This weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live was practically a tribute to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. The episode was hosted by Jerrod Carmichael, who first addressed
the pop culture moment on everyone's minds this past week in his opening monologue.
“This is going to really blow your minds. Can you believe that it's been six days? Six days! This happened a week ago,” he told the audience. “Doesn't it feel like it happened years ago? Like doesn't it feel like it happened when we were all in high school? Like it feels like it happened between Jamiroquai and 9/11. A long, long time ago. It happened on Sunday. Sunday! It's Saturday, bro.”
The subject came up quite a few times throughout the night, once with James Austin Johnson playing Donald Trump calling into Fox & Friends to say, “You know, I did see slap. I enjoyed slap. I was very impressed by Hitch. Quite an arm on Hitch. I always knew Hitch had an arm... It's a sad night for Hitch too. That kind of behavior is not going to help Kevin James get a date with Allegra Cole, I'll tell you that.”
Later during Weekend Update, Michael Che and Colin Jost spent several minutes discussing Smith and his resignation from the Academy before welcoming Kenan Thompson playing OJ Simpson, quipping, “Love will make you do crazy things... allegedly.”
Love will make you do crazy things...allegedly pic.twitter.com/pH5eCk99uj
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) April 3, 2022
One sketch was devoted entirely to the slap, but told from the unexpected perspective of a seat filler who is thrilled to be sitting next to Will Smith, his hero. Carmichael plays the Oscars seat filler who is overjoyed to be sitting next to Smith, played by Chris Redd. He asks for a selfie, which Smith is happy to indulge. Then, what happened happens.
It's a pretty funny interpretation of what the experience of the night might have been like for all the people not directly involved, but glued to their seats.