Last Night's "SNL" Featured a Tribute to New York City

Watch enough sketch comedy and you might find yourself thinking about what the first germ of an idea was that set the whole thing in motion. Sometimes, it’s pretty clear – the Saturday Night Live sketch “Papyrus” drew its inspiration from the font used for Avatar, for instance. Watching last night’s “Hello Kitty” sketch, it’s nowhere near as clear — this is a sketch that goes to some thoroughly unexpected places over the course of four and a half minutes.

If I was to venture a guess, though, I’d bet that the sketch has its origins in the fact that Hello Kitty is, according to Sanrio, not actually a cat. In the sketch, that declaration causes two newly-hired employees at a Hello Kitty store — played by Bowen Yang and guest host Keke Palmer — to take a stand in response to it.

The sketch takes a couple of bizarre turns, and features what I’m pretty sure is an homage to a certain Sam Raimi-directed film. (No, not A Simple Plan.)

Perhaps the highlight of the sketch, though, comes when one of the other Hello Kitty store employees, played by Sarah Sherman, says, “I don’t care about this job — it just seems like an insane place to get high.” This one covers a lot of ground, and it’s all the better for it.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…