Saturday Night Live opened its new 50th season by introducing what we’ll likely be seeing a lot of over the next five weeks — the political candidates running for office in November. The cold open switched between rallies held by the two Presidential candidates. Maya Rudolph played Kamala Harris as expected (and continues to nail her very specific voice), but it was a surprising delight to see Jim Gaffigan do a near-perfect impression of Vice Presidential candidate Tim Waltz. It’s a clever pick — the Midwest is strong with these two. Andy Samberg was a goofy dork as Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, and Dana Carvey got to perform his stammering Joe Biden impression he previously played while guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Bowen Yang was a funny choice for Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, but it makes sense if the SNL team was trying to just piss him off (having a queer, non-white person him, and all). The eyeliner and weird beard were good additions, and the way he awkwardly calls the crowd “awesome” while someone leaves the rally behind him was a nice touch.
We also thankfully got the best Donald Trump impersonator of the past several years, James Austin Johnson, who originally portrayed Joe Biden when he joined the show in 2021 before switching to permanently play Trump. His vocal inflections and the way he alternates between a raspy growl and a nasal smoothness is pitch-perfect, and his Mad Lib-style stream-of-consciousness has a hilarious verisimilitude despite Johnson not having much of a physical likeness to Trump.
You can watch it below:
Saturday Night Live’s Begins Season 50 with Election Impressions and Assassination Jokes
It could be said that Saturday Night Live began a downward slide a decade or so ago, especially around the time Donald Trump began running for President (which seems like a century ago). The problem is that politics became so ridiculous that SNL got lazy — all they had to do was repeat whatever ludicrous thing was done or said that week. The cold open for Season 50 suffers from the same dull writing, merely repeating things that the political candidates said (Kamala Harris owns a gun, Trump thinks “they’re eating the dogs,” Tim Waltz likes Menards).
There were, however, some good lines in the latest SNL episode. Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff was especially funny as he pushed back against being labeled a “beta, a wife guy, a trad hus, a little spoon,” for wanting to be the male equivalent of the First Lady. “I, for one, can’t wait to decorate the White House for Christmas,” said Samberg. “The theme will be Hanukkah.” And looking at Rudolph as Harris, “I feel like I’m in one of those movies where Seth Rogen dates Charlize Theron!”
And James Austin Johnson was reliably hilarious as Donald Trump, with the impersonation itself being genuinely funny. “They’re doing a Diddy,” was a great one-liner though. There was a bit of cleverness as Trump echoed the sentiments that liberals are causing political violence with their rhetoric, combined with his weird statements about Harris’ ethnicity:
“You know [the assassination attempt] happened because of the rhetoric of the radical left. They say that me blaming the Democrats for inciting violence is the pot calling the kettle black. But frankly, I didn’t know the kettle was black until very recently. I thought the kettle was Indian, but then you decided to turn black.”
Of course, there has been backlash from Trump supporters and the campaign itself for a few jokes about the attempted assassination(s) of Donald Trump. For instance, when he walks away from the podium, his staff moves a bulletproof panel of glass alongside him. And Trump at one point says, “I see you trying to leave, but the doors are locked. Come on back. We’re having fun. We love my rallies, except when someone goes ‘bing, bang, bing, bing, bing, bing,’ right at me.” Then, during the Weekend Update segment, Colin Jost joked about Trump’s cognitive abilities, saying he was “starting to worry that bullet got a little more than just the ear,”
“There were two assassination attempts against President Trump within a span of seven weeks. @nbcsnl apparently finds that funny. Disgusting,” reads the social media post from Trump War Room on Twitter (aka X), and the comments are as expected.
You can watch SNL sketches on YouTube and stream episodes on Peacock through the link below: