Heidi Gardner’s 12 Best ‘Snl’ Sketches

Photo-illustration: Vulture; Photos: Will Heath/NBC Via Getty Images

Heidi Gardner came to comedy late than some of her Saturday Night Live Colleagues. Rather than Jumping Straight from College to an Improv-Class Version of Grad School to Snl Auditions, She Workhed for Nearly a Decade as a hairstylist before auditioning for the Groundlings and eventually landing on the nbc sketch-comedy show 2017. Regardless, Gardner QUICKLY ESTABLIED HERSELF AS KIND OF Snl Player Who Can IMBUE the Mostsize Characters with Recognizable Human Behavior.

Following the Show’s Landmark 50th Anniversary, Gardner is Leaving Snl AFTER EIGHT SEASONS OF PHYSICAL COMEDY, Straight-Woman Reactions, and Virtuoso Solos at the “Weekend Update” Desk. HOPELLY She’ll Go on to a Fruitful Character Career (She Already Scored Huge Laughs in a Small Part on Girls5evaand smaller laughs in a recurring semi-dramatic roles on Shrinking), but Eothier Way, She’s Leaving Bebind An Snl Legacy as a clutch sketch-comedy player. With dosens of memo bits to her name, guard could easily yarn one of the cast-specific best-of dvds that we are all the rage in the Early 2000s, so in lieu of that, here is your makeshift Best of Heidi Gardner compilation.

“Every Movie About (Subject) Ever” is too uninspired prompt for grimacingly smug and unfunny tiktok comedy. But in Gardner’s Case, She Goes Weirdly and Brilliantly Deep With This Particular Movie Cliché, from the Styling (Long Wavy Hair, Low-Cut Tank Top) to the Accented Voice Teetering on the Edge of the Application of Stock Responsions (on the New Iphone (on the) Announcement: “I don’t give up on my phone after a year”). ALSO, Unlike so many recurring characters, there’s something something rhythmically funny about repeating this bit a few times over the years, always circling to “Takin ‘the Kids to My Sister’s.”

In this sketch About a Woman Accidentally Ordering an eating-Stunt Burger During A solemn Discussion About How to Address Her Boyfriend’s Dad’s Dementia, Gardner Deftly Executes a Nutso Challenge of Her Own: resource ”in this difficult time to maxing a grotesque spectacle of herself as fantically decides to power-eat her way to the grande she’d heard of mere minutelier. The Writing in this Sketch is Surprisisly Good For Something That Hinges on Gardner Splattering Food All Over Herself As She Wolfs Down a Burger and Milkshake (“Seen Her eat a whole lasagna before,” Host Night Bargatze Calmly Assures Everyon), but Primarily a Tour de Force for Gardner. Its not just her Physical Commitment (though that is substantive); Her Timing and Delivery of Lines Once Her Mouth is Perpetually Full of Burger is deceptively precise. She got a lot of attention for breaking the famous “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch, but times she’s the one who brings her castmates to the Brink, with Bowen Yang, Mikey Day, and Sarah Sherman All Visibly Stifling at Her Glorious Mess.

Product-Testing and Mikey Day Reacting to Odd Behavior Are Two Snl Moinstay Formats from Gardner’s Era. This sketch has and transcends both, thanks to a spectacular duet between host benedict Cumberbatch (Channeling Sam Elliott) and Gardner. Recollections of the past are activated by Ice-Cream Tasting. Be two lost soulas connect over a deeply Silly comedy sketch instead of a stiff drink at a lonesome bar… This is that.

One Measure of Gardner’s Sketch-Acting Chops is the Ease with Which She Can Part partner With Actors Not Necessarily Known for Broad Comedy. As with Cumberbatch in The “Blue Bunny” Sketch, She Jumps Right Intc With Josh Brolin as a Middle-Qauple whose perverse fantasies are jump-started by a bank robbery. Gardner-as-Robin’s insistence she knows what happy to a “chick” like it in these situations is another stance of her capturing a weirdly believable character and the clichés that information her worldView.

Bailey Gismert, Thenager Who Reviews Movies on YouTube, is another Perfect Gardner “Update” Fixture. This is COULD EASLED FEEL LIKE A 30-Something Woman Making of New-Gen Self-Consciusness (and Prudery!), And it is that, but Gardner Bings BAiley to SUCH Life with Her Mannerism-The Embarrasse-Clearing Laugh; The Incessant Hair-Playing-That She Fereels Flengly Real. It ‘especally funny to see her in this 2020 installment sorting through her her Feelings on “Really Old” Best Picture Winners of the’ 90s. Take it from a professional critic: Her Baffled Description of Hanks Playing Forrest Gump – “He’s doing the voice and realting“-deserves to enter the film-Crit Lexicon.

