Paul Mescal and “SNL” have made it onto Spotify’s Wrapped Lists

Paul Mescal and “SNL” have made it onto Spotify’s Wrapped Lists

This week, Gladiator II Star Paul Mescal made his debut as a presenter Saturday Night Live — and unsurprisingly, there were plenty of jokes about Mescal’s ubiquitous pop culture presence and good looks. But one of the episode’s most memorable skits dealt with something else that seemed to be everywhere this week: Spotify’s Wrapped Lists, which allow users of the service to share the artists they’ve listened to most over the past year.

It’s a good way for Spotify to let people know about the service. But it can also lead to surprising moments when you discover that a friend or acquaintance has surprising taste in music. Hence the plot of this sketch, in which Mescal plays a friend from a group who discovers some surprising things about him when he reveals his own information.

If you’re looking for a critique of the entire Wrapped phenomenon, you’ll have to look elsewhere for it. Instead, the sketch turns out to be based on a simple concept that largely paid off SNL: Having Bowen Yang play an absurd, larger-than-life character. (See also: His appearance as “Doctor Please” earlier this year.) Add in some very specific references to a location outside of Baltimore, and you have one of the series’ most memorable surreal sketches in a nutshell.

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However, perhaps the sketch’s most enjoyable and bizarre moment comes in the opening moments, when a character played by Andrew Dismukes concludes a story about an argument with Ira Glass. It’s a throwaway line that suggests a very different sketch – and another memorably strange concept.

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