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.
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.
This new Saturday Night Live sketch is from season 47, episode 12. This cold open skit is a parody of the Russian disinformation campaign going on right now as Vladimir Putin attempts to invade Ukraine. President Biden is being briefed by some of his top aids about the escalating tensions between Russia, America and the Ukraine as the Russians attempt to use social media to twist the facts to their advantage. Will the Kremlin succeed in convincing Europe and the west that they are the good guys?
This is a particularly funny SNL skit. It features Kenan Thompson as one of Bidens top Generals. Ego Nwodim and Alex Moffat also have starring roles as members of the presidents cabinet of advisors.
This skit also has a small appearance by Pete Davidson as Aaron Rodgers and Chris Redd as a statefarm representative. I won't gives this short vignette away but it's hilarious.
Chloe Fineman also has a small but significant role as a teenage social media expert brought in to fight fire with fire by starting her own meme war with Putin.
James Austin Johnson turns in an applaudable performance as President Joe Biden. His portrayal of the president as a clueless boomer who still hasn't yet figured out how the internet works and who is still stuck in a post WWII mindset when it comes to Germany should not surprise anyone.
Both Democratic and Republican Presidents have been fodder for SNL comedians since the shows conception. When the sitting President is well into his golden years the Saturday Night Live writers are going to take full advantage of that. There is no political favoritism here. In the past most older Presidents have been Republicans so it's just Biden's turn.
Overall this is a really funny sketch. I think James Austin does a particularly good job of portraying the President in a comedic manner. This is a really good cold open and one that I will remember for a long time. Let's just hope the real crisis on the Ukrainian border works itself out before it turns into a disaster.
