After the departure of eight cast members — including big names like Kate McKinnon and Pete Davidson — over the summer, Lorne Michaels declared Saturday Night Live’s 48th season a “year of reinvention” for the show. And while it’s still hard to say what that might mean in practice, the lack of star power was certainly felt in the first cold open sketch of the fall.
They even called in host Miles Teller to play Peyton Manning, who along with Andrew Dismukes’ Eli Manning provided meta-commentary on the show’s inevitable struggles play-by-play. But trying to approach the situation with a wink only showed how big a hole they are in. “There’s a lot of changes coming to the show that could be exciting,” Teller’s Manning said. “Let’s see what they’ve been up to all summer.”
When James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump embarked on a typical and anticipated mar-a-lago-during-a-hurricane bit, the Mannings kept chiming in to comment on how awful the whole thing was. They teased the new recruits for screwing up, roasted a “surprise fumble” of Bowen Yang who “should make a step up this year,” and drew attention to McKinnon’s absence by wondering why no one identified as Anthony Fauci or Lindsey Graham or spent Rudy Giuliani.
“The show is definitely in a formative year,” Teller said, adding, “Thank god they have Kendrick Lamar [as musical guest] because that’s the only reason anyone tunes in.”
They later decided to bring in an even bigger celebrity, “SNL’s three-time host in what seemed like a golden era,” Teller’s Top Gun: Maverick co-star Jon Hamm.
When asked what he thought of the sketch so far, Hamm said, “I don’t know, but it’s not a comedy. They didn’t even use Kenan [Thompson] still. “It’s like putting a whole team of Elis on the field with Peyton on the touchline.”
Finally, after another “gratuitous” cameo with Olympian Shaun White as Trump’s “special master,” Teller boasted that it’s always “special” when they put the host in cold openings.
“Special or desperate?” Hamm replied.
Ultimately, attempting to know self-mockery turned out to be a deeply unfunny navel-gazing that failed to calm worried viewers about how SNL might be reinventing itself this year. The opening could only be considered a success if the aim was to dampen expectations as much as possible.
For more, listen and subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast.