This Week's "SNL" Took Meal Prep Kits to a Terrifying Place

There’s a long history of food-themed sketches on Saturday Night Live, beginning with Dan Ackroyd’s impression of Julia Child and extending to more recent sketches the explored the merits of overnight salads and showed an ice cream focus group going awry. This weekend’s episode had multiple sketches built around food, including one where host Nate Bargatze and Ego Nwodim played contestants on a cooking show — and featured a cameo from Padma Lakshmi, along with the terrifying concept of Impossible Catfish.

And then there was a Please Don’t Destroy video, in which the trio did for meal kits what they’d done for hard seltzer in an earlier sketch — which is to say, take something that’s become ubiquitous and turn it into something that’s both funny and more than a little ominous.

In a world in which influencers’ energy drinks are recalled by the Canadian government and vitamin supplements turn out to contain plenty of off-label ingredients, the idea that an entrepreneur would repackage actual dog food into a meal prep kit doesn’t seem too far-fetched. (No pun intended.) And while this sketch does play out like a cautionary tale, the idea of the simplest meal kit ever — just pour the bag into the bowl and start eating, no utensil required — does have a certain terrible elegance.

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Also, it’s well worth pausing the video about 51 seconds in to appreciate the level of detail that went into the “Dawg Food” packaging. Suffice to say, some of the text and graphics on the bag are well worth savoring — and illustrate the level of craft on hand here. (In the sketch, not the dog food. Or Dawg Food, whichever you prefer.)