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Saturday Night Live kicked off its 47th season over the weekend, and started things off with an expectedly political "Cold Open" sketch. In a surprise, the show put a lot of faith in a first-time castmember to play President Joe Biden.

Many fans were wondering who would play Biden now that Beck Bennett has left the cast. As it turns out, the show has tapped James Austin Johnson, who made his SNL debut right in the hot seat.

The sketch itself also featured Cecily Strong making her return to the show playing Senator Kyrsten Sinema, -- whom Biden describes as looking like "all of the characters from "Scooby doo" at the same time?"

Meanwhile, Melissa Villasenor reprised her fantastic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez impression, and Aidy Bryant debuted her Joe Manchin impression.

The sketch really was close to an all-hands-on-deck situation, featuring Ego Nwodim, Alex Moffant and finally Pete Davidson -- who brought his increasingly unsettling Andrew Cuomo impression to the table.

As is so often the case with the first Cold Open of the season, the jokes were more of an exaggerated recap of the past four months than an actual sketch or premise. It tackled the difficulty Biden has faced passing the infrastructure bill, Cuomo's sexual harassment scandal and more.

That being said, it was a surprisingly impressive showcase of Johnson's Biden -- which will likely be a recurring impression throughout the coming episodes.

Apart from Johnson, this season has also added Aristotle Athari and Sarah Sherman, while featured player Lauren Holt has departed, along with Bennett.

Saturday Night Live airs live, coast-to-coast, at 11:30 p.m. ET, 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.

For more on the upcoming season, check out the video below.

Video

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