When Saturday Night Live gets to be absurd, that's when it can really shine; and with host Pedro Pascal, we got to see them really lean into some of the more outrageous ideas. One being Lisa from Temecula and her need to have an extra well done steak at her sister's birthday dinner. Sometimes, sketches don't have to be reinventing the wheel to work and that's what happened with this one. It's just pure dumb fun and makes it that allows viewers to laugh without having to think about it.
Throughout Pascal's hosting, there were plenty of more "in the know" sketches like his take on Mario Kart or Sarah Paulson showing up to be the mommy to his daddy at a school assembly. But sketches like "Lisa from Temecula" really just stick out in your head for the pure outrageousness that they are. In the sketch, Lisa (Ego Nwodim) is visiting for her big sister's birthday. Shayna (Punkie Johnson) invited all her friends (Pascal, Bowen Yang, and Molly Kearney) to join them for her dinner. What they didn't expect was the energy that Lisa brought to the table. Literally.
Basically, Lisa gets her steak cooked so well done that the entire table moves when she goes to cut into it. Wine is flying everywhere, everyone is breaking and laughing, and there was a pitcher of sangria holding on for deal life throughout the entire sketch. Sure, the premise of a woman trying to cut a very tough steak and making it everyone else's problem is funny on its own, but one of the reasons that the sketch was a particular highlight of the night is because everyone just kept breaking character.
Nowdim has Pascal and the cast struggling to keep straight faces all through the sketch but when Yang breaks character after she asks, "Oh 'cause we're Black," there is seemingly no coming back from that. Johnson is undeniably the MVP of the sketch for holding on to the sangria pitcher in the midst of all the chaos. Honestly, it is sketches like this that stand out to fans of the series. Yes, there are more in-depth and thought-out sketches that are often still talked about years later but sometimes, it is just ones where everyone can't stop laughing that fans cherish. This is definitely one of the funnier sketches to join that catalog of Saturday Night Live classics.
SNL wouldn't be half as funny without the editorial team behind the show's prerecorded sketches. The editors behind SNL are currently fighting for fair contracts with NBC; you can support them by signing their call to action. Check out the Lisa from Temecula sketch down below.