Over the course of nine seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, Jason Sudeikis played dozens of recurring characters, perhaps most famously then-Vice President Joe Biden. In the years since, the show first went the stunt-casting route—to disastrous effect—with Jim Carrey, before briefly turning the role over to Alex Moffat and then this season letting new featured player James Austin Johnson take the reins.
When the Ted Lasso star returned to host SNL for the first time this week, they couldn’t help but give him another shot at the current president.
After a cold open in which Chloe Fineman’s Jen Psaki reluctantly informed SNL’s new Biden about his sinking poll numbers, Johnson looked into the camera and said, “I don’t understand. People used to like me. The press would call me ‘Uncle Joe.’ I miss the old me. Where the hell did that guy go?”
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Right on cue, there was Sudeikis in his signature aviators. “I’m you from eight years ago, buddy!” he explained. “The ghost of Biden past.”
“How can you be me?” the new Biden asked. “You seem so happy, so carefree, so—what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Lucid,” Sudeikis deadpanned. When he reminisced about how great it is to be vice president, when all he had to do was “shake a few hands” and “rub a few shoulders,” Johnson informed him that sadly, you can’t do either of those things anymore. “What happened to us?” old Biden asked. “We used to be fun!”
From there, President Biden complained to his former self that the former president “ruined everything” by hanging out with porn stars, serving McDonald’s at the White House, and fighting with the Pope. To which the old Biden replied, “Wow, Hillary got awesome!”
Ultimately, after a comically unwelcome pop-in from Moffat’s March of 2021 Biden, the sketch served as a passing of the torch from one SNL legend to a future star. “I want you to stand tall and flash those 100% natural choppers we got,” Sudeikis told Johnson. “And remember, we may be from different eras, but at the end of the day, we’re both Joe freakin’ Biden!”
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