‘Saturday Night Live’s New Video Sketch Maestros Please Don’t Destroy Are Way More Than The Lonely Island 2.0

“What was that?” “Oh my god! What happened?” “What did you do?” “What the hell is it?” “No! Why are you saying that?” “You know about this?” These simple statements of incredulity, often paired with a vibe of “I don’t know, man!”, define the comedy of Saturday Night Live‘s latest viral video sketch darlings Please Don’t Destroy.

Like the Lonely Island before them, Please Don’t Destroy is a three-guy comedy team tasked with writing and appearing in trendy pre-taped video sketches for SNL’s weekly shows. Unlike the Millennial sketch group before them, though, Please Don’t Destroy seems less delighted with absurdity and more disturbed by it. Please Don’t Destroy’s John Higgins, Martin Herlihy, and Ben Marshall are consistently pulling comedy from confusion and in doing so are creating comedy that speaks to the anxieties of 2021.

When Saturday Night Live kicked off its 47th season this fall, it had the show’s largest repertory cast in history. Twenty-one comic actors made up SNL’s cast, meaning that the likes of established stars like Cecily Strong and Kenan Thompson are jockeying for screen time with standout newbies like Sarah Sherman and James Austin Johnson. There’s also Bowen Yang, Chloe Fineman, and a host of rising stars, all crowding Saturday Night Live‘s stage, looking for their own laughs. So it’s almost surprising that in such a talent-packed season, Higgins, Herlihy, and Marshall have managed to carve a consistent niche for themselves as performers when they were all hired as writers. Writers who specifically popped on social media with videos they concocted under lockdown. (Videos which are now wiped from their Twitter account.)

Many of the clips Please Don’t Destroy filmed in their pandemic pod referenced the insanity of living through 2020 and 2021. There was one where Marshall got a sketchy vaccine from a van, highlighting the exasperation of making sense of what folks should do at what time to stay safe. (And poking fun at Marshall’s in-sketch character’s stupidity.) My favorite, though, featured Herlihy playing a video game structured around actress Shailene Woodley’s life. Why would something exist? How would his character not realize she was an actress? Who can say? WHO KNOWS? The guys of Please Don’t Destroy certainly don’t!

Incredulity, anxiety, and skepticism have been hallmarks of all the Please Don’t Destroy videos we’ve seen so far on Saturday Night Live. Their earliest offerings of the season, “Hard Seltzer” and “Rami Wants a Treat”, continued the themes that were omnipresent in their at-home videos of the last year. In each, the trio start by approaching a situation as normal until it becomes more clear that they’re trapped in a chaotically absurd nightmare. (A true metaphor for life lately, huh?)

In recent weeks, though, the guys have gotten a little more creative, shooting a video with Pete Davidson and Taylor Swift where they’re the butt of the joke, and one cut-for-time sketch where they encounter their future selves. In both sketches, the gag seems to be that the Please Don’t Destroy guys are losers. And sure, they get in some good burns at their own expense. But their favorite comic through-line — a desperate “What the Fuck?!” howled to the universe — remains omnipresent.

As a Millennial comedy nerd who came of age alongside the Lonely Island, I can see both the similarities and wild differences between the two sketch groups. Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer puckishly mashed genres and tones together. They found joy in the collision of expectations. After all, the ’00s were a time of trauma, but also enforced normalcy. The comedic catharsis for the Lonely Island was in being silly in the face of a world begging them to grow up.

Please Don’t Destroy is coming to Saturday Night Live after a five year span that has felt surreal in the most frightening degree. When they look at absurdity, it’s with panic, rage, disdain, or tragic acceptance. We’re laughing with them because that ever-crunching valve of tension we’ve been living with is being released. The world is insane right now. Nothing does make sense. And the Please Don’t Destroy guys do look like a bunch of nerds! The comedy they’re making for SNL isn’t just about being silly, but trying to hold on to sanity in days that feel wholly unhinged.

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