As for the rest of the episode, there were a couple sketches that landed, a couple that were solid but didn’t quite reach greatness, one weird premise that needed more time in the oven, and a couple downright terrible bits. So it was a mixed bag of hit or miss sketches, which is par for the course when it comes to “SNL.”
Not far behind Please Don’t Destroy was the above “Barbie” parody, where Pete Davidson again used music to poke fun at himself. “I’m Just Pete” took a cue from Ryan Gosling’s incredible “I’m Just Ken” song from the “Barbie” movie and really leaned into all the entertainment and social media coverage he’s been given over the years. It was a perfectly self-aware bit that really makes you appreciate Davidson’s attitude about all the attention he gets for things no one should actually care about.
Besides that, the best live sketch might have been this absurd 1950s office sketch with Heidi Gardner playing a secretary who knows exactly what her boss needs before he even tells her. That might sound inappropriate, but she simply knows what documents he needs, what he’s going to ask for, and when. At least, she does at first, then she slowly devolves into being awful at her job, right down to a staggeringly great pratfall — one that worked so well that it reminded my of Chris Farley’s great slapstick moments of breaking furniture with a fall. It only gets more absurd from there, with the fall having made Gardner’s shirt completely fly off for some reason. There was just enough absurdity in this one to make it work.
Of course, there were inevitably some bad sketches. Undoubtedly the worst was the sketch merely called “Spaceship.” Set aboard a starship inspired by “Star Trek,” the crew gets interrupted by an annoying former crew member who used to work there, played by Bowen Yang. There’s some amusement in the fact that Yang is dressed in mostly human attire, with an ugly sweater and a little crossbody purse, but the character reminded me of a retread of “It’s Pat” without the gender mystery material, and that’s not good. However, there was one sketch that wasn’t too far behind in poor quality, but thankfully, it ended up being overshadowed by something better.