Peacock/Universal Studios
The genealogy of Saturday Night Live can be traced across decades of rascally man-boys: from the sheepish “we had homework?” grins of young Adam Sandler and Jimmy Fallon to the scruffy perma-bedhead of Andy Samberg, and now, to the scarecrow lank of the three sad virgins who make up Please Don’t Destroy.
NYU buddies Martin Herlihy (son of longtime SNL writer Tim Herlihy), John Higgins (son of longtime SNL writer Steve Higgins), and Ben Marshall (son of a Georgia couple without Wikipedia pages) were brought onboard the sketch institution to produce digital shorts in 2021, arriving as natural successors to The Lonely Island. But in place of pitch-perfect parody, they’ve preferred slices of banal absurdism featuring cracked-mirror versions of themselves behind the scenes at a 30 Rock slightly less off-kilter than 30 Rock’s.
Martin’s new friend, who happens to be 10 years old, drops in on a late-night writing session; the guys show the prodigious Pete Davidson clips from their own careers as kid stand-ups, when they did Def Jam material about “hitting it from the back” at the Apollo; guest host Bad Bunny insists on performing his ill-advised Shrek remake.