‘SNL': Kyle Mooney and Vanessa Bayer Get Awkwardly Flirty
It's always a pleasant surprise when 'SNL' digital shorts look and feel more like complete short films than simply filmed sketches. Last night's episode produced one of the more interesting shorts in a long time, reflecting a voice that felt about as far from the show's "house style" as possible. It's still lowbrow in that typical 'SNL' way, but its lowbrow-ness is strangely low key and weirdly sweet ... until it's not.
Kyle Mooney stars as a a sweet but awkward guy who desperately wants to ask his friendly, cute neighbor (Vanessa Bayer) out on a date. In a series of increasingly awkward encounters, the two flirt and banter and dance around the subject, saying hilariously stupid things to avoid asking the question that's on the tip of their tongues. But the third time is the charm and Mooney eventually gets the question out, but only after Bayer casually commits to, uh, something else.
In last week's Louis C.K. hosted episode, we noted how the digital short looked like it could have come from an episode of 'Louie' and it looks like that rubbed off on the show. This simultaneously surreal and all-too-real short feels spiritually aligned with FX's modern comedy masterpiece and we hope more more pre-recorded 'SNL' sketches go for something this weird and small in the future.