“Saturday Night Live” began Season 48 on a very meta note, with a cold-open sketch that cashed in on recent cast business, and some pretty funny jokes of the show’s hopeless reliance on lazy Trump-focused political parodies. Blown.
The bit, which originally acknowledged almost all of the show’s criticism as well as comments about the show’s health following the recent large cast exodus, first saw host Miles Teller surprisingly spot-on Peyton Manning. as shown.
Watch the clip of the cold open below, now:
Hosting an ESPN show with Andrew Dismukes as Eli Manning, he skipped the game, instead leaving bad “SNL” cold-open sketches and rated the quality.
That sketch turns out to be one of the weakest Trump sketches “SNL” has relied on a lot lately. Instead of playing it straight, Mannings—eventually joined by three-time host Jon Hamm playing himself—focused on how bad it was and the various cast members.
“I don’t know what it is,” Humm joked at one point, “but it’s not comedy. And they haven’t even used Kenan yet. It’s like having Peyton’s whole team and using Allie.” No offense Ellie.”
But the sketch didn’t just nail down the weak Trump stuff. It also made fun of how often “SNL” basically just parodied or referenced what was the meme of the week, this time with new cast member Devon Walker in the form of the corn cob kid.
Haim joked that the moment was “as a sports team tanks to pick up a better draft next year.”
As it progressed, snowboarder Shaun White has repeatedly appeared in a parody of casting “SNL” stunts of late, at which point Haim joked that it happens when the current host isn’t a big enough star. To which Taylor Manning said, “They rarely put hosts out in the cold open, so when they do, it’s special.”
Eventually Taylor declared, “Thank God they got Kendrick Lamar as the musical guest, because that’s the only reason anyone is tuning in.”