Last weekend, when John Mulaney announced he would be returning to “Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) for the fourth time, he made sure to shout out his beloved adopted hometown: “Three things define New York City,” tweeted the comedian. “SNL, the Strokes, and Ed Koch. Koch is dead, so they got me.”
But to a younger generation, Mulaney is much more of a New York icon than the former mayor. After all, he worked at “SNL” for four seasons, wrote, starred and directed in the Broadway show “Oh Hello” for six months, and often mentions his love for the idiosyncratic city in his stand-up sets. It comes as no surprise then that last night’s episode of “SNL” which was hosted by Mulaney, was very much a love letter to the city he calls home.
While Mulaney’s monologue covered a wide swath of ground—check out the hilarious bit about not wanting his grandmother to vote—a hefty portion of it was devoted to the comedian’s spot-on impression of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s early coronavirus press conferences. “He’d sit down and go ‘today is Tuueesddaay’ with a hint of pride that he remembered the day,” Mulaney joked about Cuomo. For those of us who watched the daily briefings about the virus, the bit was a painful reminder of when it peaked in the city and how all any of us could do then (and now) was take things day by day. He also touched on Cuomo’s epic quarantine with his adult daughters — a story that continues to make headlines in local newspapers.
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When John Mulaney first hosted “SNL” back in 2018, a peculiar sketch he wrote about a young man (played by Pete Davidson) ordering lobster from a New York City diner became a smash hit. As it turns out, Mulaney had pitched Seth Meyers the idea years earlier when he was a writer on the show, but Meyers turned it down. So Mulaney put the joke in his back pocket, evidently saving it for the day he returned to host. That was the right call. The sketch did so well, it ended up being the first in a series about things in New York City that technically exist, but that no one ever wants or uses. There’s also a sketch about someone asking to use the restroom in a bodega from the second time Mulaney hosted, and a sketch about someone purchasing sushi at LaGuardia from his third appearance.
The latest installment in the series arrived last night, in the form of the same young man asking a clerk at a souvenir store in Times Square if he can use the fitting room to try on a pair of “I Love NY” underpants. In a nod to our current times, the sketch focused on the pandemic and featured an array of Times Squares characters riffing on how the coronavirus has hollowed out the once famously crowded neighborhood. All of the characters are in the dumps until Lady Liberty (Maya Rudolph) arrives to tell them to buck up, recalling everything she’s lived through—from “Warhol” to “Bethany Frankel—to the tune of “I’m Still Here” from the musical Follies. The sketch ended as most things do these days, with a plea to viewers to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
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Even the musical guest contributed to the New York theme because if there’s one band that’s synonymous with post-millenium New York, it’s The Strokes. The shaggy haired band is emblematic of the rollicking music scene that spilled out across the streets of the Lower East Side in the early aughts. And while they may no longer be the reckless kids they once were, Albert Hammond Jr.’s and Nick Valensi’s quick, didactic guitar playing and Julian Casablancas’ buzzy vocals still evoke Manhattan’s manic energy—coronavirus be damned.
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But the sketch that best illustrated the essence of this wild city, was the PSA featuring New York’s most iconic and enduring figure—the quirky lady you always see in the park. Kate McKinnon could’ve played the role in her sleep, and the bit worked so well in part because of her deep understanding of the character. To be fair, anyone who has ever spent more than 48 hours in New York City has encountered this lady, which is the other reason the bit worked so well. Watching McKinnon’s elderly woman split an ice cream cone with her dog then stretch out topless across a lawn, all I could think was “I definitely saw that lady in Prospect Park this summer.” That, and “I heart NY.”
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Abigail Covington
Abigail Covington is a journalist and cultural critic based in Brooklyn, New York but originally from North Carolina, whose work has appeared in Slate, The Nation, Oxford American, and Pitchfork
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