For free, real-time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our breaking news emails

Sign up for our free breaking news emails

Sign up for our free breaking news emails

Saturday Night Live was labeled “irrelevant” after a sketch for the premiere of its 50th season failed to amusingly address the subject of the gag.

SNL returned on September 28th with a show hosted by Jean Smart and featured an already infamous skit about singer Chappell Roan and viral pygmy hippo Moo Deng.

Another skit in the episode was a fake advertisement for US store Spirit Halloween, a seasonal retailer with more than 1,500 locations across North America. Stores often open for the Halloween season and then close when the festivities are over.

In the voiceover for the sketch, SNL cast member Heidi Gardner says, “Times may be good on Wall Street, but on Main Street communities are struggling. Closed stores, shuttered stores, empty parking lots… When hard times come, it’s easy to feel like no one cares.”

Gardner continues, adding that “help is on the way because when others go, we come” and that they will “greet customers for six weeks and then leave.”

Chloe Fineman then takes a look at Spirit Halloween’s costumes, which are often vaguely described to avoid copyright issues. For example, in the sketch, a young girl asks for a Taylor Swift outfit and is given a disguise titled “blonde singing woman.”

Fineman says, “We provide vulnerable communities with the things they need most: rash-inducing wigs, disposable fog machines, and famous character costumes customized just enough to avoid a lawsuit.”

Although “Spirit Halloween” has become something of a meme in recent years, SNL’s attempt to mock the retailer didn’t go over well with the store itself.

In response to -Show”.

The packaging also described the outfit as containing “outdated references, unknown actors and declining ratings.”

Open image in gallery

Elsewhere on SNL, James Austin Johnson reprized his role as Donald J. Trump on “Saturday Night Live” and joked that the former president picked the wrong vice president in Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

“People say he was a bad choice, and in many ways he was,” Johnson’s character says before introducing Vance, played by Bowen Yang, at a rally. An elated Yang takes the stage and says Johnson’s version of Trump told him, “JD, you’re like a son to me because I don’t like you. I’m stuck with you.”