"Lin-Manuel Miranda was my first choice!"
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I apologize for taking you to a secondary location.
I realize that this is an amazingly late recount of an SNL line-going experience. It's almost a month past when the episode actually took place, and I went back and forth on if it was something I should even write about at that point... but then all of the COVID-19 stuff happened. SNL got shut down, probably for the season. And that made the experience of seeing the show so close to its unexpected closure all the more special as a moment in time to reflect—I was a lucky audience member for an intimate, one-night only comedy show led off by John Mulaney and David Byrne.
For some reason, the prospects of a leap day episode of SNL immediately piqued my interest; it would be a first for the show's history (and very potentially this could be the only episode to land on such a date), and I'm all for that incredibly niche but ultimately meaningless specificity. Then I found out that episode would be hosted by none other than Mulaney with musical guest David Byrne—because truly, what combo of individuals would be more suited for such a strange date—and I knew that I had to go.
This wasn't my first time seeing the show; the season prior, I got into the Awkwafina episode (and, likewise, wrote a little piece on it). But the stakes for this go-around were far different on account of the host being John effin' Mulaney, a guy who's proven himself to be one of SNL's most reliable hosts in recent history, scoring two out of two instant classic hosting gigs in the span of less than a year. Add in the fun new factor of this trip taking place during the winter as opposed to on a cool, autumn evening and you've got a lot of strange and frightening variables floating around in the air that I had to make sense of quick.
