Colin Jost hosting Olympic surfing would be the funniest SNL sketch in years if it wasn't real

“You might be the only person in the world that has made paradise tragic and difficult to deal with.”

By Emma Keates  |  July 30, 2024 | 4:40pm
Screenshot: NBC Sports/YouTube
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Colin Jost hosting Olympic surfing would be the funniest SNL sketch in years if it wasn't real

It’s a classic Saturday Night Live setup: someone completely unqualified for a job bumbles their way through its various tasks, causing hilarity, chaos, and a cascade of capital-S Situations as the clip goes on. It’s “Target Lady.” It’s any sketch where Cecily Strong doesn’t understand that she’s at a fake restaurant. It’s “The U.S. Men’s Heterosexual Figure Skating Championship” for a little added relevance. It’s Colin Jost in a suit jacket and Hawaiian shirt, reporting live on this year’s Olympic surfing competition in Teahupo’o, Tahiti, surrounded by chickens, with ants apparently crawling around in his reef-begotten foot wound. 

That last one is 100% real and happening right now, but you just know the Studio 8H writers’ room is kicking themselves for not thinking of it sooner. Somehow, and much to the disdain of all his NBC colleagues, SNL’s fake news anchor landed the best gig in the house; reporting the real news straight from the beautiful beaches of French Polynesia, where this year’s competitors are riding the waves. But for all his landlocked colleagues’ good-natured ribbing (Mike Tirico straight up asks “how the heck” he got the assignment in one clip), Jost is proving to be the perfect man for the job. And by that, of course, we mean that he’s absolutely terrible at his job.

While the surfers sit on their cruise ship village and dream about standing on the podium, Jost is experiencing his own personal Survivor. The clip above might as well be one of those “videos taken seconds before disaster” clips. First, Jost got pummelled by the first wave he tried to ride, scratching his foot on the shallow coral below. (He later posted his battle wound on Instagram.) Then, in a video that we’re not sure Lorne Michaels could have scripted so well if he tried, he told sports commentator Maria Taylor that he was currently walking in place in the chicken-filled yard from which he was reporting, because if he stayed still ants would crawl into his open wound. That’s not to mention the poisonous stonefish he almost stepped on while filming the previous video, the five-foot sharks his producers attracted to him for some reason, and—worst of all—the fact that he had to keep a straight face while reporting on a surfer’s mother being named the 88th “Lei Queen.” “I would say I’m being set up for failure,” he correctly surmised. 

 

Taylor summed up Jost’s whole vibe pretty perfectly when she deemed him “the only person in the world that has made paradise tragic and difficult to deal with,” but the comedian’s journey into the wild somehow only got worse from there. “It’s a weird feeling when you’re in the medical tent way more than any of the athletes,” he shared in another update a few days later, referencing his now-bandaged foot. “It feels like being a war correspondent and saying, ‘Hey army, can I have a Band-Aid?’” At least Jost is winning a gold medal for his sense of humor about the whole thing. When Taylor asked him later in the interview if he had a joke for her, he answered without missing a beat, “Yeah… I’m here. Colin Jost is a surf correspondent. That’s the joke.”

“Or,” he amended, “Why did the chicken cross the road? To peck at the staph infection in my foot.” While we wish Jost all the best for the next two weeks (and a little more survivable misery because, let’s face it, it’s really funny), there is an added perk to having him out there. If you’ve ever wished the Olympics would add a regular person to each sport to highlight just how talented these athletes are, now’s your chance to watch exactly that. News flash: the right people are winning the medals.

 

 
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