Saturday Night Live's 50th season premiered over the weekend and, given that we're a few weeks out from the United States' presidential election, it was unsurprising to see the show hit the ground running with a bevy of political impressions. The cold open was presented as a news🅷 broadcast cutting between dueling rallies for Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance.
Rallying Behind Old SNL Cast Members
The opening sketch of a new season would be a great time to highlight the current cast🐷, introducing new players and giving viewers the chance to🎶 see returning favorites for the first time since the previous spring. But of the seven speaking roles, just three of the cold open's parts were played by actual cast members.
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At the Harris-Walz rally, both members of the ticket were played by non-cast members. As in 2020, Kamala Harris was played by Maya Rudolph, who hasn't been a show💧 regular since 2007. Jim Gaffigan, in a cameo appearance, played Tim Walz. Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, was po🍸rtrayed by Andy Samberg who left SNL in 2012. President Joe Biden, a role the show has never been able to completely figure out, was played by Dana Carvey, who was last a cast regular in 1993.
On the other hand, James Austin Johnson returned as Donald Trump. Johnson's Trump is the kind of undeniable impression that the show wouldn't dare replace. It's game-changing, too; go listen to a random comedian's Trump impression from 2017 and compare it to a ran🅰dom comedian's Trump impression from 2024, and you can see how much Johnson's scatterbrained take ushered in a sea change. Bowen Yang, one of the breakout cast members of the last few years, showed up briefly to play J.D. Vance. And the relatively thankless role of ABC News World Tonight anchor David Muir went to Andrew Dismukes✤, a cast member since 2020.
I didn't watch the cold open live, but as I saw the news go live that the episode had featured Rudolph, Carvey, Gaffigan, and Samberg, I couldn't shake the feeling that SNL has entered the same territory that most aging franchises are in at this point. Like 1▨68澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars, Indiana Joneඣs, Blade Runner, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Beetlejuice, Frasier, Rocky, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Jurassic Park, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghostbusters (among many, many, many others), the cur♌rent iteration of Saturday Night Live i꧑s a legacy sequel.
The Cameo Fixation Is A Curse For The Current Cast
That may seem strange, given that Saturday Night Live is a single, long-running TV show, not a sequel film (a la Creed) or a sequel series (like Will & Grace). SNL has always been a Ship of Theseus, gradually swapping out old parts for new ones until, eventually, it becomes an entirely different vessel with the same name and the same captain in Lorne Michaels. It'🐻s how the show has operated since the beginning, but in recent years the process has begun to flow the other direction, too. Creaky old parts are now being brought back instead of the show even attempting to install the new ones.
This kind of stunt casting has been going on for a long time(people forget that Tina Fey was no longer a cast member when she played VP nominee Sarah Palin), but it got particularly egregious during the Trump era. Longtime host Alec Baldwin got tapped to play Trump on a regular basis. Former writer Larry Dav⛦😼id made multiple appearances as Bernie Sanders.
Many, many, many well-known actors stopped by the show to mug as the Trump world figure who was prominent in the news that week. John Goodman played Rex Tillerson, Bill Hader played Anthony Scaramucci, Melissa McCarthy played Sean Spicer, Matthew Broderick played Mike Pompeo, and on, and on, and on. The show began casting on the basis of which celebrity in Michaels'𓄧 rolodex kinda looked like a political figure, rather than giving cast members a chance to take on a major role.
All of these performance💮s were surprise appearances. I obviously don't take issue with hosts playing characters. That's how the show works.
This kind of stunt casting functions in the same way that Luke Skywalker showing up in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Mandalorian does.ཧ Rather than patiently laying the groundwork by placing a cast member in a role, SNL is attempting to find a shortcut by bringing back familiar faces. I like Rudolph, Carvey, and Samberg. Gaffigan was particularly good as Walz. But the show needs to find a new identity, and is hurting its long-termღ creative potential and broader relevance by playing the hits. This version of SNL is designed to appeal to longtime SNL fans and that's a surefire way to prevent anyone else from caring.
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