COVID hit us all hard and when host Jerrod Carmichael came to Saturday Night Live, the cast and Carmichael brought us a brand new game show that honestly, maybe we should play in real life. Called Is My Brain Okay?, the sketch is Saturday Night Live's typical game show format where they have a host ask questions that are easy for the audience to understand but the characters can't seem to answer them.
This time though it was almost too real. The game is simple: Our brains are not what they used to be in 2019 because of the last two years, and how we've barely been around people and whatnot. So many of us have forgotten how to interact with everyday life.
Kate McKinnon stars as the host who is asking simple questions, such as asking them to identify a wheelbarrow based on a picture — which Carmichael calls a "farm bicycle". It gets better – or worse — when she brings in Carmichael's character Derrick's college roommate (Chris Redd) and asks what his name is.
While this isn't the first time they've used this gag, it's one of the first times the "what's their name" part of the sketch didn't feel mean. Mainly because it was all centered around how we all just forgot how to do basic things due to being in isolation. Sarah Sherman's character doesn't even use a pen when writing her final answer to "what's a way to greet someone", a question they all fail for the most part.
Are we at the point of making fun of how we all are still living through a pandemic? Probably, because otherwise, it's just sad to think about how close to home a show like this is. At one point during the sketch, McKinnon cannot remember the word for "jumpstart" and everyone gives her wrong suggestions of what she is trying to figure out, and while that could be something that we used to not relate to, I think we've all had that moment of forgetting what it was like to be out and about with other people.
So Is My Brain Okay? isn't a real show but if they wanted to make it one, there are plenty of people who could definitely jump into it after the last few years. Myself included. At least Derrick took home the prize of a staycation in his apartment instead of a trip to Hawaii.
Check out the sketch here: