From Leon Phelps The Ladies Man to The Ambiguously Gay Duo, SNL has spent the last fifty years leaning into sexual innuendos, often with recurring characters. From where I’m sitting, however, I’m not sure there’s ever been a filthier series of recurring sketches than Shop TV. Each episode features a celebrity bringing a product onto a home shopping style show to pitch to the general public, and each time, the product looks way more explicit than the person realizes. Guest host Olivia Rodrigo gave us another good example last night when she tried to sell lava cakes that reminded everyone of something else.
More specifically, they reminded everyone of buttholes. As always, the hosts (Mikey Day and Ashley Padilla) realized immediately what was going on, but Rodrigo’s entrepreneur was completely out of the loop, as she asked people to sniff, poke and taste the center of her lava cake, which contains “flavor wrinkles” around the outside. The audience caught onto the joke immediately, and in addition to laughter, there were, at times, hollers and bigger reactions than SNL sketches normally get. You can watch the madness below…
Shop TV: Lava Cake – SNL – YouTube
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The best thing about the so-called Shop TV sketches are how rarely SNL does them. Obviously there’s a formula here that works with fans, but the writers have been careful not to overdue it. They just bring it out once or twice a season. That way, it always feels like a welcome surprise and the concept doesn’t feel stale and overdone.
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The most recent example happened with Sabrina Carpenter. She went on Shop TV to sell a line of neck pillows that, of course, looked like another body part. It originally aired about six months ago and already has more than four million views on YouTube, which easily puts it among the most watched sketches of the season. You can check it out below…
Shop TV: Pillow – SNL – YouTube
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It’s crazy to think we’re almost at the end of Season 51. There are only two more episodes left, both of which have exciting guest hosts. Of course there are all kinds of wild rumors going around about Lorne Michaels’ future and possible cast member shake-ups, but there’s a good chance that we might actually see very little turnover. The cast has really gelled this season and found a groove. It would be a shame to break it up.
Ashley Padilla and Sarah Sherman are really starting to emerge as big voices, and I think the show is going to want to explore building around Padilla, as well as giving more airtime to the other talented cast members who are starting to get more comfortable and come into their own. That’ll likely mean not bringing in a bunch of new faces. We’ll see though. It’s entirely possible some big names end up leaving. We likely won’t know until the end of the summer.
