Saturday Night Live had its Season 47 finale this weekend. While it was a bittersweet episode, being some cast members' final episode, host Natasha Lyonne and the cast still delivered a hilarious night. One of the best sketches, arguably the best sketch of the season, titled “After High School” takes us back to our youth in very humorous ways.
The pre-recorded sketch follows a man, played by Andrew Dismukes, reminiscing about his high school prom 20 years later. He takes us through all his “friends” and what they have been up to since they graduated. Or, more hilariously, what they have not been up to in the last 20 years. While several of his classmates ended up happy, the focus of this sketch is on its gut-busting dark humor. Needless to say, a lot of people do not make it out of this sketch alive, literally; many of the character's classmates end up missing or straight-up dead, and at the center of most classmates' endings is the eerie Rachael Finnster played by Lyonne.
What makes this sketch work so well is its simplicity and staple repetition. It’s just Dismukes taking us through all his classmates one by one, but it is the line delivery that makes this particular setup comedy gold. Dismukes effortlessly captures and combines the doe-eyed wonders of classic high school coming-of-age stories with deadpan harsh bluntness.
While everyone often reminisces about their high school years and probably have wild stories to tell, this sketch puts a humorous twist on a time that we often look at with rose-colored glasses. At the same time, the sketch is a weirdly charming retrospective about a vastly different group of people that were all together during this one moment before their lives changed forever. Even though the story gets absurd and extremely morbid at times, it is also a little scary how spot on the sketch is in some cases.
The many ways Rachael Finnster keeps tying into the story will have you falling out of your seat laughing as Lyonne’s facial expressions remain spot-on throughout. The twist punchline ending, in particular, puts a nice killer comedy bow on this gleefully dark sketch. We’re not going to spoil it here. It is just one of those perfect endings that is classic SNL; the series always works best when it combines the absolute absurd with real-world quirks. As a result, this may be one of the best sketches of the season.
To start your nostalgia trip, watch the full sketch down below: