When a Saturday Night time Dwell parody tune begins, there’s normally a second of anticipation the place you marvel what the punch line goes to be. That was the case final evening as a bunch of feminine solid members started a ballad about their aloof spouses, one questioning, “Is he dreaming of one other girl he needs greater than me?”
Then the sketch lower to what the boys have been considering. What was on their thoughts: The Roman empire, in fact. Sure, it was possibly a few months delayed, however the rap tune that ensued was concerning the meme that males are virtually at all times pondering the main points of the Roman empire. The evening’s host, Jason Momoa, took the lead: “5 instances a day it pops into my dome, which jogs my memory: They invented the dome. Simply one of many causes that I take into consideration Rome.”
With the burly Momoa, there to advertise his newest flip because the DC superhero Aquaman, SNL’s writers had a paragon of muscle-bulging masculinity to deploy. The “Rome Music” sketch was simply one in every of many the place they used Momoa’s quintessential dudeness to supply some—generally amusing, generally overly simplistic—comedy on gender tropes.
The Roman empire bit was the primary one of many evening that leaned into this theme. Momoa’s broad shoulders match completely right into a Roman warrior costume, however he was in the end joined by the solid members Mikey Day and Kenan Thompson, who additionally spat out information about gladiators and marble statues.
The sketch had another commentary on fixations. When it peeked into the mind of just a little child enjoying the son of Momoa and Ego Nwodim, the boy started to rap about dinosaurs. And as for the ladies? Properly, girls are at all times dwelling on astrology, which led Momoa to level out that “the Romans have been really into astrology too.”
As a complete, the sketch was effectively executed—the “dinosaur” interlude was a very cute addition—however it supplied nothing new by the use of commentary on the meme, which at this level has already been performed out throughout social media. Plus, there’s nothing actually subversive about saying, primarily, that males obsess over historical past whereas girls have a look at their horoscopes. In reality, it’s just a little reductive.
The episode didn’t get all that extra insightful because it went on. Later, Momoa performed the hunky ex-fiancé of a lady portrayed by Chloe Fineman. She had thought him useless after a airplane explosion, however he returned from being stranded on an island sexier than ever, a lot to the dismay of her new partner (Andrew Dismukes). She was smitten, and it was a simple gag, a showcase of Momoa’s robust, wild-man persona and never rather more.
However maybe the evening’s strangest tackle gender got here close to the top of the present. In a riff on Netflix’s Untold documentary sequence, Sarah Sherman appeared because the fictional tennis participant Charna Lee Diamond, who, on this model, had a battle-of-the-sexes event earlier than Billie Jean King did. Besides Charna wasn’t so profitable. She challenged a person to a match and acquired paired up with Momoa as Ronnie Dunster, who “on the time was the most important man to ever play tennis.”
That’s the place it verged into absurdism. When Ronnie served, the ball actually went via Charna, leaving a bleeding gap within the middle of her abdomen. She screamed, “Did I break it for ladies?” She pressed on. Her head got here off together with his second serve. Charna tried to alter historical past and died doing it.
The gross-out gruesomeness of the sketch distinguished it, however it was in the end simply one other reminder of how huge Momoa is, and, in flip, how manly. The underlying sentiment: Come on, a lady can’t beat that man.
Many hosts arrive on SNL wanting to subvert their public persona and present their comedic vary. Momoa threw himself into the sketches with verve, however he didn’t take a number of dangers to problem his picture, and neither did the writers. With Momoa as an emblem of big male power, they dove headfirst into drained binaries.
