The Best Saturday Night Live Sketches from This Weekend
It had been a little over a month since the last episode of Saturday Night Live, which featured Daniel Craig as the host and a bunch of nervously funny jokes about coronavirus before shit really hit the fan in the U.S. Times certainly have changed, but SNL came back this weekend for a unique quarantine episode, Saturday Night Live at Home. The Not Ready for Primetime Players, host Tom Hanks, and musical guest Chris Martin, were all isolated in their homes and apartments, but they still managed to cobble together a charming block of comedy, especially given the circumstances.
With few exceptions, most of the skits were solo efforts—like Kate McKinnon’s extremely DIY Ruth Bader Ginsberg workout video (using Q-tips as weights is both scrappy and a pretty solid joke). A couple of sketches involved more than one cast member at once, though. Colin Jost and Michael Che weren’t at the same desk, but they tossed jokes back and forth via video chat for Weekend Update, and six of the gang Zoomed-in for a sketch about McKinnon and Aidy Bryant’s elderly receptionist characters utterly failing to learn how to use the video-conferencing app. (Honestly, this one was a little too real!) Martin’s musical appearance consisted of him singing “Shelter From The Storm,” which was both a little on-the-nose and also appreciated.
Here, though, are the three best sketches of the night.
Tom Hanks At-Home Monologue
One has to wonder how many lives were saved when Americans started taking the coronavirus seriously after the NBA canceled its season and Tom Hanks announced he'd contracted the virus on the same day. Luckily, Hanks, along with his wife Rita Wilson, have made a recovery, and the beloved actor served as this episode’s host. “I have been the celebrity canary in a coal mine for coronavirus,” he accurately describes himself as, before making some cute jokes about forgetting how to put on a real shirt and doing some intentionally shoddy costumes for a self-Q&A.
It’s not the show's funniest monologue by a long shot, but it’s actually quite comforting, in a way. It’s good to see Hanks (and it’s interesting to see the new selfie cast introductions that precede his appearance), plus it’s nice to hear him acknowledge that this is a strange time. As part of this, he admits that this is somewhat of a strange episode, but that there will hopefully be some laughs. “It’s SNL,” he says. “There’ll be some good stuff. Maybe one or two stinkers. You know.”
How Low Will You Go?
This was one of the few sketches that more resembled what you might see in a traditional SNL run-of-show (it’s easy to imagine this on a set rather than via video chat). The concept is pretty simple: it’s a dating show, but for people who have been in self-isolation for a long time and, as a result, are desperately horny. The touch-starved bachelorettes—Bryant, Heidi Gardner, and Ego Nwodim—introduce themselves to host Beck Bennett by revealing how many vibrators they’ve broken during quarantine. The real jokes come when they reveal how little they care about the bachelors (Mikey Day, Pete Davidson, and Kenan Thompson). It doesn’t matter that, say, Davidson’s character brags about watching every episode of Family Guy to pass time during the pandemic. “Yeah okay, he’s fine,” Bryant says. “He’s got the good parts with me, I’m good with him.”
Bernie Sanders Address
Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign last week (RIP), and quarantine gave recent GQ cover star Larry David a perfect excuse to bring back his uncanny Sanders impression without having to leave the comfort of his own home. As Sanders, David makes some solid jokes at Joe Biden’s expense (“The media lined up behind Joe Biden like he lines up behind a set of lady’s shoulders.”) But, perhaps the best part of the sketch is hearing David just recycle his own personal opinion on handshaking and passing it off as a Bernie joke.
We venture into the peculiar alternate reality of Larry David and begin to wonder: Is the world's most infamously neurotic man actually its most self-actualized?
“You’re hurting old people like me. Well, not me, I have nothing to do with you, I’ll never see you."
Originally Appeared on GQ
