Bill Hader Revived A Beloved 'SNL' Sketch

When it was announced that Bill Hader would be hosting Saturday Night Live on March 17, everyone was hoping that he would bring back some of his most popular sketches from his time on the show. And we were not disappointed. SNL brought back The Californians sketch and Twitter couldn't deal. Because to be honest you just can't improve on a classic. Especially a classic that includes funny accents.

In his opening monologue, Hader reminded the audience that he was on Saturday Night Live for eight long seasons comprising over 200 episodes. And during that time he made a couple of sketches incredibly famous, including The Californians, a parody soap opera about people from California constantly being late and arguing about driving routes. Because apparently if you don't argue about the best way to get from point A to point B then are you even really in California? Hader is always reliably hilarious, so it was great to see him back in action on the show. It was also great to see him back in one of his best sketches ever. Twitter, predictably, loved every second of it. Maybe SNL should just do a whole season of former cast-members coming back to reprise their iconic sketches.

Hader actually explained the cheeky origin of the sketch to fellow SNL alum Seth Meyers on an episode of Late Night. Hader explained that the show simply started as a funny riff the cast-members would do while waiting for the perpetually late Lorne Michaels to show up at meetings. Apparently he, Fred Armisen, Kenan Thompson, and Andy Samberg would do the traffic bit for years before it was eventually turned into a full-fledged skit which was written by Armisen. Who knew that making fun of your boss could occasionally result in a great career move?

On Saturday night, Hader started his monologue by explaining to the audience some things about the show that they may not already be aware of. For example, when people do impressions of celebrities and the celebrity in question interrupts them, that is actually planned. He also said that the monologues could be as short as you want them to be. With that, he changed into his old The Californians costume and launched immediately into the exact skit that everybody was hoping to see from him (as well as Stefon, obviously).

As the official creator of the sketch, it was great to see Armisen return as the lead of the fake soap opera. Armisen had already appeared earlier during the cold open as Michael Wolff, the author of Fire and Fury, about the Trump administration. But it simply wouldn't be an episode of The Californians without him. In the revival sketch, Hader's character argued with Armisen's character about the best way to get around southern California. Specifically — whether it would be better to follow the directions of Google maps or the popular driving app Waze (Hader was on team Google and Armisen was for Waze).

One of the funniest aspects of the sketch was always the over-the-top accents of the actors, who always sound like they're extras on a teen movie from California but who've also just had serious dental surgery. And for once, the accents were actually called out by Pete Davidson. Davidson's character showed up to ask why they were talking that way. He'd grown up in California his whole life and had never heard anything like it.

In any case, I loved the sketch. The only way it could have been better was if Kristen Wiig had shown up in her own cameo.

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