This weekend, Saturday Night Live welcomed Ryan Gosling as its guest host in what was actually one of the better (if not the best) episodes of the season. While Gosling was pretty good (especially his Scarecrow), the defining moment of the episode came from Kate McKinnon in the show’s “Close Encounter” skit about the NSA talking to alien abductees.
Saturday Night Live’s best sketch: Kate McKinnon cracks everybody up
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
McKinnon, who has the range to play Justin Bieber, Hillary Clinton, and Ellen DeGeneres, plays a woman named Ms. Rapperty — one of three people who were abducted by aliens and then asked to remember what happened. She recalls an ordeal that left her without her pants, being left on the roof of a Long John Silver’s, and a ritual that involved 40 aliens taking turns knocking her breasts. Her fellow abductees did not share the same experience.
“I don’t think I was dealing with the top brass,” she says. “Nah, this felt super off-the-books.”
McKinnon’s dry delivery and the sheer ridiculousness of her lines start breaking down her co-stars’ resolve one by one. You can see Gosling try to hold in his laughter, then Aidy Bryant’s poker face starts to fade, as does Cecily Strong’s. McKinnon is a gem, but there’s something about watching everyone else start breaking that makes this whole skit even more hilarious.
