While awkward, creepy tech executives have become a recurringtheme on Saturday Night Live, this week’s episode gave the cast a chance to show off all their impressions at once.
In a single sketch, we got James Austin Johnson as Peter Thiel, Ben Marshall as Sam Altman, Jane Wickline as Dario Amodei, Jeremy Culhane as Elon Musk, Andrew Dismukes as Mark Zuckerberg — and eventually, the recently departed Bowen Yang joined the fun as Jensen Huang.
Huang’s ouster from Nvidia (after admitting to an affair with a suspected Chinese spy) could have serious implications for the tech industry; it also provided a hook for some easy jokes about rich nerds being easy marks for women (or men) who are out of their league.
In the sketch, a CIA agent played by host John Mulaney (hilarious as ever, if not entirely confident about how to pronounce “Palantir” or “Nvidia”) attempts to painstakingly explain why these execs should be suspicious when someone attractive suddenly seems interested in them romantically. For Altman and Thiel’s sake, he added, “I hope this is obvious: Even though you’re gay, you can still be tricked by a spy.”
Johnson’s version of Thiel pushed back, insisting that that tech tycoons deserve more respect, given all they’ve done for the country. “Name one time technology has let us down,” he said, giving Mulaney a chance to remind viewers about flights being halted all across the United States on Friday night.
“Okay, name one more time,” the fictional Thiel said, leading to an obligatory mention of Microsoft Outlook going down on Thursday. When asked for a third example, Mulaney said, “No, I’m done naming times.”
“Look, I get it,” he said. “I can’t imagine how disorienting this has been for you, to go from being bug-eyed weirdos to being gods. I mean, never in the history of our species have people as pale and as strange as you a) survived, and b) been given all the world’s wealth and power.”