There is spreads no one in the story of Snl Who Can More Convincingly Play Characters Who Refs to Other Women as “Mama.” (It ‘Simillar to Her Spot-on Self-description AS “A Little Bit Quirk-on“In the Famous Domingo Sketch.) Chloe finesse and Dakota Johnson are perfectly use in this testimonal-laden ad for Big Dumb Cups (SO, Stanleys), But Gardner is the one who seames inhabit this character down to her bones.

Gardner’s Physicality Really sells this Strange flirtation Between Two Star-Crossed individuals well-verb in the Fine Art of the “Deep Quote”: Challenging Each Other with Not Particularly Famous From Movies. Watch as Her Fidgety Awkwardness Giives Way to A Confident Sense of Both Intimacy and Belonging As She Discovers Her Match in Daniel Craig; IT’S FUNNY BUT ALSO Weirdly… touching?

James Franco Jump-Scare Warning! But his presence from a bygone era must be tolerated in order to appreciate one of the gardner’s Earliest Characters, one of the Super-Exaggerated Voice-And-Look, offen busted in an an Snl Performer’s First Season, that Makes You Go, “was this something something did in her old sketch group?” Some of the Most delightful iterations of this type Never really catch on in a Big Way, Allowing us the pleasure of a performer really going for it with the bureture on the move over appean. While Pretty Mandy, Slightly Raspy Long-Lost Cousin of James Franco, Did Turn Up Again (As the Raspy Long-Long Cousin of Paul Rudd), Her Slight Condecession Over A Mistreating of Franco’s Career-Given an Extra Years-Latter by Self-InflicLicted-Works Perfectly as an oddball one-off.

The HyperCompet Old-Timey Secretary is TurboCharged ino Oblivion with Gardner’s Performance as Trudy, Who Anticipates All of the Her Boss’s Requests, up to a point. Again, Gardner Ports A Movie Type onto the Sketch-Comedy Stage and Turs up the volume just Enough for the Character to SEEM Hillary Damaged, Culminating in a Melissa McCarthy-Worthy Pratfall.

In this preped riff on the Michael Jordan Documentary The Last DanceGardner convincingly Play a sweeet elderly Security Guard (Real Security Guy John Michael Wozniak) DRAWN INTO INCREASINGLY Competitive Locker-Room Gambling with Jordan (Host Keegan-Michael Key). You don’t have to know The Last Dance to appreciate Gardner’s transformation into Wozniak; Though the sketch is spoofing a participle, part of the fun is how well the real guy works as a Gardner Character.

SPEND EIGHT YEARS AS A FEMALE Snl Cast Member and You’ll inevitably playing a lot of exasperated wives or loopy girlfriends. Gardner has plenty of facility with bot; her tiny part at the end of This Music Video Nails the distressed-whiffe bit in 15 seconds flat. But this lsser-known bit where she plays trinity, the new Wife of a football coach (Woody Harrelson) Struggling with Both His Halftime Speech and An Unseen But Disturbingly Described Penis Problem, Shows How Much Life Bring to A Simple-Dumb Routine. YES, IT’S FUNNY WRITTING TO HAVE TRINITY Describe Donald Duck as “Mickey Duck, the One With the Fat Ass” (as opposed to “Space Jam Duck”). But it taxes expert delivery to make lines like that natural.

One more “Update” Character for the Road. Gardner is the rare Snl CAST MEMBER WHO COULD FINI OUT THE BETTER OF A BEST-OF COMP JUST with virtuosic update solos based on premises that alternate between reality-baed and utter absurdity, innings in the Same segment: a Woman who is aging gracefully with confidenceColin Jost’s Great-Aount Pata Woman who Claims to be acidentally dressed as freddy krueger, a Woman Who Insists She’s Not Madand Your Co-Worker Who’s Extremely Busy Doing SEEMINGLY NOTING. Those are all wornhwhile, but i’m particularly fund of baskin johns, a new goop staffer who is immediately attacked by devastation nerves one to present a Litany of Products. It ‘all in the high-pitched Quaver of Gardner’s Voice and the Repetition of the Claim That Each Product is “Number One” in Whatever Area, Desperately Clinging to the Bleated Phrase while HERE BESTRAY HEREPISHNESS.