It’s very rare for Saturday Night Live to not start with a political cold open. They keep James Austin Johnson in a cooler somewhere, thawing him every time they need to put the saggy neck prosthetics on him for the first three minutes of the show. But on the day that hundreds of thousands of people showed up for No Kings protests across the country, SNL put away the orange face makeup and red ties and pulled out Marcello Hernandez and a little goatee.
When the “Domingo” sketch first aired, featuring a parody of a song from tonight’s host, Sabrina Carpenter, starring Ariana Grande, it was an instant viral sensation. Since then, there have been multiple versions: After the Bridesmaid speech, there was the Babymoon and the Vow Renewal. The sketches have now featured Grande, Carpenter and Charlie XCX.
But for the cold open, the joke just felt dead. Already relying on a premise that’s funny approximately one time, it also just lacked any of the energy and charisma of previous versions. Maybe it was that instead of Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner, we had two newer cast members. Maybe it’s hard to believe that Andrew Dismukes would allow his cheating girlfriend’s loose-lipped friends to give any more songs in the form of speeches.
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Whatever the combination is, it just wasn’t enjoyable to watch, which is especially hard because fans have been pushing for fewer political cold opens and more goofy, irreverent ones. But the Domingo sketch felt like an obligation for everyone involved, the sort of self-referential humor SNL deploys to deepen our parasocial bond with the show.
Except, it was hard to enjoy that when there were too many people awkwardly reading from cue cards and a dismal number of actual punchlines. Instead, we just got the ghost of better sketches past.
Fortunately, the cold open was the weakest part of the show. Unfortunately, it might be time to kill off the Domingo sketch forever.
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