tweeted me that McCarthy “ruined” Ghostbusters (she didn’t). Some people tweeted me that Kristen Stewart was a “terrible actress” (she’s actually really terrific and gets better with each successive film – her latest, Personal Shopper, debuted at Sundance to acclaim). Some others said she wasn’t a “real” lesbian, (she seems to be pretty real to this lesbian).

In July 2016 Stewart came out in an interview in Elle, noting, “When I was dating a guy I was hiding everything that I did because everything personal felt like it was immediately trivialised, so I didn’t like it. We were turned into these characters and placed into this ridiculous comic book, and I was like, ‘That’s mine. You’re making my relationship something that it’s not.’ I didn’t like that.”

Then Stewart came out. “But then it changed when I started dating a girl. I was like, ‘Actually, to hide this provides the implication that I’m not down with it or I’m ashamed of it’, so I had to alter how I approached being in public. It opened my life up and I’m so much happier.” Referring to girlfriend Alicia Cargile she said, “I’m just really in love with my girlfriend.”

And that’s the story of my Saturday night in the time of Trump.

There’s no greater resistance than humor and lesbianism. The Wife and I highly recommend it. And apparently, so does Kristen Stewart.

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