SNL Puts A Hilarious Spin On The Time Travel Of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Traveling through time sounds like an excellent adventure ... until you remember that deodorant wasn't invented until the end of the 19th century and "splinter-free" toilet paper didn't enter the market until 1935. Between these and other historical inconveniences, time travel has the potential to be a pretty bogus journey.
On the flip side of that, our present time — as miserable as it might sometimes feel to those of us who live here — would probably look quite bodacious to time-travelers from the past. That's certainly the case for abolitionists Harriet Tubman (returning guest host Quinta Brunson) and Frederick Douglass (Kenan Thompson) in a sketch from this week's episode of "Saturday Night Live." After partaking in a radical experience with '80s teens Will (Marcello Hernández) and Todd (Andrew Dismukes), Harriet and Frederick politely decline the offer of a return ride to the "1-800s."
Check out the sketch above, co-starring Emil Wakim as Julius Caesar, Chloe Fineman as Queen Elizabeth I, and Mikey Day as Leonardo DiCaprio Da Vinci.
A short history of excellent adventures
The sketch is, of course, a spin on 1989 sci-fi comedy classic "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," in which the fate of humanity rests on titular teens Bill and Ted getting a passing grade on their history presentation. Thanks to a time-traveling phone box, they are able to enlist the help of famous historical figures like Dave Beeth-oven, Bob Genghis Khan, So-crates Johnson, and Dennis Frood.
Also among them is Abraham Lincoln. It's just as well he caught a ride with Bill and Ted instead of Will and Todd, since Lincoln had a famously complicated and contentious friendship with Frederick Douglass that could have made for an awkward ride through the Circuits of Time.
Bill and Ted's crew of fish-out-of-water historical figures soon find themselves in trouble with the police after struggling to blend into 1980s California, but in the "Saturday Night Live" sketch, Harriet and Frederick are considerably more savvy. Wearing '80s fashion is a small price to pay if it means you get to ride rollercoasters instead of fighting for basic human rights.