Saturday Night Live brought back a legend for this weekend’s new episode: former cast member Tracy Morgan. Morgan made a cameo at the end of a sketch called “Men’s Room,” starring host Kieran Culkin and cast members Bowen Yang, Chris Redd, Andrew Dismukes and Alex Moffat. As always, Morgan’s brash delivery had the crowd howling.
“Men’s Room” poked fun at the awkward social dynamics at play in a men’s restroom in the workplace, with the cast members giving self-conscious soliloquies about the things they tend to blurt out in small talk at the urinal. They exchange cliche jokes and sayings, but privately question themselves and wonder if it’s the location that makes them act awkwardly. Moffat plays the boss, who escalates by using his blue-lit speech to reveal that he committed a murder years ago and somehow got away with it.
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The final joke of the sketch comes when Morgan struts out of a stall, revealing he has been inside all along. After sharing his own banal joke about what he was doing inside, he looks at Moffat and cries: “Hey, this dude killed my brother!” The sketch ends there.
Morgan joined the main cast of Saturday Night Live in 1996 and stayed there through 2003. According to a report by Entertainment Weekly, it came down to either Morgan or Stephen Colbert in the final round of auditions that year, and Lorne Michaels decided to cast Morgan. Morgan played some fan-favorite characters including Brian Fellow and Astronaut Jones, all with his signature bombastic, unpredictable style.
After SNL, Morgan did not go far – he played a fictionalized version of himself on 30 Rock called Tracy Jordan, with all of his idiosyncracies exaggerated along with his wealth. He was on that show from 2006 to 2013, and in the meantime, he hosted SNL in 2009, made a guest appearance in 2011 and hosted again in 2015. In 2019, he made a brief guest appearance like this one in an episode hosted by Eddie Murphy.
These days, Morgan stars in the TBS sitcom The Last O.G. He is also active in the stand-up comedy industry, particularly in New York City. It is not clear why exactly he dropped in on SNL this week, but his appearance was welcome by fans.
Culkin’s debut performance as host was generally well-received this weekend, as was musical guest Ed Sheeran. The variety show will be back on Saturday, Nov. 13 with host Jonathan Majors and musical guest Taylor Swift. SNL airs live at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
