‘Saturday Night Live’ promo: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cecily Strong are all sorts of hilarious
The “Saturday Night Live” season 42 premiere was by our money one of the best starts to the series in years, so why not try and keep the momentum going?
The video below, at least to us, may very well be the funniest promo in recent “SNL” lore, at least since they started shooting more remotes outside of the studio and in various spots around New York City. For the record, as a traditionalist we initially groaned at the concept, but the show is still doing studio promos and they’ve shown that these remotes are a welcome change — the sort you don’t have to be scared of. It gives the upcoming host and the cast member more of an active environment to play around in. On this particular occasion, we have Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cecily Strong within a restaurant reacting to various things and having what appears to be a casual discussion … one that turns crazy at a few moments.
There are several individual bits in this promo that we consider drop-down funny, especially given the limited amount of time for each one of them to land.
1. Seeing Cecily trot out a surprisingly long list of Lin-Manuel memorabilia (much of it extremely creepy) for him to sign. His response to this, asking about his mother’s safety, is priceless.
2. Lin-Manuel’s response to Cecily’s impression of him from the premiere episode. (We’ve thrown that in for reference.)
3. A really silly “Sex in the City” inspired gag that uses Lin-Manuel’s last name as a springboard.
While it may only be one line, we really laughed at the delivery of Lin-Manuel’s delivery of “I won three Tonys.” Genius.
Typically, we don’t judge an episode of “SNL” if the promo is bad, largely because these are often shot under-the-gun and the assumption for the most part is that the writers want to focus in the good material for the show. Yet, when a promo is good, it gets us tremendously excited about what could be coming up — typically, there’s a good correlation there.
For more “SNL” coverage, check out our full review of the premiere! Also, sign up over at this link to secure some other TV news on everything we cover via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)