SNL A Christmas Carol Skit Featuring Steve Martin And Martin Short

 

One of the funniest comedy duos to ever feature on Saturday Night Live has been Steve Martin and Martin Short. These two geniuses of comedy timing are without peers in the celebrity world. Anytime they have ever done a skit together on SNL it is always a good time with plenty of laughs to go around and this SNL Christmas skit is no exception.

Martin Short plays the part of Ebenezer Scrooge in this comedy retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Steve Martin takes on the role of whom I believe to be the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Just like in the original story, Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up after having his nightmarish visits from the three ghosts of Christmas past, present and future the night before. With a renewed heart he seeks to begin celebrating the true nature of Christmas by sharing his wealth with the common people and he starts by enlisting the help of a poor orphaned lad played by Sarah Sherman.

Scrooge asks the young lad if he knows of the large holiday Goose for sale down the street. The young street urchin knows exactly which one the old Ebenezer is speaking of. Scrooge instructs the young lad to go fetch it for him so that Tiny Tim and his family can have a Christmas feast. But when Martin Short throws a gold coin down to the young boy his eye is put out and a bloody comedy scene begins.

Tiny Tim and another orphan played by Marcello Hernandez show up on the scene and more hijinks insue. The townsfolk played Aidy Bryant and Kyle Mooney also get in on the hijinks. By the end of this skit all the towns people are dead, horribly injured or at the very least covered in blood. This is probably one of the goriest holiday snl skits ever put together but I would rank it among the funniest Christmas themed sketches ever put together.

This is one 5 minute clip you don't want to pass up. Grab yourself a cup of got coco and enjoy.

Fusion Scientist And His Loser Brother, Austin Butler SNL Skit

 

Here is a new family dinner conversation skit from the 48th season of SNL. It's been almost a year since I posted anything on this blog and this simple vignette seems like an easy clip to talk about as I move into finally getting this Saturday Night Live blog back on its feet.

In this short comedy skit from episode 9 of season 48 Austin Butler plays the archetypal brilliant son who has just helped discover a breakthrough in fusion energy. His position at the department of energy has him manning the lasers that create the fusion reaction that attempts to harness the energy of a star.

His underappreciated and idiot of a brother is played by Andrew Dismukes. The clips from this last season are bittersweet as they are the last time we will get to see Cecily Strong as a regular on the show. In fact this is her last episode. Let's hope we get to see her in a guest appearance in later seasons.

As the family praises their intelligent and successful son on his codiscovery of free energy their other much less appreciated son interjects that he does stuff too like deliver so many pizzas.

This skit has a simple formula but it's hilarious and should not be missed. I won't ruin it for you by giving away to many spoilers but for an under six minute skit it is full of laughs.

Butler, Cecily and Dismukes are joined by fellow cast mates Heidi Gardner, Marcello Hernandez, James Austin Johnson, and Sarah Sherman who play his family members sitting around the table for dinner.

Saturday Night Live Skit Star Trek Spinoff

 Star Trek has been one of the television shows that Saturday Night Live has parodied many times throughout the years. John Belushi did captain Kirk and Patrick Stewart was on the show himself when he did a spoof that made fun of his own character from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This new skit centers around two self centered white twenty somethings that just graduated from a exclusive starfleet training academy. The young crewmembers are played by Carey Mulligan and Mikey Day. As the ship faces certain destruction by being pulled closer and closer to a blackhole the duo continuously wreaks chaos on the bridge by making themselves the center of fake drama.

This is not the best Star Trek skit I have seen SNL come up with but it has some good laughs. The whole cast comes out for this one with Beck Bennett playing the captain, Kate McKinnon as the 1st officer and the rest of the crewmembers are filled in by Ego Nwodim, Alex Moffat, Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman.

SNL Skit Cinema Classics, Gaslight

 This is another season 47 episode 11 SNL skit featuring Will Forte and Kate McKinnon. I don't know why I keep coming back to this episode other than the fact that many of the skits are really funny. That and maybe because it is so convenient to pull newer clips off youtube rather than scrolling through older ones. 

However, I have made a commitment to post old and new Saturday Night Live Skits on this blog. So you should come to expect a nice mix of everything as far back as the first season from 1975 all the way up to the newest episodes.

This sketch is a parody of the PBS series “Film Classics". It features Kenan Thompson pretending to be the shows host Reese De’What. I'm not sure if that's a real person but the name is perfect for a one liner that Kenan doesn't fail to exploit.

Kenan proceeds to give the audience the definition of gaslighting as the manipulation of facts to make someone believe something that is not real. This is something that everyone who has watched the Trump movement and the rise of right-wing alternative facts should be familiar with.

We are then treated with a scene from the 1944 Ingrid Bergman black and white movie “Gaslight". Believe it or not this is an actual film. I think it might even be where the term comes from but I'll have to do some further research. Kate McKinnon plays the part of Ingrid Bergman and Will Forte plays the part of her costar Charles Boyer. Chloe Fineman plays the part of the couples 18 year old maid who seems to be in on the gaslighting scheme the cruel husband is playing on his wife.

In an effort to convince her she is going mad he turn down the gas pressure just a little each night as he tries to convince his wife that the burning flame is at the same level it was the night before. He is trying to convince her that she is mad, presumably to get a divorce or swindle her out of her fortune.

This is seriously funny and Kate McKinnon is the shining star in this one. She is one of the best serial cast members from the modern era of Saturday Night Live and hope we get to see her on the show for many more years to come.

SNL Weekend Update Joe Biden's Presidency Enters 2 Years

 Another great SNL skit from season 47 and episode 11. This is one of the episodes hosted by Will Forte.

