January 19, 2019 – Rachel Brosnahan / Greta Van Fleet (S44 E10)

Cold Opening - Deal Or No Deal: Government Shutdown Edition Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) does Deal Or No Deal with government shutdown I’ve been growing very tired of both these cold opens and Kenan’s Steve Harvey. Not even a seemingly-promising change of pace such as this cold open’s premise is having me onboard. Ugh. Alec …

December 15, 2018 – Matt Damon / Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus (S44 E9)

Cold Opening - It’s A Wonderful Trump election loss improves everything Funny seeing a parody of the classic movie, as I quite recently saw the first John Goodman episode, which had a parody of It’s A Wonderful Life with Dana doing his great Jimmy Stewart while portraying a random politician as its cold open. Man, …

November 17, 2018 – Steve Carell / Ella Mai (S44 E6)

Cold Opening - The Ingraham Angle Mark Zuckerberg (ALM) downplays Facebook abuse Didn’t we just get an Ingraham Angle cold opening? This ain’t no Hardball to have it as the cold open every two or three episodes, SNL. This is pretty much following the same tell-don’t-show approach that’s been plaguing a lot of SNL’s political …

November 3, 2018 – Jonah Hill / Maggie Rogers (S44 E4)

Cold Opening - The Ingraham Angle Jeanine Pirro (CES) doomsays migrant caravan The first of quite a number of Kate-as-Laura-Ingraham cold opens over the next few seasons. Kate’s solid here, but I am not caring for these very self-aware lines she’s given; basically telling us again and again why she’s here and how she sounds, …

October 6, 2018 – Awkwafina / Travis Scott (S44 E2)

Cold Opening - Brett Kavanaugh Post-Game victorious GOP locker room celebrates Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation Hmm, an actual fun & loose concept for a cold open, with SNL treating the aftermath of Kavanaugh’s confirmation in the same vein as post-game celebrations? Am I watching an SNL from a different dimension? Very funny Mitch McConnell impression from …