As an avid “Saturday Night Live” fan, I, and I bet many others who saw last week’s cold open, were wondering how they would handle Donald Trump winning the election. Let me tell you, they did not disappoint. 

The episode opened with the entire SNL cast recapping what happened with the election. This included them highlighting how Trump is the first felon to be elected to the presidency, and how he has near total control over the Supreme Court. 

They began to set up a serious cold open, which would be out of the ordinary for SNL, but not unexpected after Trump’s win, when Keenan Thompson tossed out, “That is why we at SNL would like to say to Donald Trump. We have been with you all along,” with Bowen Yang saying, “We have never wavered in our support of you, even when others doubted you.” 

This completely shifted the skit from a somber, serious tone to satire. They kept it up, satirically praising Trump, and pleading for him to take SNL off his enemies list (if it was on there). 

To nail the lid on the coffin, James Austin Johnson brought out a Jacked Trump impression to satirically suck up to the president-elect. Colin Jost also donned a Viking hat while lamenting the fact there was not another chance to “do a January 6th.” 

This cold open rocked. We, sadly, did not get Maya Rudolph smashing a piano to “Hallelujah,” or singing a Charli XCX song in a lament to Kamala Harris losing the election as some online had expected, but this was a fabulous alternative. 

The cold open was, by far, the strongest part of this episode. Most of Bill Burr’s material fell flat, and I would have preferred a different host for the episode after the election. He lacked chemistry with the rest of the cast and made some pretty foul jokes in his monologue. I recommend watching the cold open, then turning the episode off and going to watch a different, funnier one. 

While this episode of SNL did not land (outside of the cold open), the rest of the season has been solid, safely the funniest SNL season in a while.