Saturday Night Live cold open: Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush returns

Going into this weekend’s new Saturday Night Live, it actually felt like reasonably close to a sure thing that we were going to have a chance to see Alec Baldwin back as Donald Trump. After all, how could we not given that it’s been such an eventful past few weeks? Also, we had an alumni host in Will Ferrell and that often tends to mean that you get a number of appearances from other notable names.

One thing we know with confidence: There was certainly no shortage of things that SNL could have mocked Trump for. There’s always a relative embarrassment of riches in that department.

Well, we didn’t get Trump, but we got something just as great (or maybe even better) — Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush. There’s something wonderful and almost comforting about Ferrell’s impression — while he’s clearly poking fun at the President, there was also an earnestness to it. Ferrell’s Bush is like the bumbling sitcom character, stumbling his way through a sketch and trying to figure out a way to keep from falling over.

The whole point of this sketch was pretty simple: Don’t suddenly think that Bush was a good President just because he’s not President. “Bush” gave some examples of some of his many misgivings, joked about Dick Cheney, and mispronounced a good 10-20% of this words. Also, great appearance from Leslie Jones as Condoleezza Rice. They concluded the cold open with a song — we didn’t need it and singing isn’t Jones’ forte, but that’s fine.

The one thing that SNL missed

We don’t think that the rise in Bush’s approval rating over the past few months has anything to do with policy. It likely has more to do with the fact that he wasn’t ever as harsh or vicious to media or Democrats while in office. It’s a vote based more on the perception of a homespun President years after the fact by people who may not remember it all that well.

Overall, though, this a tremendous start to the show — there are weeks we miss Baldwin as Trump, but with Will Ferrell here we absolutely didn’t miss him.

Related – Read our full review for tonight’s episode

What did you think about this week’s Saturday Night Live cold open, and were you pleased to see the Bush impression back? Be sure to share now in the comments! Also, you can like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want some more insight regarding the NBC series. (Photo: NBC.)