Saturday Night Live cold open: Britney Spears, Ted Cruz, & Andrew Cuomo

This week’s new episode of Saturday Night Live was shrouded in some mystery — as many have been as of late. At the start of the season, we were able to estimate quite easily as to what the cold opens would be. That’s since become a little bit more challenging. There’s not often a singular headline anymore, and they also are not all politically based.

So what did the show decide to go with this time around? Instead of strictly politics, the show instead moved into pop culture … and then politics. It began with Britney Spears talking about the #FreeBritney movement, and then also Aidy Bryant coming out as Ted Cruz, fresh off of a trip to Cancun. (Remember that this was tied to current events in Texas, with him getting away from the winter storm.) This was probably the one thing about politics this week that we thought the show would reference in some shape or form. Then, we also had Pete Davidson come out as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In this, he tried to compare nursing-home deaths being mislabeled, much like bodies could be moved after a theme-park death.

Finally, we also had an appearance from Cecily Strong as Gina Carano, who recently was let go from The Mandalorian over some controversial comments she posted on social media.

The Britney talk show actually worked well as a format — it had a little bit of fun around Spears without making fun of her. The impersonations were actually pretty spot-on — we never would have imagined that Davidson would do a great Cuomo, but here we are. Strong actually did a great Carano, but we think there are probably a lot fewer people out there who know what she actually sounds like.

This was fun — and a great start to the show overall.

Related – Be sure to get some more coverage now on this week’s SNL!

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

Be sure to share right now in the comments! After you do just that, remember to also come back around — there are some more updates coming and we don’t want you to miss them. (Photo: NBC.)