“Saturday Night Live” returned with a live show Saturday night following its winter hiatus with host Maya Rudolph. The former SNL cast member ended the night reminiscing about her times on the show with a The Shining-inspired sketch called “The Maya-ing.”
In the sketch, Rudolph comes upon a mysterious bar that appears in studio 8H, where she is reunited with former castmates Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, and Rachel Dratch, along with long-running cast member Keenan Thompson. Fey plays original SNL writer Gloria Zelwig, while Wiig, Dratch, and Thompson play parodies of characters from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Thompson portrays a cook, who explains to Rudolph “the shine” something he says former SNL cast members get when they become hosts. “When you come back to host, you shine,” said Thompson. The character, a clear play off of the Dick Hallorann character that explains “the shining” to Danny Torrance in The Shining film.
Kristen Wiig appears in the sketch as twin versions of her SNL character Gilly, a clear parody of the Grady twin ghosts that Danny Torrance sees in The Overlook Hotel’s halls in Kubrick’s film.
Rachel Dratch appears in a bathtub, a nod to the dead woman in room 237 who appears to Jack Torrance in Kubrick’s film, but in the closing sketch, Dratch is alive and well and well and simply using the tub because the water was out in her building.
The Shining‘s iconic elevator scene was also recreated for the sketch, but instead of blood flowing from the elevator doors, red wine flows in an effort to flood the studio with alcohol since afterparties are no longer permitted due to COVID-19.
The sketch ends similar to The Shining film, with the camera zooming in on a black and white photo. Like in the case of Jack Torrance in The Shining, who appears in a photo of The Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball in 1921, Rudolph also appears out of time in a photo of the original 1975 cast of “Saturday Night Live.” Rudolph, of course, wasn’t an SNL cast member until the year 2000.
While the sketch was for laughs, it’s always nice to see horror get a nod on SNL outside of the Halloween season.
