Saturday Night Live cold open: Fox & Friends + Will Smith’s Oscars slap

As we prepared for this week’s Saturday Night Live cold open, it really felt like there was only one natural option: The Oscars. How could the NBC show ignore what happened with Will Smith and Chris Rock? It’s true that Chris is a former SNL cast member, but we don’t think that would exclude them from addressing the subject. (Nor would the fact that Rock is in the midst of a comedy tour and, pending some miracle, would not be appearing live.)

So did NBC actually people give the people what they wanted? Well, the moment we saw that they were doing a Fox & Friends spoof, we groaned. What in the world were they doing? For most of the sketch, we just sat around waiting for the show to get to what we actually wanted. Instead, they moved into an interview with Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni. Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon were fantastic here, but where was the stuff we really wanted here?

After that, we got into a bit from Cecily Strong as Jeanine Pirro — once again, a fantastic impression, and that’s before we get her cracking open some booze right on-camera.

We finally got to a discussion of the Oscars slap via James Austin Johnson’s version of Donald Trump, which used it as a way to transition into a rant about Will Smith and Kevin James in Hitch. Was this funny? Sure, but it still felt like the show making small potatoes of one of the biggest moments in awards-show history. After that, they went into Trump going into various things, including burner phones and their role on a certain infamous day in January.

For those wondering…

We did get a lot more conversation about “the slap” via Jerrod Carmichael’s cold open, who ranted about how there has already been SO much conversation about it.

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What did you think about the Saturday Night Live cold open this week?

Was it precisely what you wanted it to be when the dust settled? Be sure to share right now in the comments! Once you do just that, remember to also stay at the site — there are more updates coming and of course, we don’t want you missing them. (Photo: NBC.)