If there’s one thing Saturday Night Live loves, it’s to make a meal out of its longevity. Referencing the past, celebrating the highs of years gone by, and relitigating particular sketches. This being the 50th anniversary year (it was actually last year, but never mind), the sketch comedy powerhouse is continuing this trend, this time with a new shortform series for Peacock, YouTube, and socials. It’s called The Rundown in which various luminaries of SNL discuss their ideal or perfect run of show.
First up, we have current head writer and Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost talking about the ever-important Cold Open.
Jost says the cold open of SNL is truly cold. Despite a warm-up act at live tapings, audiences get “10 minutes of jazz” between the warm-up and the show beginning. So the real trick of writing a cold open is to get the audience laughing as quickly as possible. Jost says he ended up writing something like 100 cold opens over the years, which is a really impressive feat.
When it comes to Jost’s pick for the best, most perfect cold open, he chooses the season premiere from season 34, in September 2008. In the heavy lead-up to the presidential election between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the latter’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, proved a ripe figure for satire. The cold open parodies an interview Palin had with CBS’s Katie Couric, except with Tina Fey as Palin and Amy Poehler as Couric. The sketch, which Seth Meyers wrote, Jost says, has a mix of nostalgia and timelessness that makes it his pick.
The Rundown will drop new episodes on Wednesdays every week SNL isn’t airing a new episode. It will run through mid-June. Future episodes will have presenters like Dana Carvey, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang, and Questlove choosing their favorites.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.