Saturday Night Live cold open: Kenan Thompson’s Santa takes on politics

This weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open was one of the strangest ones of the season. After all, we had Kenan Thompson playing the part of Santa Claus — with the big twist being all of the kids were asking for weird, hyper-political things. This was meant to be a reflection of the current climate where nobody can get along on anything. More than that, everyone feels the need to reinforce their politics on everyone else. Apparently, not even Santa is spared in this sort of odd world.

Were there some good lines in here? Sure, including a take on the NFL and also on Israel. Yet, not all of them came through as according to plan.

The big problem with this cold open was that there were, unfortunately, a number of young actors who weren’t quite ready for primetime. They struggled with the lines and seemingly reading the cue cards, and you could see Kenan at times trying to ease the kids into reading them and looking at them. It did take you out of the sketch, just because you could see everyone looking at the cue cards off-screen.

As a result of all of the miscommunication that seemed to be going on with the kids (was this sketch put together at the last minute or something?), this was probably the worst cold open of the entire season unfortunately. It wasn’t altogether funny and is a great example of how a decent idea can fall apart if it’s not executed as according to plan. The problem with this sort of sketch is that when you’re dealing with a major unknown like kid actors, you need to make sure that the environment around them is perfect for them to succeed. That didn’t happen and instead we were stuck waiting for the actors to say some lines that were ill-timed and devoid of much of their comedic value.

Still, kudos to Kenan and Kate McKinnon for trying.

What did you think about this week’s Saturday Night Live cold open? Be sure to share some of your thoughts in the comments! 

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