‘SNL’ Cold Opens Need to Take Lessons From ‘South Park’
For years, Saturday Night Live’s cold opens have been the weakest, laziest part of the show. The segment is nearly always a plug-and-play recap of the week’s buzziest news events, featuring James Austin Johnson’s impeccable Donald Trump impression alongside cast members cosplaying public figures who recently trended on Twitter. The segment is Mad Libs comedy — a preset template that plugs in (Pete Hegseth) or (Jeanine Pirro) or (Marco Rubio) to celebrate the makeup department’s proficiency with wigs. As for satire with actual teeth? C’mon, man, we’ve got advertisers to appease!
But now Saturday Night Live has a South Park problem. While the animated series has always been topical to a point, it’s kicked things up a few notches this season, sharpening its knives to inflict damage in real time. While SNL’s Trump is so audacious that he’ll interrupt a Mother’s Day tribute, the cartoon version on South Park is shoving Qatar’s luxury jet up Satan’s ass. If SNL’s Trump winks at the Epstein scandal…
Don't Miss
…South Park’s tiny-dicked President is sex-trafficking Dora the Explorer.
Those Trump cold opens were lame enough when there was nothing to compare them to. Now that South Park is coming for SNL’s corner, can the 51-year-old elder statesman step up its game? South Park, no spring chicken since it debuted in 1997, doesn’t always land its blows, but it’s not afraid to take big swings.
Lorne Michaels will have to let go of his desire to be impartial. “On whatever side, if there’s idiocy, we go after it,” he recently told the cast, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. “We can’t be the official organ of the Democratic Party.”
That’s fair enough, but trying to be an equal-opportunity offender in the show’s cold opens has resulted in tepid satire.
Ironically, there’s a place where Saturday Night Live can find inspiration for hard-hitting political humor — its own Weekend Update. I’m not sure why the show’s open pulls its punches while Colin Jost and Michael Che are allowed to kick America in the crotch on the regular. Last season, Che was getting away with razor-sharp lines like this:
“President Trump says he was interested in reopening Alcatraz because it represents something ‘horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable and weak.’ Which are also his nicknames for his five children.”
While Jost was kicking in with equally brutal jabs:
“Paddington's a toxic bitch. He's an illegal immigrant, freeloading off a nice, gullible white family. His sticky little marmalade paws are just waiting to rip open that trench coat so he can flash our straight children. I can't wait to call ICE on his Peruvian ass.”
We’ll soon find out whether or not Che and Jost are returning for another season of mayhem, but that hilariously mean spirit should live on no matter what. Get those vicious, South Park-style jokes to the top of the show, Lorne, or bail on political sketches altogether.
