Dana Carvey’s Joe Biden impersonation is so perfect he should be back on ‘SNL’

Let’s face it, “Saturday Night Live” nailed it when they chose Alec Baldwin to play Donald Trump on the show, but they missed the mark casting Jim Carrey as Joe Biden. Carrey’s Biden was all-over-the-map, sometimes he was a doddering old man, other times he bounced around, making finger guns and acting like a 1930’s brawler.

This season, Carrey was replaced by cast member Alex Moffat and the results, so far, haven’t been very memorable. In the past, Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson, John Mulaney, and Kevin Nealon have all taken a shot at playing Biden on “SNL.”

Former “SNL” cast member Dana Carvey appears to have found the secret sauce to impersonating Biden and it’s so good that he should return to the show as the president.

Why not?

Maya Rudolph rejoined the cast to play Kamala Harris. Carvey was probably best known on ‘SNL’ for his impersonation of George H.W. Bush which was the gold standard during his presidency.

He also famously played the Church Lady and Garth on “Wayne’s World.”

Carvey debuted his Biden impersonation on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday. Carvey says his impersonation is the one you see at a town hall. That’s the more empathetic version of Biden that we’ve seen a lot of since the COVID-19 outbreak.

“I do him at the town hall when he’s like the gentle father to the country and he looks like the alien who came off the spaceship in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’” Carvey explained to host Colbert. He also peppers in Biden’s unique ability to lose his train of thought mid-sentence.

“Folks, c’mon. Folks, let’s get real here. You know, we’ve got to do the thing,” Carvey said while squinting his eyes. “We did with Barack, we did the deal. And, you know, my dad, you know, lost his job in Scranton. No joke! No joke, I’m not being a wise guy here. I said, ‘Pops, why did you lose it?’ He said, ‘Joe, I did.’ My mom said, ‘That’s the cookie that crumbles.”

People contain multitudes, so the best impersonators seem to focus on one aspect of their subject’s personality. Carvey’s approach is similar to the one taken by master Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson, who focuses on Trump’s behavior at rallies. His initial attempts at impersonating Trump targeted his bigotry, but he soon realized that that’s more bothersome than funny to most.

Carvey also did his Dr. Anthony Fauci impersonation on the episode. To Carvey, Fauci comes off as “kind of a tough guy.” Here, he imagines what a conversation between Fauci and Paul McCartney would sound like.