SNL branded ‘irrelevant 50-year-old TV show’ as sketch backfires

The show was also mocked for having ‘dated references, unknown cast members, and shrinking ratings’

Saturday Night Live has been slammed as “irrelevant” after a sketch on the premiere of their 50th season failed to amuse the subject of the gag.

SNL returned on 28 September with a show hosted by Jean Smart and featured an already infamous sketch about singer Chappell Roan and the viral pygmy hippopotamus, Moo Deng.

Another sketch on the episode was a fake advert for the US store Spirit Halloween, a seasonal retailer that has more than 1,500 locations across North America. The stores often open for the Halloween season and then close after the festivities are over.

In the voiceover for the sketch, SNL cast member Heidi Gardner, “Times may be good on Wall Street, but on Main Street, communities are struggling. Closed stores, shuttered businesses, empty parking lots… When hard times hit, it’s easy to feel like no one cares.”

Gardner continues, adding that “help is on the way because when others leave, we show up” and that they will be welcoming customers “for six weeks and then bouncing.”

Chloe Fineman then takes a dig at Spirit Halloween’s costumes, which often have vague descriptions to avoid any copyright issues. For instance, in the sketch, a young girl asks for a Taylor Swift outfit and is handed a disguise called “blonde singing woman”.

Fineman says: “We’re here providing vulnerable communities with the things they need most: Wigs that give you a rash, single-use fog machines, and costumes of famous characters tweaked just enough to avoid a lawsuit.”

Although Spirit Halloween has become something of a meme in recent years, SNL’s attempt to mock the retailer didn’t sit well with the store itself.

Responding on X/Twitter, the Spirit Halloween account wrote: “We are great at raising things back from the dead @nbcsnl”. The accompanying image was of a Spirit Halloween costume was of SNL and was called “Irrelevant 50-year-old TV show”.

The packaging also described the outfit as including “dated references, unknown cast members, and shrinking ratings”.

(X/Twitter)

Elsewhere, on SNL James Austin Johnson reprised his role as Donald J Trump on Saturday Night Live, making a joke about the former president picking the wrong running mate with Ohio Senator JD Vance.

“People are saying he was a bad pick and in many ways he was,” Johnson’s character says before introducing Vance, played by Bowen Yang, at a rally. An enthusiastic Yang walks on stage, saying Johnson’s version of Trump told him: “JD, you’re like a son to me, because I don’t like you. I’m stuck with you.”