Quinta Brunson sashayed onto the main stage looking like Betty Boop, ready for her sophomore stint hosting SNL. She gave passing glance to her brief
Quinta Brunson sashayed onto the main stage looking like Betty Boop, ready for her sophomore stint hosting SNL. She gave passing glance to her brief tenure working a phone sex line before moving onto the driving bit of her monologue. The 4’11 Emmy-winning star and creator of Abbott Elementary broke into song—her voice a bit quavery to start—in praise of her humble stature. “If you’re looking for a superstar, start looking down,” she sang. “You can flip like Simone, Olympic superstar, or start a war with Drake like you’re Kendrick Lamar. You can be like Tom Holland and marry a 10, or like Sabrina Carpenter and…” Enter Carpenter in the pink, shiny flesh, cute as a cupcake. She helped sleek out Brunson’s voice and the two were off to the races, singing about about all the fun sights from their point of view, like “toddlers’ eyes, peoples’ crotches, and Jeremy Allen White!” Marcello Hernandez wanted in because hanging around polly pockets helped him feel statuesque. Basketball hall-of-famer Dwyane Wade was a left-field add to the mix, but a welcome one, mainly because he seemed so earnestly dedicated to his dance choreography.
Brunson’s best scene partner throughout the episode was Kenan Thompson, who was at her side for most of the night. Their finest hour perhaps was “OnlySeniors,” in which they played aging parents bragging to their grown children—Ego Nwodim and Devon Walker—about their up-to-date life insurance plan. All they had to was “set up our camera and do stuff to each other.” Sometimes with a ball gag. Or in a swing. Or with the Johnsons from next door, Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner in open bathrobes.
Speaking of Day, he was back raging behind thesteering wheel. Alongside his daughter, played with salivating aplomb by Chloe Fineman, he parked next to Brunson on a ferry. His pantomimes of annoyance over her bad parking job escalated to him acting out the word toxic and Fineman dangling imaginary balls over her mouth to tell Brunson she was nuts. “You raised a hoe,” said Brunson, raking an imaginary garden tool. If the conceit of placing the sketch on a ferry seemed an odd one, the pay off was a frantic Colin Jost appearing in the passenger window wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Thurston Howell’s silk neck scarf. “Hey, you say you love ferries? Would you like to buy one? Please buy it. I’m Pete Davidson, hi.”
With summer swift approaching, women have a substantial decision to make. Can they still pull off Coachella Whore or is it time to bleach their wardrobes of joy? “Your 20s are over, mama. It’s time to close that book and move on. Introducing Forever 31… with styles in every color of the bummer rainbow.” Fineman misremembering the moves to the Charli XCX Apple dance while draped in shapeless swathes of charcoal grey was one of the best moments of the entire episode. Suits, bigger suits, “big ol’ David Byrne suits.” Trenches, inexplicably costly t-shirts, and loose trousers, “because we know you freezing your eggs.” Okay, now do Forever 51.
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