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.
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.
This was another Saturday Night Live skit that drew a lot of attention and criticism for making light of the terrorist group known as ISIS. I don't know what people expect when a group like ISIL has become such a major terrorist organization. The media is covering this group on a daily basis so of course we are going to see some comedians taking shots at them. I think Chris Rock and Kyle Mooney did a great job of portraying two ISIS militants seeking funding for their terror group. Chris Rock goes a little over the top with his humor but any fan of his work should be use to his methods for getting the audience to crack up. I really don't see what all the drama is about. SNL has been pretty tame even in recent years when you compare them to series like MadTV or In Living Color. Comedy shows from the 90s were much more offensive than Saturday Night Live is on their worst episode.
As far as the acting goes Kate McKinnon does an incredible job of playing Barbara Corcoran, I mean she hits it out of the ballpark here and even seems to get her voice right. Kenan Thompson also does a great job portraying Daymond John who seems willing to strike a deal with the two jihadists when they offer to make FUBU the official brand of the new Islamic caliphate. Season 40 has really been great, there have been many incredible celebrity guest stars too, I'm sad to see it coming to an end but we still have a few episodes remaining.
