If there was one true breakout sketch from the first half of this season of Saturday Night Live, it was “Close Encounter,” from the Ryan Gosling episode.
“Close Encounter” is a recurring sketch on SNL that first aired in December 2015. Last weekend, much to the delight of SNL viewers, Kate McKinnon revived one of her bawdy recurring characters, Ms. Rafferty, a.k.a. the woman who experiences some pretty traumatic extraterrestrial encounters compared to the relative transcendence of her peers.
Past cast member Kate McKinnon has appeared in all the previous iterations of the sketch about her character’s encounters with aliens, ghosts, and Santa Claus.
To sum it up for the uneducated viewer: While Ms. Rafferty is getting her tits flicked by horny aliens, the other two are getting their consciousness laid beyond time and space. Ms. Rafferty, she’s caught in a net and brought into a spaceship in a snare. The others, they’re gently guided by a pathway of golden light.
These otherworldly creatures either must really despise everything about her, or … nah, there’s really no other explanation.
The Premise and its Evolution
While the premise of each sketch has been slightly tweaked each of the five times, the four SNL hosts subjected to these “encounters” - Ryan Gosling, Casey Affleck, Brie Larson, and most recently, Liev Schreiber - have all carried on the storied tradition of breaking at some point during the sketch, thanks to McKinnon’s unflinching dedication to her chain-smoking drawl and physical man-spreading comedy.
In the first of the five sketches, we’re introduced to the basic premise that would later serve as the outlier of the sketches to come: McKinnon’s Ms. Rafferty, Cecily Strong’s polite Southern broad, and another Southern bumpkin played by the host (here, Ryan Gosling) are being interviewed by two NSA experts tasked with learning about their respective experiences.
The idea stayed pretty much the same throughout the week: Three people were abducted by aliens. Two had a transcendent, beautiful experience. But it was her musings about the aliens “slapping” her “knockers” that made Gosling - and Bryant - lose it.
McKinnon: “I dropped down seven feet onto the roof of a Long John Silver’s. They threw out my pants separately; they missed the roof. My slacks landed in a frickin’ pine tree, 30 feet away.
In the only sketch not to deal directly with the paranormal, a group of gal pals (featuring Brie Larson) becomes of great interest to the scientific community after they were all declared technically dead for 55 minutes. (They took a wrong turn into a lake during a road trip, yikes.) Unlike the others whose souls left their bodies and were beckoned to a golden light by their deceased relatives, Ms.
In a major win for the secular and religious communities, Ms. Rafferty and her two friends (one being Casey Affleck) had genuine encounters with the real Santa Claus - well, not Ms. Rafferty, as she was instead met by a “nine-foot tall goat man named Crinklemouse” who forced her to work in the reindeer stables with his “lez” wife and Gollum-esque elf named Shart.
Of all the hosts, Affleck managed to get off the most unscathed with breaking - and, like Larson, GIFs can’t capture his muffled laughter - but Ms. Rafferty’s aside about Mrs.
Reuniting the original gang for a sequel, the NSA once again interrogates the trio due to them being the only people to experience two verified alien abductions. Lucky them!
Breaking from the alien theme for the most recent installment, the group is interrogated by paranormal specialists after they had experiences to prove the existence of ghosts.
As always, Ms. Rafferty got the short end of the stick - while Strong and Liev Schreiber’s characters helped deliver the final wishes of friendly ghosts to their loved ones, Ms. Rafferty had to fulfill the bizarre quest of a demon to “upper deck that bitch’s toilet” with a fresh deuce.
The Magic Behind the Laughter
Close Encounter 50th – SNL50
The writers, Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, shared some insights into the sketch's creation.
Kate has an innate ability to make weirdos wonderfully accessible. She felt like a real person up there, which made the weirdness of her experience on this UFO with a group of dumb aliens seem more real. She found an awesome nuance in not playing it angry or too annoyed, but weirdly accepting and kind of disappointed, yet pretty much unfazed.
It went well, which made us super happy. It was pretty late in the read-through, so we didn’t know how it would go.
