‘SNL’ Cold Open Successfully Goes Full Meta With Some Donald Trump, Jon Hamm, Shaun White & Self-Deprecation Galore In Season 48 Premiere

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With a smorgasbord of greatest hits past and perhaps present, Saturday Night Live went successfully mega-meta tonight in the sometime bubbling over cold open of its Season 48 debut. “I got to point out, where’s the balance politically?” asked host Miles Teller in his best Peyton Manning impersonation. “They’re making Trump Columbus jokes, meanwhile Joe Biden’s lost his damn marbles,” the Top Gun: Maverick actor added to the Andrew Dismukes portrayed Eli Manning on the split screen as  James Austin Johnson reprised his POTUS 45 role from last year “They’re not even going to mention that.” The Manning brothers break down the #SNLPremiere pic.twitter.com/kH1cttLSts Using the NFL siblings and Peyton’s Omaha Productions’ Manningcast perch as the podium, the cold open leaned into the easy but effective Trump as skit within a skit, while lamenting the exit of Kate McKinnon and embracing cast old and new with tropes galore. “The show’s in a rebuilding year for sure,” quipped Teller’s Peyton Manning, effectively saying the quiet thing out loud as one new cast member after another showed up for a nanosecond.

The very cable news and sports stats graphic of “14 Attempted Jokes, 1 Mild Laugh, 3 Chuckles”  might have been the best therapy and gag SNL has pulled off in a cold open since …well, the last time Kate McKinnon showed up. “Thank God they got Kendrick Lamar, because that’s the only reason anyone is tuning in,” Teller tossed out to a huge studio audience laugh in NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza.

With its own up and downs, tonight’s cold open fortunately took the opportunity to break the show’s habit over  past several seasons to use the cold open for a general approach in order to spotlight individual talents – and not just because