SNL'south David Pumpkins Sketch Works Considering It Confused You

Saturday Night Live - Season 42

Tom Hanks as David Pumpkins (and Bobby Moynihan every bit Dancing Skeleton) Photo: Will Heath/NBC

"Whatever questions?" is how Sabbatum Night Live'south breakout sketch "Haunted Elevator" ends, and it'south an appropriate button, since many viewers seemingly came away with some. I can't recall another sketch that has been every bit popular yet left so many people confused every bit to why they detect information technology funny. The irony is that the answer is in the question: "Haunted Lift" — or "David Pumpkins," as it will forever be known — is confusing by blueprint, looking for a sort of "wait, what!?" laugh. Tom Hanks as David S. Pumpkins asks "whatever questions" because yous should have them — and yous practise considering it is a damn good sketch.

The overall concept instantly reminded me, and anybody else, of "FBI Simulator." It shares the same writers, Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell (with Bobby Moynihan joining for Mr. Pumpkins), and it uses a similar structure. It also reminded me of the old Former Spice guy, in that David Pumpkins is a character congenital on random absurdity — or as the Hollywood Handbook podcastwould put it,"rando sense of humour." You lot're meant to not become why he's funny. The difference with "Haunted Elevator" and why it's funnier than Old Spice commercials — or similarly wacky Skittles commercials, for that thing — is that visible confusion is built into the sketch.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Keegan-Michael Fundamental, co-creator of the most technically perfect sketch prove ever, Cardinal & Peele. In a quote that got cut from the piece, he said: "I think people don't notice this sometimes, but by and large, when you laugh when you're watching a comedy, you lot're laughing on the reaction shot … You lot're laughing at the person who's reacting the style you're reacting."

That'southward how "Haunted Elevator" works, with the sketch post-obit Brook Bennett's and Kate McKinnon's responses to David Pumpkins. It can exist argued the sketch is not nigh "a random character that shows up with 2 weird sidekicks" only "a couple who tries to effigy out why random graphic symbol and his two sidekicks are in a haunted ride." The first big laugh of the sketch isn't the first appearance of David Pumpkins, merely rather Bennett going, "I'm just trying to wrap my head around David Pumpkins. Are we supposed to know who that is?" Non long after is arguably the funniest moment of the sketch, when McKinnon asks, in the second beat, "Yeah, like is he from a local commercial?"

The intentionality of the script is of import because a sketch like this tin can easily descend into Crazy Town, a term used past UCB co-founder Matt Besser to draw a scene in which there are "so many absurd elements in play that it becomes difficult to distinguish the unusual from the ordinary." A sketch is generally bettered by having people providing grounded reactions to strange behavior. (Near SNL sketch these days, for example, will take a beat in which Kenan Thompson or Leslie Jones just react to whatsoever'due south happening.)

Day and Seidell, who as well wrote final season'due south breakout "Shut Encounter," are particularly good at putting boggling characters in boggling situations by filling out the scenes with precisely calibrated straight people. So while David S. Pumpkins's appearances intensify, the sketch by and large heightens because of Bennett and McKinnon's increased confusion.

It all builds to a simple, expert conclusion, which may be the best matter about the sketch on a technical level. (On a less technical level, the best thing was Mean solar day and Moynihan's dancing. It was very silly and nice.) Sketch writing in general struggles with endings, but it is something that particularly plagues SNL. There is a joke that every SNL sketch ends with the cast members freezing and the audience clapping. This has improved a bit with digital shorts, since songs, for example, have born endings. But it's zilch like Key & Peele, who — since they weren't working on a weekly, high-pressure schedule — were masters of ending things on a big beat that both escalated and wrapped things up perfectly. Take "Prepared for Terries," which is ridiculous all the way through, but cleverly pulls out to reveal information technology was a TSA training video.

What makes the ending of "Haunted Elevator" and so sharp is that the first thing Tom Hanks says is "I'thousand David Pumpkins and I'm going to scare the hell out of you" and that's exactly what he does. The ending of him kneeling behind Bennett and McKinnon and asking for one last, horrifying time "Any questions?" is a perfect resolution of the sketch's foreshadowing, a justification for the graphic symbol'southward confusing behavior, a validation of the internal logic of the haunted-elevator ride, and a last time to re-upwards a catchphrase.

Then in that location'south Tom Hanks of it all. Though Hanks is generally considered ane of the all-time bang-up SNL hosts, he hasn't hosted the testify in over 10 years. Fifty-fifty older fans probable forgot how good he is at it. And in the time since his last appearance, Hanks has ascended to the role of America's Dad, equally the bear witness itself mocked. To take this literally, imagine if final week your actual dad texted y'all a movie of himself dressed in a suit with spooky pumpkins on it, and a note saying "I'thousand going as David Pumpkins for Hallowen!" The gobsmacked feeling you lot'd accept is part of the mixture that made this sketch such a phenomenon, since seeing Hanks deed this style mirrors the disorientation at the center of the sketch.

Still, there's a difference betwixt controlled cliffhanger and, say, Adult Swim's brand of gonzo ridiculousness, and it'due south that deviation that lends "Haunted Elevator" its wide appeal. Despite its random-seeming parts, the sketch makes sense on plenty levels for information technology to succeed. This speaks to what is so special aboutSNL: timeliness, and the comedic power of borer into the collective unconscious. Last week, with the final debate in the rearview mirror, people felt like Halloween week could be a sort of respite. Hopefully, it would exist a cursory window of fun, silliness, and childishness before we faced the horrors of the existent world again. As inane as David S. Pumpkins may take seemed when Day, Seidell, and Moynihan pitched information technology Monday night, he was exactly what nosotros all needed come Saturday. Peculiarly for anyone still in search of a costume idea.

SNL's David Pumpkins Is Supposed to Be Confusing