During the first blocking rehearsal on Thursday. He always seemed to lose it after Kate described being tossed onto the roof of Long John Silver’s. He had the line, “Man, you got screwed,” after that part, but it always seemed to take a while for him to get it out.
Yeah. Were the cast members laughing in the days leading up to it, too?
Yeah. Kate was like an assassin, taking them out one by one. She’d get Bobby to laugh, then spread her legs wider and wider until Aidy lost it.
Dress was very similar to air. We trimmed a line or two before air, but Kate had a good rhythm with the structure, and we didn’t want to throw anything off.
Ryan’s smile would get bigger and bigger. Also, you can in see in Aidy and Bobby’s eyes that they’re holding back laughter.
We were charmed.
It was fun because you could tell the cast was having fun with each other.
They walked off still laughing, which was cool. As Bobby exits at the very end of the sketch, you can see him shaking his head, like, “Well, we made it through that.” We gave Kate a giant hug after.
Simple: Aliens gently batting around knockers is a GUARANTEED WIN. But truthfully, it was Kate’s fantastic performance that broke the cast.
Meryl Streep Joins the Fun
The SNL50: The Anniversary Special on Sunday brought back Kate McKinnon‘s signature Colleen Rafferty alien abductee character in a special edition of the popular recurring sketch “Close Encounter” with a surprise appearance by Meryl Streep as her mom, Mrs. Rafferty.
In addition to McKinnon, also back was SNL alumna Aidy Bryant as one of two specialists interviewing a trio, including Rafferty, who all claimed that they had been abducted by aliens. Rafferty acknowledged her repeat abductions, all of which somehow involved her only being dressed from the waste up. Pascal and Harrelson both cracked up.
What was unexpected was Steep joining the group as Colleen’s mom, Colleen Sr., aka Mrs.
Explaining her tardiness with a bathroom break where “No. 1 turned into No. 3,” Streep’s Mrs. Rafferty channeled her daughter with NSFW zingers like, “Us Rafferty gals, we’ve always attracted the freaks.
The three-time Oscar winner made her first-ever appearance on Saturday Night Live during the 50th anniversary special on Sunday night. She popped up as Colleen Rafferty Sr., the mother of Kate McKinnon's iconic character who frequently gets abducted by aliens.
"Us Rafferty gals, we always attracted the freaks," Streep declared during SNL50.
The 75-year-old actress added, "I still had my pants on when they took me, but much like her, I've got an 'into the woods' sort of situation going on. My ex used to say that it was like trying to hack his way through the black forest."
That was a sly reference to Streep's 2014 musical movie Into the Woods.
Streep broke character several times during the sketch, and she almost said the "F" word at one point when she accidentally spilled her drink on herself.
McKinnon's quirky character Miss Rafferty first appeared on SNL in December 2015.
Streep won three Oscars for The Iron Lady (2011), Sophie's Choice (1982), and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). She's one of the most well-known actors to never host Saturday Night Live.
SNL50: The Anniversary Special celebrated five decades on NBC with dozens of former cast members, beloved guest hosts, and music superstars. The pilot originally aired on Oct. 11, 1975.
The three-hour program started out with Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon singing "Homeward Bound," and then Steve Martin delivered a traditional monologue. Two nights earlier, Streep and Short attended the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall.
“As for underwear-wise, this devil wears nada,” she said, a nod to one of Streep’s most famous movies, The Devil Wears Prada. Watch the video above.
In the latest sketch of “Close Encounter,” McKinnon’s character opens up about a new experience with alien abduction and has Pascal and Harrelson help her recreate her abduction. They were also abducted.
Streep plays McKinnon’s character’s mom. In a nod to the classic film The Devil Wears Prada, Streep says “the devil wears nada” about her undergarment situation with the aliens.
The mother also refers to Pascal’s character as “mustache” while they’re hitting on each other.
Earlier in the 50th anniversary special, Pascal joined the “Domingo” universe. He and Bad Bunny appeared in a new sketch with Marcello Hernández’s beloved viral character. Pascal played Domingo’s older brother Ronaldo and Bad Bunny was his self-proclaimed “hot brother” Santiago.