Led by a spot-on performance by host David Harbour, Saturday Night Live skewered Todd Phillips’ Joker, spoofing the villain origin story with a trailer for another gritty tale — one from “the studio that brought you Joker and the twisted minds at Sesame Workshop.”
Grouch sees Harbour doing his best Joaquin Phoenix-as-Arthur-Fleck, adopting the creepy voice and antisocial tendencies this time as a garbageman who transforms into Oscar the Grouch as he becomes fed up with the Gotham-esque crime and squalor of Sesame Street. We also see Big Bird dancing for cash, Bert and Ernie getting mugged, Elmo getting arrested for selling crack, a homeless Cookie Monster and a junkie Count as Guy Smiley declares “the once-friendly neighborhood of Sesame Street has now become a haven of crime and corruption.”
“If everybody calls you trash, and everybody treats you like trash, why don’t you become trash?” Oscar the Grouch asks, as an eerie orchestral version of the Sesame Street theme song swells and we see him applying makeup and descending into a trash can.
The sketch also features nods to some of the most memorable moments from the Joker trailer. We see Oscar the Grouch dancing as he descends a long staircase and backstage at a talk show asking to be introduced as the Grouch just like Phoenix’s Fleck requests to be brought out as Joker.
And of course, as the parody notes, the flick is directed by Phillips and penned “by the writer of P is for Potty.”
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