Saturday Night Live's most recent episode ended with SNL host John Krasinski in a ridiculous sketch parodying the Pixar film Ratatouille - and the sketch proves that leaning into absurdity is worth the risk. The sketch, simply called “Ratatouille,” stars John Krasinski and Chloe Fineman as a couple, with Kyle Mooney as Remy (but he’s referred to as Ratatouille), Aidy Bryant as a flea, and Pete Davidson as Anton Ego. The premise of the “Ratatouille” sketch is simple – John Krasinski and Kyle Mooney play Linguine and Remy from Ratatouille. Despite the simple setup, the sketch teased that things would get really weird and really funny. However, much of the sketch seemed like it was either playing it safe or, more likely, that it was added at the last minute.
While “Ratatouille” was easily one of the funniest sketches from SNL’s first episode of 2021, it failed to pay off several of its threads in its short runtime. When John Krasinski’s character reveals to Chloe Fineman’s character that he keeps a rat under his top hat who controls his body – even when they’re having sex – Chloe Fineman barely reacts. That wasn't too much of a problem, because there was still plenty of time left in the sketch to hit a solid punchline, but Aidy Bryant’s flea kind of fizzled, too. However, the sketch managed to end on a solid and unquestionably absurd note when Pete Davidson parodied Anton Ego as a “sex critic.”
Davidson’s appearance was more of an epilogue to the sketch, but it was the unexpected weirdness of Davidson’s Anton Ego that proves absurdity is worth the risk. Recently, a number of SNL sketches have attempted to parody our reality and most of those sketches have fallen flat. The problem is that reality becomes difficult to parody when it’s already ridiculous. However, there’s still a way to make absurd sketch comedy work by letting go of the desire to ground it in reality. Sketches like John Mulaney’s SNL sketch “Diner Lobster” prove that when SNL's weird sketches work, they're comedy gold - but the key is to lean into the absurdity and make them really, really weird.
No one expected Kenan Thompson in a lobster costume singing a Les Misérables parody and it’s that feeling of being caught off guard that makes some of SNL’s more absurd sketches so funny. “Haunted Elevator (ft. David S. Pumpkins)” and “Mafia Meeting” (the origin of Peter Dinklage’s “Space Pants” song) follow a similar style. The downside to this kind of comedy is that it relies on being able to shock and surprise the audience, so sequel sketches to “Diner Lobster” like “Bodega Bathroom” and “Airport Sushi” are still funny, but they don’t quite have the same effect because we’ve seen the format already and know what to expect.
What’s also a little bit strange is that SNL’s “Ratatouille” didn’t even go in the direction that most viewers would have expected, either. Ratatouille’s popularity has surged because of a crowdsourced TikTok musical that started going viral in the fall of 2020, but SNL’s sketch didn’t reference, acknowledge, or parody the TikTok Ratatouille musical at all. Ironically, it's the absurdity that also makes the TikTok Ratatouille musical work as well as it does. Instead, the three-minute SNL sketch was a straightforward work of parody with some entertaining moments, great costumes, and the coining of a hilariously uncomfortable phrase, “sex rat.” In the end, Saturday Night Live's “Ratatouille” sketch was still funny, even if it had the untapped absurdist potential to be truly hysterical.