Is there anything trendier than staying in on Saturday night to watch live sketch comedy on network television? My tenth-grade self would say “no.” Saturday Night Live’s in-house trend forecasters might violently disagree. On the April 9 episode, Aidy Bryant and Bowen Yang’s blond bewigged “Weekend Update” characters made their second appearance since January, dressed yet again like they’re in a German reboot of Schitt’s Creek. They’re “tracking the trends with a big old mean computer” and telling Michael Che what’s in or out. Out in the fitness space? Jogging to Kelly Clarkson because she “doesn’t have time to motivate your juicy ass. Go to bed, bitch.”
When Che asks why the forecasters keep telling old trends to go to bed, Yang says, “Because they have to get up early for a flight to hell.” These characters have such a strange, aggro self-assurance to them, and like their on-trend predecessor, Stefon, they work because they’re vessels for endless strings of nonsense words and non sequiturs. The funniest section is “Romance Trends,” in which Yang decrees “In: cheating” and Bryant tells her hypothetical lover in a hypothetical dressing room to “Come out from the curtain and kiss me or I’ll kill you!” If they keep bringing these two back, we sense an SNL vibe shift.
