Saturday Night Live Belonged to Pedro Pascal

Flexing impressive turnaround muscles, Saturday Night Live opened on a spoof of the Chinese balloon that was shot down off the South Carolina coast yesterday. Chloe Fineman’s MSNBC anchor scored an exclusive interview with the remains of the surveillance balloon, a grumpy Bowen Yang encased in a white bubble suit and orange floaties, bobbing in the Atlantic. “I entertain you people for four days and then get shot by Biden!” he pouted. “I can’t believe I’m Joe’s Osama.” He blamed his passover of Montana on his entertainment tastes. “I love the show Yellowstone. It’s like Succession but outside.” Batting off a ridiculous seagull, he let it be known that he didn’t appreciate all the pundits commenting on his weight, comparing his size to that of three buses. “I’m a balloon, so that’s my body.” Yang in costume—the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, a humping bumblebee—always pays off. His reliable charisma could be the key to SNL taking back their cold opens. 

Now give it up for Daddy! Host Pedro Pascal bounded down the steps in his purple silk shirt, looking like it was his birthday party. The crinkly-eyed star of The Last of Us and The Mandalorian oozes warmth and gratitude. Some stars make it through their hosting gigs hanging on for dear life, their eyes darting for the cue cards. Pascal, meanwhile, looked ready to move into Studio 8H he was so relaxed and game. But during his monologue he also got visibly choked up calling out the bravery of his parents who fled Pinochet’s dictatorship when he was nine months old.   

After years of playing father figures and declaring himself a bigger Daddy than Oscar Isaac in Vanity Fair’s lie detector test, Pascal leaned right into his reputation in the Mr. Ben sketch. His high school students were hot for teacher, and who can blame them? Pascal in Mr. Ben’s shirt and tie gives off the equivalent heat of the Magic Mike’s Last Dance trailer. But Mr. Ben had a job to do, which was make sense of his students’ use of social media during school hours, which meant dissecting their short-circuited digital speak. “Covid lock us down when we 11 and now we 14 so now we have to make you Daddy,” explained Ego Nwodim’s student. “Mommy works remotes on day,” continued Yang, “and doesn’t have time to eat it up no crumbs left so we made you Daddy and Miss Jenny Mommy.” Enter an exquisite Sarah Paulson in a pixie cut, as a similarly befuddled teacher. The takeaway of all this is that teenagers have relocated to Mars through no fault of their own and Pascal and Paulson should star in a Nora Ephron-style romantic comedy, stat. 

Somewhere, Chris Pratt is crying into his glass of fresh farm milk with the knowledge that Dark Mario is the reboot the world needed. In a faux trailer for the prestige HBO series, Pascal plays our suffering hero who’s seen too much of this cruel world. Fineman is his bedraggled Princess, on the run from Kenan Thompson’s maniacal Goomba, “a sentient figure with shoes for legs.” Mikey Day is-a Luigi and everybody else in the cast is bisexual because HBO is cool and and no crumbs left on the Rainbow Road.