Relax, kick back and… prepare to guffaw! We invite you to join us, heading into the Labour Day weekend, in a retro binge of Saturday Night Live’s greatest food-themed sketches. These classics never get old for me…
Who can forget the absolutely iconic Julia Child bit? Or Phil Hartman as The Anal Chef? Or the Heinz Ketchup commercial introducing a new squeeze bottle that makes a ‘whoopie cushion’ noise?
From sublime to… darkly ridiculous
My favourite of all is the ‘French Chef’ skit in which Dan Akroyd totally nails the late Julia Child. In classic ‘Julia’ style, the hostess maintains her legendary good cheer and sense of ease – as she bleeds out live, on air, from a horrible knife cut.
Bizarre? Yes. But not nearly as dark as the Dysfunctional Family Dinner. It starts out amicably and normally enough but devolves into an all-out brawl. The very essence of disfunctionality, taken to the ultimate extreme.
Then there’s a slew of just silly – though nuanced – sketches. Not the least of which features Kate McKinnon as the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who credits copious amounts of Emergen-C for keeping her healthy, as she heroically refuses to retire.
But most memorable to many fans may be the ‘naughty bits’, with outright sexual or intestinal themes. Some of the best examples include the ‘colon Blow’ High Fibre Cereal bit. And the unfor-gettable Trendy Restaurant (which is definitely NSF kids and anyone with delicate sensibilities)..
My take
I particularly love Bobby Moynihan in ‘Guy Fieri’s Full Throttle Christmas Special’. The bit mercilessly flails Guy’s famous ‘go big or go home’ mantra. I also adore the silly but subtly ironic ‘Pepsi Crystal Gravy’ sketch. What could be farther out than Pepsi with ‘nothing in it’? How about Pepsi with gravy…
And special thanks to FoodBeast for compiling a list of no fewer than 15 classic food-themed SNL vignettes. Enjoy!
~ Maggie J.