[Looking for TV and movie recommendations? Sign up for our newsletter, Watching.] With the partial government shutdown continuing to stretch on, “Saturday Night Live” proposed its own solution to the standoff: a game show parody. The first new “S.N.L.” of 2019 opened with a special “government shutdown edition” of “Deal or No Deal,” whose only contestant was President Trump — played by Alec Baldwin in his recurring role — looking for a compromise that would end the impasse. As the host Steve Harvey (played by Kenan Thompson) explained to Baldwin, “Earlier today you went on TV and you told the American people that you wanted to make a deal.” He added, “So we decided to do this in the only format that you can understand: a TV game show with women holding briefcases.”After rejecting the immigration deal that Congress offered in December, Baldwin made a counterproposal: “I want $5 billion for my border wall,” he said, “and in exchange I’ll extend DACA, and I’ll release the kids from cages so they can be free-range kids.”

Source: New York Times January 20, 2019 08:15 UTC