I love the SNL weekend update skits. Colin Jost and Michael Che are the funniest current news broadcasters on cable TV. They never fail to present the news in a way that makes you laugh about the current events in our political landscape and the social instability in the world even though these things make you want to cry.

In this skit they poke fun at President Biden's first 2 years in office but let's be fair, no American President in history has had to deal with as much turmoil and chaos left over from a previous leader than Biden has.

They also take a jab at Trump, who was hands down the worst President this country has ever seen. He was mentally unstable, an extreme narcissist and willing to whip up the religious right into a frenzy of political extremism even though he himself is most likely not really a Christian at all. Most billionaires turn out to be atheist no matter what face they give to the public. I don't have a problem with being a non-believer as I identify as atheist myself. It's the lies and manipulation of the American people that angers me.

That's the difference with Biden. He may not be one of the better Presidents we've had when you look at all the leaders from the past. But when you compare him to Donald Trump he is a genius.

There are also some well aimed shots at Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin who voted for reinstating the filibuster allowing the Republicans to block any bill that might prevent voter suppression. With one vote these two supposedly Democratic Senaters gave power back to the minority party. After the vote Senate Republicans lined up to shake Kyrsten Sinema's hand. That should tell you something about what's really going on here. 

This is a weekend update that made me both laugh and cry. Our country's political system is in chaos and I don't anything can save it. At least we have Saturday Night Live to help us get through it.

SNL Wario Skit With Elon Musk And Grimes

Saturday Night Live season 46 featured Elon Musk on episode 18. One of the skits was an homage to all the characters in the super Mario video games. Elon Musk played the part of the evil Wario who was on trial for the murder of Mario who is portrayed at the end of this SNL skit by Kenan Thompson.

This sketch is set in a courtroom with Mikey Day playing the defense attorney for the accused and Kyle Mooney as Mario's brother Luigi. Grimes plays the part of Princess Peach who is secretly carrying on a love affair with Luigi. Kate McKinnon plays the best friend of Wario and the other evil character Waluigi. Heidi Gardner gets the role of prosecuting attorney and Cecily Strong plays the judge in the case.

There is also a surprise appearance of Pete Davidson as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, this episode was created during the time the Governor was going through a scandal that would end his political career.

I didn't really like most of the SNL skits that featured Elon Musk but the cast did a great job of making these sketches funny. At the very least they were not bad and I could get at least a few laughs out of all of them.

Saturday Night Live Skit Season 36 The Talk

This season 36 Saturday Night Live skit is from episode 17. It's from the episode hosted by Zach Galifianakis. He plays an audience member that has his birthday ruined because he has been fooled into watching a live episode of the talk instead of his favorite show the view.

This is a parody skit of the same show that appears on CBS on the afternoon. One of the running jokes is that they aren't that other show. Julie Chen is played by Kristen Wiig. She does a very laid back impersonation of her. Abby Elliott is Leah Remini, Vanessa Bayer portrays Sara Gilbert and Nasim Pedrad does a cartoonish version of Sharon Osbourne. Kenan Thompson even drops in as Whoopi Goldberg

All in all this is a great parody of the CBS talk show. Things really get funny when Zach Galifianakis pops up. He seems to be playing his character from The Hangover in this one. I haven't seen the full episode with him hosting yet but this looks like it might be a good one.

Saturday Night Live Urkel Reboot On Peacock

 These days it seems every streaming service and network is rebooting some old television series from the 80s or 90s. Saturday Night Live has some ideas of their own for the next big reboot. They want to see a new gritty updated version of Family Matters.

This updated version has a new spin on the popular sitcom with the Winslows living on the bad side of Chicago instead of their upper class California neighborhood. Although Urkel still has his nerdy persona the mean streets of Chicago have hardened him up and in one scene he repeatedly hits Mikey Day’s character while saying his catchphrase 'did I do that'

All the major characters from the original show are acted out by the SNL crew. Ego Nwodim plays Laura Winslow. Kenan Thompson plays Carl Winslow. And of course Urkel himself is portrayed with great comedic effect by Chris Redd.

I really love this skit. I often watched Family Matters when I was younger and seeing the characters I enjoyed watching so much parodied by the SNL cast was a real treat. Don't pass this one up. It's worth a watch.

SNL Sketch Comedy Man Park Featuring Pete Davidson

This season 47 episode 6 Saturday Night Live skit is a commercial and features Alex Moffat and Pete Davidson as husbands who are having male intimacy issues because now that they are married they seem to have no male friends to talk about guy stuff with.

When their wives played by Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim come home they are inundated with a verbal tidal wave of masculine information about sports and random movie facts.

Cecily Strong does the voice over for this funny commercial skit. She explains that there is a place for men that have male intimacy issues and that place in man park. A park created exclusively for straight partnered men.

As the men visit the park they find it is an outlet to talk and sometimes argue about movies, sports and other interests.

The park is sort of like a dog park for grown men that have no male companionship. This turned out to be a great skit. Pete Davidson never fails to deliver. This is one SNL sketch comedy you don't want to miss.

MacGruber Coronavirus SNL Will Forte Skit

 Former cast member Will Forte is hosting Saturday Night Live in this season 47 episode 11 show. If you're a fan of his beloved character MacGruber then you will love this new Coronavirus and conspiracy theory inspired skit.

In this sketch MacGruber is trying to diffuse a bomb. He fails but is somehow caught in a time loop where he comes back after each explosion. It seems each time he returns he has become even more entrenched in Alt-Right conspiracy theories.

After the first attempt at disarming the bomb he comes back believing that Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are the cures for the covid19 he has become infected with.

By the end he has become the QAnon Shaman and is spouting all sorts of nonsense about celebrities eating babies. 

This is a great skit featuring Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe as MacGrubers partners. I can't get enough of this character and I hope we see Will Forte doing many more ofcthese in the coming years.