You’d think host Josh Brolin would be screwed having to follow that, and his monologue indeed took several beats to find its rhythm. The whole poetry felt like a miss. He rattled off a few florid lines about his Dune: Part 2 co-star Timothee Chalamet’s beauty before moving on to waxing ridiculous over Thompson. “I look at you with your ageless face… sugar cookie cheeks into the divots of your laugh lines.” Just as I was losing interest, Brolin began disrobing, while comparing the hosting task to that of his recent cold plunge hobby. “Surrender to the discomfort!” he exhorted the audience, as he stripped down to nothing but black boxer briefs and business socks. What a thing, to be promised a great show from a man waving his wet socks and splashing his hands like a duck in a soup of ice.
Brolin’s very best sketch of the night was Shrimp Tower—a bit and a visual—a tower of coupe glass shrimp cocktails—so good and absurd it got its own SNL bumper between ads. Brolin was Count Kinnski, a Viennese man in 1893, who needed to marry well to hang onto his lifestyle.
He told his gentlemen entourage that he believed his beloved shrimp art installation cum appetizer, which he pitched as “the thinking man’s mozzarella sticks,” would be more than enough to win the hand of Sarah Sherman’s archduchess. What followed were three attempts to push his would-be fiancé out the window lest she offset the balance of his masterpiece, ending when he sent it crashing to the floor on his own. This was as specific and dumb and wonderful as any great sketch should be. For the haters who like to type in all caps every single week about how the show HAsN’t BeEN FuNNy iN yEArS, have a shrimp and relax.
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