Saturday Night Live featured a surprise guest appearance from Aquaman star Jason Momoa, who played himself in a fury after a D-list social media celebrity (Beck Bennett) tagged him in an embarrassing song calling out President Donald Trump on Instagram.
Bennett's song was a parody of the Imagine video from early in the pandemic, in which a bevy of celebrity tunelessly traded off verses on John Lennon's Imagine to help raise peoples' spirits.
The episode was hosted by stand-up comic Bill Burr, while Jack White filled in for the uninvited musical guest Morgan Wallen.
The original Imagine video was called out after it went viral even by sympathetic liberals, who blasted it as being unnecessary, cloying and poorly planned out, among other complaints.
Once he finished his song, Bennett tagged Leonardo DiCaprio, Trevor Noah and Jason Momoa for responses.
As soon as Bennet’s character sat down to go to the bathroom after posting his video, he started getting call after call from friends telling him to take the video down because it was embarrassing and he didn’t have the clout for it.
‘I’m not famous enough? Just a desperate career move? Could actually mobilize his base?’ he replied to a caller.
Things got worse when his girlfriend arrived unseen at the door.
‘Hey baby! You’re not coming in? And this is what? A box of all my stuff?’ he said of the insta-dumping.
Bennett’s character got excited when he got a video call from Jason Momoa, only to get a tongue lashing.
‘Untag me from that pathetic piece of s**t! That was the saddest, weakest thing I’ve ever seen,' Momoa said in a fury.
'I’m watching it and I’m thinking to myself, “How the f*** did this guy even get to that age without dying?" You need to take it down, because it’s pathetic and you’re a loser.'
The message didn't seem to get through, though.
‘It works, Jason Momoa knows me!’ Bennett cried out after hanging up.
Earlier in the show, Burr delivered his monologue in front of a masked band and audience members.
He joked that he was happy to see people wearing masks, but didn’t mind if they didn’t.
'Take out your grandparents,' he said. 'You know, take out your weak cousin with asthma. I don't care, it's your decision — there's too many people.'
He then joked about cancel culture and brought up an infamous 1971 Playboy interview with John Wayne in which he made racist comments about Black people, which have gone viral on social media multiple times.
He also lambasted white women for complaining about sexism, before saying he didn’t 'want to speak ill of my b***hes.'
Toward the end of his monologue, he referenced shooting The King Of Staten Island last year with Pete Davidson and Judd Apatow, which launched into a bit complaining that LGBTQ people got the whole month of June to themselves.
‘That's a little long, don't you think? For a group of people that were never enslaved,’ he said, which received groans and some boos from the audience.
Burr made his first sketch appearance in a couple with Kate McKinnon as they joined some of their friends for a socially distanced get together in the backyard.
They set their friends off after saying ‘unpresidented’ in the manner of President Donald Trump, rather than ‘unprecedented.’
After everyone moved on to compliment their buffalo wings, Burr and McKinnon suddenly erupted in anger over being corrected.
‘Sorry we had the nerve to make so many mistakes on your deck!’
Things took a turn for a worse when he accidentally said ‘noon normal.’
‘Things get repeated! Our brains get confused!’ he screamed, before apologizing: ‘For all intents and porpoises, we’re done.'
Burr returned again, this time with hair, on a fake sports talk show The Blitz with Ego Nwodim and Kenan Thompson.
After he gloated about calling a game correctly, Thompson’s character said he didn’t watch the game because he was preoccupied with a fictional Black man who was shot and killed by police.
Burr’s character instantly tried to downplay his gloating, but he didn’t help when a prearranged steak dinner was delivered to him, while Thompson was delivered a baby’s bottle as joke.
Thompson tried to speak about is experiences as a Black man, but he stopped when he realized that the camera crew had put on a filter with a baby’s pacifier over his face.
After Burr’s character tried to save face with a speech about the seriousness of the issue, Nwodim called him out for not even knowing the murdered man’s name.
The host appeared again in a sketch was as a mob boss returned to his crew after years in jail.
After he tried to get back to business, his lieutenants got offended after he referred to the competing neighborhood gang as ‘Mexicans,’ before getting schooled on less offensive ways to refer to LGBTQ people.
Burr’s final appearance was in a pre-taped sketch poking fun at Samuel Adams Beer commercials.
After the brewery announced a new pumpkin beer at a grocery store, all the customers loved it, except for Burr, who gulped it down before saying he didn’t like it.
‘This is the kind of beer somebody brings to a party at your house, and then it just like sits in the fridge for, like, eight months, then one day your buddy comes over and he’s like, “hey, you got a beer?”' he explained. 'I'm like, "Well, I got this pumpkin s**t." So you drink it, you know, it gets you a buzz.’
Country singer Morgan Wallen was originally intended as this week's musical guest, but he found himself out of a gig after videos surfaced of him partying without a mask just days before the broadcast.
The singer was seen in TikTok videos filmed in a bar in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where the University of Alabama is located.
He was pictured kissing multiple women in addition to not wearing a mask among the packed crowd.
The Whiskey Glasses singer later apologized in a video posted to social media in which he said SNL had uninvited him.
'I respect the show’s decision because I know that I put them in jeopardy, and I take ownership for this. I’d like to apologize to SNL, to my fans, to my team for bringing me these opportunities, and I let them down… I think have growing up to do.'
He also claimed SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels had said he would be invited back at another time to make up the appearance.
