“SNL” brought back almost all of the people who have played Joe Biden, courtesy of Time Travel, in order to cheer up modern day Joe Biden, and honestly, it kind of cheered us up too.
“SNL” cold open sketches have tended to be really, really long for the last several years — pretty much since the rise of fascist sympathizers in America made politics a constant stress ball — and hey coincidentally (not really), that context made up the central joke of the cold open’s premise. But the sketch itself was really short, which was a nice surprise.
The sketch started out with the current “SNL” cast’s President Joe Biden, played by newcomer James Austin Johnson. This Biden was extremely bummed out about his declining polling numbers, and needed a pick me up.
That’s when he was suddenly joined by a visitor from the past: Vice President Joe Biden, traveling to the present day from 2013 — played by the guy who portrayed Biden back during the Obama years, tonight’s host, Jason Sudeikis.
Sudeikis’ Biden noticed how sad Johnson’s Biden is and tried to cheer him up with a lot of old Biden swagger. “I hope this doesn’t sound sexist, but you gotta smile more sweetie,” he joked.
Johnson’s Biden explained that things are pretty dismal, telling old Biden that the last president ruined everything. But when he mentioned some of Donald Trump’s more embarrassing scandals, he didn’t actually make it clear who he was talking about.
Which led 2013 Biden to remark “wow, Hillary got awesome.”
You can watch the full cold open in the video above.