In the months since Saturday Night Live went off the air for the summer, the Trump administration provided a head-spinning amount of scandals, controversies, and absurd characters for the show to catch up with when it finally returned. But after the record-high ratings of its previous season, S.N.L. seemed to realize that its true strength was all in being current.

So naturally, the cold open for the 43rd season jumped right into the return of Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. It could very well have been happening in real time, showing the president at his Bedminster Golf Club as he sparred with San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. After a day of headlines dominated by Trump’s tweets attacking Cruz, and just minutes after the White House issued a press release boasting of Trump’s phone call with the former governor of Puerto Rico, for all the S.N.L. team knew, their sketch could have been a real-time depiction of exactly what Trump was doing with his Saturday night.

Though Aidy Bryant had debuted her Sarah Huckabee Sanders impression earlier in the year, her presence flanking Baldwin’s Trump in the cold open was evidence of how much has changed since May; goodnight, sweet Sean Spicer. Dressed in golf clothes and bragging of the sacrifice he made by “skipping the back nine,“ Baldwin’s Trump jumped immediately into a phone call with Cruz, played by Melissa Villasenor in a straightforward impression the cast member, just one year into her time with the show, likely never expected to do. “Wait you do know we’re a U.S. territory right?” she asked Trump, who pauses with a dramatic look of shock on his face before responding, “I do, but many people don’t know that.“

Even with all the Trump administration turmoil that happened over the summer, there was still room for one recurring favorite. Kate McKinnon popped up—literally, she jumped up from behind the resolute desk—as an elfin Jeff Sessions, who profusely apologized for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and begged Trump, “Please Mr. President, don’t tweet on me.“

The sketch ended with a surprisingly dead-on impression from Alex Moffat as New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who arrived to riff on his famous Chinese food summit with Trump that ended in a debt ceiling agreement in mid-September. Schumer is another politician who never seemed all that likely for his own parody, but if the Trump administration has proved anything thus far, truly anything can happen. Nobody may wind up playing Anthony Scaramucci, who for 10 days in the summer seemed destined for his S.N.L. moment. But if anyone in the cast has a good Lindsey Graham or Don Wright impression in their back pocket, they may as well keep it ready. Who knows when they might need it.