Last night’s SNL was very unusual. Mere hours before it went live, the show revealed that they had to send most of the cast and crew, plus musical guest Charli XCX, home due to a massive spike in COVID cases, all thanks to the Omicron variant. (Get boostered — or vaxxed — if you haven’t.) The show still went on, sort of. Host Paul Rudd was there, as were guests Tom Hanks and Tina Fey, plus cast members Keenan Thompson and Michael Che. But most of the episode was comprised of pre-taped sketches they’d filmed during the week, plus some random old sketches.
One of the pre-taped bits was called “An Evening with Pete.” (“Here’s a sketch we finished filming at 5am this morning,” Rudd told viewers in a brief intro.) It revolves around, yes, Pete Davidson, catching up with over three decades in the future, in the year 2054. As Rudd pointed out, the inspiration was Raging Bull, one of Martin Scorsese’s enduring greats, which chronicles the decline of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) from boxing champ to washed-up has-been working nightclubs.
And that’s what happens to Pete Davidson in the sketch. He’s got a sad white suit, a receding hairline, and an army of bitter jokes to tell audiences who just want to see him do Chad, his breakout SNL character. “You guys know the difference between Gilligan’s Island and Staten Island? One’s filled with a bunch of morons who are stuck there for the rest of their lives, and the other one’s an old TV show,” he cracks while sitting next to a malfunctioning android version of Colin Jost.
Eventually, Davidson reconnects with an old SNL staff writer (Rudd), who reminds him that he’s responsible for his best old jokes. In return Davidson gifts him with “one of my Oscars,” which happens to be Viola Davis’ Lifetime Achievement Award. And there’s Machine Gun Kelly’s urn, too.
You can watch the sketch in the video above.
