NBC
Following the departure of eight cast members—including big names like Kate McKinnon and Pete Davidson—over the summer, Lorne Michaels declared Season 48 of Saturday Night Live a “year of reinvention” for the show. And while it’s hard to tell yet what that might mean in practice, the lack of star power could certainly be felt in the first cold open sketch of the fall.
They even called in host Miles Teller to play Peyton Manning, who along with Andrew Dismukes’ Eli Manning, delivered play-by-play meta commentary on the show’s inevitable struggles. But the attempt to wink at the situation only highlighted how big of a hole they are in. “There are a lot of changes at the show, which could be exciting,” Teller’s Manning said. “Let’s see what they spent the entire summer coming up with.”
As James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump launched into a typical and expected Mar-a-Lago-during-a-hurricane bit, the Mannings continually chimed in to remark on how terrible the whole thing was. They teased the new recruits for messing up, roasted a “surprise fumble” from Bowen Yang who was “supposed to take a step up this year,” and drew attention to McKinnon’s absence by wondering why no one was impersonating Anthony Fauci or Lindsey Graham or Rudy Giuliani.