In a night full of sharply insightful sketches featuring Chance The Rapper, watching Chance portray a black newscaster hilariously miscast as a hockey sideline reporter may just be the most accurate. Chance plays Laslo Holmes, who normally covers the Knicks for the “MSG Network,” fills in for the usual rinkside reporter and provides a kooky, totally uninformed running commentary of the more unusual parts of hockey. Holmes seems bewildered by the complex, European names, flustered by the seemingly random fistfights, and utterly undone at the intense cold. It’s clear he has no idea what’s going on, especially when the most notable portion of the game for him is spotting a lone, Black hockey fan across the rink.
Earlier in the evening, Chance lampooned Batman for his “tough on crime” stance and his odd tendency for hanging low-crime perpetrators from gargoyles and begged Obama to come back to office, ’90s R&B-style. He also declared his intention to campaign to be the “Mariah Carey of Thanksgiving,” dropping off a holiday anthem that skewers the discomfort we all feel being trapped with our estranged and just-plain-strange family members.
As it turns out, Chance The Rapper is just as good at comedy as he is at hip-hop. Maybe a name change is in order, after all.
