Saturday Night Live cold open: The suspected Chinese spy balloon

We will admit that we’ve been excited about tonight’s particular Saturday Night Live for quite some time. Yet, it didn’t have so much to do with the cold open. We more just wanted to see what was coming on the other side of it, given that we were gearing up for Pedro Pascal as the host.

So in that sense, the opening tonight had a pretty low bar in our mind. We weren’t anticipating anything insanely entertaining. Instead, we just wanted something moderately amusing and a nice transition to the rest of the show.

Ultimately, we should have actually seen the subject of tonight’s cold open coming: The suspected Chinese spy balloon, which has generated headlines the past couple of days. We do think that this represents the writers really working to make things happen fast, given that the balloon was only shot down earlier today — yet, this is how the show works sometimes! Kudos to Kenan Thompson for playing a general popping on to an MSNBC show to discuss said balloon.

Then, we brought on Bowen Yang as the actual balloon. We imagine that this was a take on him playing the iceberg that took down the Titanic, with him talking about why he was taken out and that he wanted to hover over Montana because he was a big fan of Yellowstone. Then, he was attacked by a seagull.

Did this work as a cold open?

It’s about as strong as we could have suspected going into the episode tonight. This is actually what the show should be doing almost all of the time — capturing what’s going on in the world while still keeping things weird and funny. It’s also SNL cementing further that Bowen is one of their biggest stars, given that he was ultimately the primary showcase of the show sketch. Kenan was almost more of the warmup act.

What did you think about the cold open during tonight’s Saturday Night Live episode?

Be sure to let us know in the comments! After you do just that, stay tuned for all sorts of other updates. (Photo: NBC.)