Larry David Smashes Into Bernie Sanders on SNL with “Bern Your Enthusiasm”
We love Larry, but going into Saturday Night Live last night, let’s just say we were keeping expectations low. Many of Saturday Night Live’s funniest hosts have unfortunately produce some of the show’s weakest episodes. So last night we were thrilled to see Larry David kill as the host with some of the funniest sketches of the year, proving that the LD style has so many great places to go. Bonus for the chance to see Larry bring his curmudgeon LD style to some silly characters. We couldn’t pick our favorite LD sketch from last night so here are our top 5.
The sketch of the night of course, was Bern Your Enthusiasm, which mingled Larry’s Curb character with his Bernie Sanders impression. We were all waiting for it, and it paid off beautifully with a outstanding and hiliarious J.B. Smoove impression from Jay Pharoah as Larry’s campaign team hanger-on’er “Leon”. Taran Killem also played a perfect “Mary Funkhauser” and Cecily Strong tore shit up with a solid “Susie” campaign manager. Larry of course presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who has a real chance to win this whole thing with all of America feeling the Bern, until his inner Larry comes out and fucks it all up. He just can’t shake hands with a woman who coughed (no wipe, just a cough and shake), he can’t handle 2 percent milk, and popping in a voter’s dislocated shoulder is just out of the question– he’s not a popper.
Larry David/Bernie Sanders worlds collided again in Steam Ship, this time with a special guest appearance from Sanders himself, in a great sketch about an old timey ship full of immigrants that runs aground on it’s way to America, leaving the ships crew to start evacuating women and children into lifeboats. Except of course for Larry, who doesn’t get this whole “save the women and children thing” and even if he could somehow accept the premise that women and children should go first, he’s got some questions about whether those kids actually qualify, and he wants the crew to consider a new evacuation plan. When all else fails, Larry’s character pulls the one percenter card to get into the lifeboat, bringing out old timey Bernie Sanders to put a stop to Larry’s preferential treatment plan.
Number three on our ranking of the top 5 Larry David sketches from last night’s SNL took place at Songwriting Class. Pete Davidson played a kindly songwriter teaching Songwriting 101 to adults. For the first class, Davidson’s character teaches his class an exercise to help them create rhyming lyrics. Larry plays an enthusiastic student named “Russ” who overcomplicates his song lyrics and can’t quite find the rhyme and ends up taking up most of the teacher’s time and energy talking about “Froghattan”, Frog’s houses, Frog buildings. He just can’t get off those frogs, and once he gets going, the rest of the class follows suit. C
A Super Bowl themed digital short for Totino’s Pizza Rolls comes in as our #4 LD sketch. When you need to keep your hungry guys fed, there’s Totinos pizza rolls, and Vanessa Bayer is happy to make them. Larry David, Kyle Mooney, Jon Rudnitsky, Jay Pharoah, Pete Davidson, and Beck Bennett star in this creepy fake commercial. Go go go go go GO GO GO TOUCHDOWN! Awww fumble! TOUCHDOWN! Awwww fumble! TOUCHDOWN! Fumble. TOUCHDOWN!
Our last pick goes to Last Call with Larry David, with David as Ace Chuggins, before model for teeth whitening ads, and last call barfly who hooks up with fellow stool sitter Sheila Sovage. Bartender Kenan Thompson pays witness to the sad hookup. Ace and Sheila share their favorite colors, favorite smells and make plans for a wild night.
