Hasta La Creative!

A five-minute 1990s-era Scientology sing-along video doesn’t need a parody to be funny. But that hasn’t stopped Saturday Night Live from making one anyways—and the results really don’t disappoint.

Everyone’s favorite crazy celebrity cult is enjoying (or not) a renewed place in the popular consciousness, thanks to the buzz around the HBO documentary Going Clear. So is everyone’s favorite kitschy decade, thanks to BuzzFeed. That means NBC’s live sketch comedy show was able to topically spoof the clip, which resurfaced online in 2011.

There’s ample opportunity for skewering. The lyrics include excellent couplets like “Religion and science intertwined/aliens live inside of our minds.” Pop-up annotations list the sinister fates of faces gleefully bobbing on the screen. Bobby Moynihan shines as L. Ron Hubbard.

Titled “Neurotology Music Video,” it’s packed with references that will tickle anyone who’s been following the scandal around the church—even if the reality is unsettling. (Anyone who hasn’t been keeping up can find an excellent, hefty primer in the 2011 article “The Apostate,” by Lawrence Wright, who went on to write the book Going Clear, on which the HBO documentary is based.)

It’s too bad SNL couldn’t also work in an extended parody of Tom Cruise raving about how great it is to be Tom Cruise, the Scientologist. Though in that case, it’s hard to imagine anything beating the real deal.

One of the things Saturday Night Live does best is skewer advertising tropes, so it’s no surprise that in last night’s pre-Super Bowl episode, the show did just that. With a parody Totino’s ad, no less. 

In the spot, Vanessa Bayer gamely plays a bored housewife who doesn’t know what to do with herself after she’s served her hubby (host J.K. Simmons) and his pals their snacks for the Big Game. Enter Totino’s Super Bowl Activity Kit for Women.  

The skit makes fun of ads that play up the role of a doting wife for the Big Game. It helps, too, that the activity pack looks like something Hasbro would make—with a top, a set of jacks and other kid’s toys inside.

Most presidents go through a second-term depression, but Obama's has been particularly dismal. To help out, Saturday Night Live has introduced Paxil Second Term Strength, a depression medication for the narrowest target market imaginable: the president of the United States. Paxil Second Term Strength makes you feel like you're giving a speech on a college campus in 2008 or getting Bin Laden all over again. It's even powerful enough to deal with symptoms from Benghazi to that time Jay-Z and Beyoncé went to Cuba. Not a Democrat? No problem. There's also new Paxil Republican Strength for when you have to answer to Congress or the Koch Brothers. It's not the funniest of SNL, but it's worth a chuckle. It also appears to be some excellent product placement, given that Paxil is a real medication with a registered trademark whose packaging and logo were used in the spot—a fact which should be far from depressing for Paxil's brand managers.