For the second time in as many episodes, a Succession cast member appeared on Saturday Night Live. This weekend, Kieran Culkin hosted for an evening that featured Culkin in a turkey costume, a heist gone wrong and the Please Don’t Destroy guys having an escalating series of awkward telephone conversations.
The episode featured multiple filmed sketches in which a familiar narrative takes a bizarre turn. In one, a planned theft of a supercar goes very wrong for a logical yet unexpected reason — making for an outstanding punchline once it becomes apparent where things are headed. The other begins in a very dramatic place, with an injured jockey and a crucial race on the line. But soon enough, it becomes very clear that we’re a long way from Seabiscuit.
I’m not sure how someone came up with the idea of “horseracing, but with the 90s” — but the combination of Culkin’s commitment to the sketch and some very unconvincing special effects makes for a good sense of “what did I just see?” It might not be the best SNL sketch involving a horse to air in the last year, but it definitely went somewhere unexpected. Sometimes, that’s enough.
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