You’ve got to hand it toSaturday Night Live: When they celebrate, they celebratehard. The latest episode ofSNLaired approximately 12 hours after major networks officially namedJoe Bidenas President-elect andKamala Harrisas the Vice President-elect after a week of counting ballots and slowly watching election maps turn blue and red. After a day of public rejoicing across the nation,SNLdecided to keep the good times going with one heck of a cold open starringJim Carrey,Maya Rudolph, andAlec Baldwin.
The cold open kicked off withBeck Bennettplaying Wolf Blitzer andAlex Moffatas John King. The two CNN anchors went from tired to wired when they were able to call the election for the Biden/Harris ticket, segueing into Rudolph and Carrey recreating the victory speeches given by Harris and Biden just a few hours earlier in Delaware. There were some good cracks, natch, with Rudolph getting some of the best of the bunch. But the cold open’s real stroke of genius was giving viewers the chance to absorb a punchier, sillier version of the President Trump concession speech we’ll likely never hear. The concession portion of the cold open went from good to fucking incredible when it chose to plop Baldwin’s Trump behind a piano — recallingKate McKinnon’s Hilary Clinton singing “Hallelujah"back in November 2016— and have him sing a slowed-down version ofThe Village People’s “Macho Man,” a Trump rally favorite.
And, if the “Macho Man” shoutout wasn’t good enough, the cold open-ended on the highest of high notes. As the sketch came to a close, Carrey’s Biden madeanAce Venturareference. The actor leaned hard into the podium and put his whole body into delivering the iconic “You’re a loser” line, making sure we all knew it was directed at the outgoing President of the United States. Truly, I can’t think of a more breathtakingly perfect cherry on top of an already incredible Saturday.
Saturday Night Liveairs on Saturdays at 11:30/10:30c on NBC. Watch the celebratory post-election cold open below. For more, why not revisit thebest sketches from last week’ssupremely good Halloween episode?
Allie Gemmill is the Weekend Contributing Editor for Collider. You can follow them on Twitter@_matineeidle.
