Watch “SNL” Show What Stunt Performers Do With Their Time Off

This sketch took a turn for the delightfully strange

Stunt sketch from "SNL"
A "Saturday Night Live" sketch about stunts and the people who do them.
NBCUniversal

In an interview last month with Vulture, Saturday Night Live‘s Lorne Michaels spoke about the show’s return to being shot in the studio and “the sheer physical challenge of what we can do within protocols.” And so it’s not surprising that the October 3 episode of the show, hosted by Chris Rock and featuring Megan Thee Stallion, struck a balance between the show as it normally exists and the two “At Home” episodes that closed out its previous season.

It is notable that one of the evening’s more successful sketches felt like something that could have aired on one of the remotely-shot episodes. While several of the sketches never quite clicked, a sketch focusing on the travails of stunt performers waiting for film shoots to begin again took a turn for the strange and doubled down on it repeatedly.

The premise of the sketch involved homebound stunt performers working out a kind of virtual showcase — which seemed straightforward enough when Mikey Day, Chris Redd and Ego Nwodim were in the spotlight. But soon it shifted to Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant as stunt performers who work primarily in comedies for children, and things took a turn for the weird.

Admittedly, “let Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant play bizarre characters” is a pretty solid comedic strategy. And as the sketch gets deeper and deeper into their world — including Bryant explaining the finer points of farting on camera and discussing the importance of “ass calluses” — it got both weirder and funnier.

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