Saturday Night Live brought out the big guns for host Pedro Pascal and he knocked every sketch out of the park! One of the first moments we got to really see him shine was in a sketch called "The Big Hollywood Quiz" and boy was it surprisingly funny. Overall, the night had some incredible sketches and characters for Pascal to play but Robert, a man who doesn't know anything about movies made in the last five years, may be one of my favorites.
The sketch was one of the typical Saturday Night Live formats of taking a game show and turning the concept on its head by having the contestants struggle to find the right answers. For this specific sketch, it was all about how these three experts didn't know anything about movies made within the last few years and honestly had some great jokes about just how much content we have nowadays. Pascal plays Robert, a professor, and is joined by Ego Nwodim and Chloe Fineman as the three players who are all supposedly experts in cinema.
But when simple questions about movies that were released in the 21st century trip them up, it is clear exactly what kind of film experts they really are. And it ended up being a multi-layered commentary on the state of cinema as well as how supposed "experts" parade themselves as all-knowing without being all that informed.
The sketch worked to poke fun at how there's so much content in movies and television these days that the everyman can't possibly keep up. It also was at the beginning of a night that was filled with brilliant sketches focusing on Pascal's natural charm and talent. For someone's first hosting gig, Pascal had an ease about him on stage that really came across in the sketches and made all of them that much better to watch. Often, a host's nerves can make a sketch feel like it is dragging or doesn't work, but that never happened with Pascal. He embraced the chaos of Saturday Night Live and just went with it.
Did the audience—myself included—laugh out loud over the Sarah Polley joke? Yes because supposed lovers of cinema did not see a movie nominated for an Academy Award—it was a great change to the game show format.
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