Saturday Night Live Creates Live-Action Beavis And Butt-Head, Starring Ryan Gosling
When Ryan Gosling was first announced to host "Saturday Night Live" this weekend, most of us expected a giggle-heavy affair. His first two hosting gigs, from "Close Encounter" to "Terrezano's," had Gosling breaking in nearly every live sketch, so it was no surprise when Gosling broke constantly last night as well. What we didn't see coming was just how much the rest of the cast broke, especially in the sketch where a serious intellectual panel is interrupted by two guys in the audience who inexplicably look like Beavis and Butt-Head.
First we're introduced to Beavis, played by Ryan Gosling, who insists that he's not pulling a prank, that he's never heard of Beavis before, and has never been told how much he looks like him. It's an unlikely story, but Heidi Gardener's Bobbi Moore and Kenan Thompson's Professor Hemming are willing to move past it, so long as "Beavis" agrees to switch seats to somewhere out of Hemming's line of sight. Unfortunately for them, replacing Beavis's seat is a guy who looks exactly like Butt-Head, played by Mikey Day. He too has never seen the show and doesn't know what Hemming's talking about.
It's at this point that Heidi Gardner breaks entirely, harder than she's ever had on the show before. The last time a cast member broke this bad was in "Inside the Beltway," a 2019 sketch where a stage hand accidentally walked on stage mid-sketch to change Aidy Bryant's outfit. Like Bryant five years before her, Gardner struggled hard to get her lines out in this sketch, and both Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day (who's usually unflappable) were struggling hard too.
A sequel to a sketch you might not remember
Kenan Thompson's the only one keeping it together here, although I don't think anyone in the audience minded the unprofessionalism this time around. As past sketches like "The Californians" show, sometimes the breaking is the best part. "Debbie Downer" also wouldn't be nearly as popular today (to the point where it coined the now-ubiquitous phrase 'Debbie Downer') if it weren't for the fact that everyone laughed in it. "I still believe that sketch may be a cure for low-level depression if watched regularly," Amy Poehler, who also broke in the sketch, wrote about it in her 2014 memoir. This new sketch seems designed to achieve the same effect.
Also worth noting is that "Beavis and Butt-Head" is technically a sequel sketch. It's following up on a 2018 sketch with Jessica Chastain where a member in the audience (once again Mikey Day) inexplicably looks like a live-action Bart Simpson. Not only does he have the same basic hairstyle and outfit as Bart, but his name is literally Bert Sampson. It's no wonder he's driving everyone else in the audience crazy.
The tragic tale of Bert Sampson made for a decent sketch, one that was received positively by fans at the time but which never truly became well-known or particularly beloved. It's probably due to how simple the premise is, how it's not quite memorable enough to climb into "David S. Pumpkins" absurdist territory. Although this sequel with Beavis and Butt-Head doesn't change much writing-wise, the infectious giggling goes a long way of helping it surpass its predecessor. Will "SNL" attempt to visit the premise again sometime down the line? It's certainly possible, although without the organic laughter behind it, it might not work half as well.