On its way out the door, SNL has some questionably catchy pandemic parenting advice
Saturday Night Live ended its coronavirus-shortened 45th season last night (having completed only 18 episodes rather than the usual 21), with the hodgepodge of reliably inventive YouTube clips that’s been masquerading as SNL since March. Kristen Wiig dropped in as the nominal host (monologue and one sketch), Martin Short showed up to be Martin Short, and Tina Fey revisited her old Weekend Update stomping grounds to deliver some trenchant advice for parents currently losing it pretending to know Latin so their kids’ school will get off their backs.
Sticking with the helpful mom advice on this Mother’s Day episode, the entire cast got together (via Zoom, or Skype, or something) to impressively harmonize in a PSA music video also purporting to impart vital self-care information to those in charge of caring for a houseful of quarantined little people. Starting out with Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, Beck Bennett, and Aidy Bryant crooning a lovely intro about the melancholy nature of pandemic parenting, the song lurched straight for the chorus where the song’s questionable theme was taken up by all. “Let kids drink!,” sang everyone in unison, with Ego Nwodim advising, “They’ll be happier and funnier, and they’ll fall asleep by six,” as the video cut to a montage of cast children happily slugging down alcohols of every description.
Now, some out there might be questioning the true wisdom of this coping strategy at this point. Is it effective? Of course. Cut to: shots of toddlers hoisting wine bottles bigger than they are and tweens passed out in easy chairs. Is it legal? Well, the lyrics assure us, “We asked child services, and they said it’s okay.” (A chyron rebuts this.) But could Frozen star and Disney vassal Josh Gad show up alongside his maniacally copyrighted snowman avatar to praise the practice of “a bedtime story/it’s vodka-soda-lime” unless the litigious powers that be gave the green light? Of course not. (And, according to another onscreen disclaimer, they emphatically did not.) Newly sober Pete Davidson asks his housemate/mom if he can get in on the fridge full of the action, to no avail, in a moderately uncomfortable verse. Extending the family’s pandemic sedation needs to dogs and Beck Bennet hiding and drinking alone in his toolshed, the song eventually reached a crescendo of thrillingly melodic terrible advice all around.