Saturday Night Live cold open: Deal or No Deal, Shutdown Edition

Saturday Night Live

This weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open could’ve basically chosen to go in almost any direction based on recent headlines. We figured the government shutdown would be a part of it, but whether or not we got an appearance from Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump was certainly up in the air.

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So what did the NBC series decide to go with tonight? Well, this was a thing of brilliance — let’s just put things that way. After all, we had Deal or No Deal: Shutdown Edition! The goodness started with Kenan Thompson playing Steve Harvey (subbing in for Howie Mandel) — then came Alec Baldwin. The idea here was brilliant — using a game-show in order to proof real-life headlines while also being super-current at the same time. We also had in here shocking lines (“free range kids”), Donald mocking Nancy Pelosi, and all sorts of other ridiculous stuff. We do love the impersonal that Kate McKinnon did of Pelosi, where she turned her into a successful but also power-hungry. This was really all about the reaction shots more so than anything else.

The one criticism that you can make for this sketch is that it lasted a little bit long — what was also a little bit interesting was that SNL did not go soft on Democrats, choosing to poke fun at Chuck Schumer for caving in on deals too quickly. (We also got a sense of SNL’s version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in here, even if it was brief, in addition to the show painting Mitch McConnell as a turtle hiding within his shell.)

We’ll leave you with three words: Habitat for Hannity. This was a random joke that we actually did appreciate. We appreciate a lot of the things that the show threw out there to try to make this as funny as possible. At least this was different than the standard political cold open. We don’t always love it when SNL does a political cold open every week, mostly because they do the same thing time and time again. We love it, however, when they can get political with a creative spin. Not every joke landed, but at least there were plenty that did.

For those wondering, the misspelled hamburger at the end of sketch was a reference to a real tweet that Trump made, and then deleted.

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What did you think about this weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open? Be sure to share some of your thoughts now in the comments. (Photo: NBC.)

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