Hosted by COVID-19 survivor Tom Hanks and filmed remotely, the show’s latest broadcast is a cultural document of the times.
“There’s no such thing as Saturdays anymore … Every day is today,” said Tom Hanks, introducing last night’s unusual edition of Saturday Night Live, a TV show whose traditional format is wildly unsuited to a time of social isolation. SNL is usually written in cramped offices, filmed in front of a packed audience in bustling Midtown Manhattan, and aired in celebration of the weekend, which is a little harder to enjoy right now.
Given America’s ongoing lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the cast and crew of SNL could be forgiven for taking the next few weeks off. Instead, they returned for a remotely filmed cavalcade of sketches that felt perfectly matched to the strange era that the world is living through.
The various missives were filmed by cast members in their own homes and assembled into something legible by SNL’s nimble post-production team. The sketches varied in quality—some went on too long, others were too brief, and the show’s energy had undeniable peaks and valleys. But all of this is fairly typical for SNL. As Hanks said in his introduction (filmed in front of his very tastefully appointed kitchen), “There’ll be some good stuff, maybe one or two stinkers; you know the drill.”
What carried the entire experiment through was the can-do, show-must-go-on spirit, a reminder that comedy can still thrive under the strangest of circumstances…
Watching cast members such as Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, and Pete Davidson rattle around in their homes may have had a touch of public-access strangeness to it, but each of their performances had a pent-up quality that many a home viewer could probably relate to. They’re performers, after all, and they have nobody to perform for. As McKinnon bounced around the room doing home workouts as part of her Ruth Bader Ginsburg impression, her exuberance at finally unleashing some energy felt contagious…
Read the full review in The Atlantic here: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/04/saturday-night-live-at-home-quarantine-episode/609892/