Aubrey Plaza’s mischief as an intern started lengthy earlier than she performed the sardonic April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation. During school, she briefly served as a web page at NBC, the place she spent her time sharing faux details on the excursions she led and sneaking off to vomit away her hangovers. Unsurprisingly, Plaza lasted only some months earlier than being requested to depart, however in her brief stint on the community, she obtained the possibility to path SNL’s design division. “I was stalking, lurking in the shadows,” she instructed Jimmy Fallon earlier this week.
When Plaza took the stage final evening to host SNL for the primary time, she wasn’t lurking anymore. During her opening monologue, she gave a fabricated tour of SNL Studio 8H, then joined three of the set designers she’d interned with all these years in the past. “When I was showing up an hour late and barely working, did you ever expect to see me hosting the show?” she requested one in every of them. “Bow to your queen!” she demanded.
And pay homage SNL did. Allison Jones, the casting director for Parks and Recreation, as soon as purportedly referred to as Plaza “the weirdest girl I ever met,” and Plaza’s delightfully offbeat vibe got here to outline the episode. The present leaned into it from the soar, delivering a number of sketches about bizarre characters liable to weirder behaviors that gave Plaza a possibility to play together with her abilities. During a premise about morning bulletins at a Catholic faculty, she performed a nun who’d been unintentionally electrocuted within the tub, died for 2 minutes, and found heaven won’t exist. The expertise left her questioning all the pieces. “I’m going to have sex tonight!” she shouted, widening her eyes in shaky resolve.
In a sketch a couple of sport evening, Sasha (Plaza) and her accomplice, Ian (Mikey Day), ended up horrifying their new neighbors by unintentionally revealing their darkish historical past whereas enjoying Taboo. Racing to get Ian to guess a secret phrase appropriately, Sasha prompted him by reminding him what she was “on” the evening they first met. His guesses—on ketamine, on parole—lastly led to the best one: on fireplace. The impact felt like a throwback to SNL’s halcyon days just a little greater than a decade in the past, when Kristen Wiig and Will Forte usually pushed the present’s sketches in absurd and grotesque instructions.
Still, though the present tiptoed as much as Plaza’s vibe, it stopped in need of going too far. SNL has, in spite of everything, lengthy aimed to succeed in and please center America—one thing Sarah Sherman has needed to navigate since becoming a member of the solid final yr. Known for body-horror comedy underneath the identify Sarah Squirm, Sherman has discovered methods to tone down the extra excessive facet of her humor with out forgoing the explanations SNL employed her within the first place. In each Sherman’s and Plaza’s circumstances, the compromise works, however one has to surprise what may be attainable if the present didn’t so fervently pursue middle-of-the-road comedy.
As it nears its fiftieth anniversary—and as even longtime solid members query its longevity after that milestone—SNL appears to be at an inflection level. Given that so lots of the present’s most recognizable solid members have lately departed, newer members have the potential to reinvigorate it. With youth usually comes experimentation, and it’s led to large payoffs up to now, specifically the viral energy of Digital Shorts.
But this season has performed it secure as a rule, tapping big-name hosts and visitor stars so as to add pizzazz as a substitute of giving its newer solid ample room to attempt novel issues. Last evening mined nostalgia in a number of predictable methods, together with by having Plaza seem as her famed Parks and Recreation character throughout a “Weekend Update” bit. She was ultimately joined by her boss, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), for a second that sweetly related the 2 reveals. Poehler took the chance to sit down in her former anchor chair and ship a joke. It was a delight, after all, but in addition a reminder of the previous relatively than a sign of the longer term.
Each period of SNL has to seek out its personal voice. In a season bursting with change, the present has struggled with relevancy and originality; it hasn’t but discovered a solution to stand out from earlier eras. But as a lot as Plaza’s activate the present nodded to the previous (her time as a web page, beloved outdated characters), it additionally hinted at new potentialities.