Every time Dave Chappelle hosts SNLIs it just me or does it feel like he’s turning the long-running sketch comedy series into yet another installment of his subversive, boundary-pushing film? The Chappelle Show? If you caught the show this weekend, for example, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
One of the most remarkable sketches of the new SNL The episode Chappelle hosted was “Evacuation Alert”, which provided a perfect encapsulation of Chappelle’s brand of comedy – his material makes you both belly laugh and gasp in shock – as well as being one of the sketches the most hilarious ones I’ve seen on SNL in years.
At the latter point, the sketch (which you can watch below) transformed the Los Angeles wildfires and the chaos of their escape into an absurd family collapse. I’m sure it was also trying to say something about some of the area’s wealthier residents who had to flee their palatial homes, but – well, that’s up to you to judge.
In the sketch, Chappelle plays a stressed-out father who rushes to gather his family and prepare to leave after the evacuation alert resulting from the wildfires blares on their phones. This is not, however, a normal father urging his family to simply move to safety. Cash, for example, is hidden in the walls (“Don’t worry about where I got my money. There’s no time to explain. Let’s go!”). The father also has a fake passport (his wife in the skit: “Who is Demetrius Quinn?” Answer: “Someone who is always welcome in the Dominican Republic”), and the family dog actually contains drugs .
At one point, Chappelle’s “Reggie” retrieves a gun from a hidden panel in his wall and hands it to his son. “Here, boy. Take this. Have you ever held this heavy metal before? The son replies – and for some reason this is the sentence that killed me – “No, Dad!” I’m in high school and I play the bassoon! Reggie hangs his head in shame. “I’m sorry son, I let you down. I raised you like a slut.
The sketch gets even more offbeat from there. An assassin bursts in, who Reggie shoots with a silencer. Reggie has a secret French family living in his wall, and he scolds them for calling him “daddy” in front of his real family. Like I said, I haven’t seen anything this crazy since SNL in a while – and many viewers agree.
“As a Los Angeles native who lived through this, this sketch is comedy GOLD!!!” one viewer wrote in the YouTube comments for the video below. I added another: “Lorne really let that man do anything LMFAOOOO, that was by far the craziest sketch I’ve seen on snl.”
