Don Roy King | The Admiral / 2020 [TV (SNL) episode]

back into service

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Che, Colin Jost, and Kent Sublette (head writers), Don Roy King (director) The Admiral / 2020 [TV (SNL) episode]

 

In this sketch from March 1, 2020, Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant redo a previous sketch titled The Corporal, this time trying to outdo and kill off each other, in Cinderella step-sister style, as they both attempt to woo an Admiral (Beck Bennett) in a 1950s-style episode of “Say, Those Two Don’t Seem to Like Each Other.”    

   McKinnon falsely praises her sister, noting that she is wearing “mother’s pearls,” while Bryant repeats the nicety, adding that she is wearing “father’s pearls.”

    Today is the day the Admiral is visiting to choose a wife, despite the fact that he’s never before even had a girlfriend. McKinnon is sure that she will be the “most sexually gor-geous,” Bryant, observing that her sister’s hair is “quite a mess” suggests she put on a hat, as she suddenly produces an anvil. McKinnon suggests her sister sign her birthday card, which Bryant immediately recognizes as a suicide note.

     Bryant one ups her, suggesting that her sibling is looking chilly: “Why don’t you put on this scarf?” she suggests as she holds up a boa constrictor. McKinnon, commenting on her sister’s bad breath, hands her a mint in the form of an “actual bomb.”

     Fortunately, the doorbell rings, bring a halt to the sisterly one-up-man-ship. They rush forward imploring the Admiral to pick one of them. But just before his difficult decision, in swishes John Mulaney, just back from war.

     The Admiral, with great relief, shouts out, “Well, hello sailor!”

     The sisters attempt to scare him off, but their brother reports that he’s just run home from the Pacific Theatre, and he’s awfully sweaty, which even further stimulates the Admiral’s admiration.

     The sisters, now quite jealous of their brother Julian, remind the Admiral that their brother was just a petty officer. But Julian declares that he got promoted—to “pass-around-party-bottom.” By this time the Admiral is absolutely drooling.

      Realizing that he’s gotten taller in his absence from home, Julian measures himself against the previous wall-marking, moving down and down while declaring he’s “up for anything.”

      The two ugly sisters, trying to get rid of their now “gay-hot” brother suggest to him that the Admiral has found him “annoying.” Not wanting at all to be annoying to a man in such a position, Julian declares he will just turn around against the wall so that the Admiral might ignore him, the sister’s quickly recognizing the dangers of taking such a stance.

      Julian, coming up with another plan, attempts to hide behind the couch by first pushing it up against the wall with punctuated ahhs and ooohs.

    They decide the shoot him, the machine doing away with the sailor suit’s arms and legs, while leaving their dear brother in a vest and shorts, making him even cuter than before.

      When the Admiral returns he inevitably chooses “the twink.”

      While this is clearly not a hilarious sketch, its gay jokes being, as IndieWire argues, lame and lazy, Slate found humor in Beck Bennett’s “ping-ponging back and forth between strict military discipline and the cartoonish lust of Tex Avery’s big bad wolf.”

      It all reminded me a bit of Guy Maddin’s Sissy Boy Slap Party (1994, 2004).

 

Los Angeles, August 4, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).