Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | March 19, 2026
Saturday Night Live cold opens can feel like a magic trick sometimes. Yes, I know that they’re currently bogged down by sketch after sketch about a certain terrible, dangerous man with lots of power because they do insane numbers on YouTube (welcome to 2026, my friends), but there was a time when it felt a little less punishing. The show could open with a surprise cameo or a song by the full cast. You wouldn’t know what to expect (unlike now). Then, you’d watch some carefully crafted idea either start the show with a bang or a whimper.
Now, on a new online segment called The Rundown (which is also on the almighty YouTube, praise be), Colid Jost just went over some of his favorite cold opens and what it’s been like to write them for so long. It’s pretty fun! Not only do you get a fun walk down memory lane, but you get a fun look at the process, and Jost has some good stories to tell. It also feels like him at his most fanboyish, which is fun to see. He really seems like he loves the show.
At one point, he talks about Matt Damon coming on to play Brett Kavanaugh (which I had absolutely memory-holed). Damon did an incredible job, and you’d maybe think that he had known he was going to do it for at least a week. Instead, Jost notes that they wrote the sketch and thought of Damon the night before. They called him, and he flew overnight from San Francisco to get there on time, arriving at about noon the day of the show. Then, 11 and a half hours later, he drank a beer, went onstage, and crushed.
If anything, hearing Jost wax poetic about cold opens from the past, like one early on in his tenure that featured a reveal of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, kind of underlines how underwhelming they have been lately. But, as he also points out, there was a time when SNL was doing OJ cold opens every week for months. So, there is precedent for something like this, but hopefully they can get back to something else Jost mentions, which is just a funny situation with a hilarious performance (though I’m sure that’s easier said than done).
