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SNL's "Grouch" Sketch Is the Gritty Joker Sequel We Deserve
David Harbour plays a radicalized sanitation worker living on Sesame Street in Saturday Night Live's parody of the DC movie.
Director Todd Phillips' Joker movies re-imagine the Batman supervillain's origin story. Loosely based on the DC character first created in 1940, the films follow Arthur Fleck's arc from failed comedian to vigilante killer and antihero. Grounding the comic book character in a dark drama was such a success, it inspired Saturday Night Live to give Sesame Street's prickliest resident the same treatment.
In SNL's cinematic pretaped sketch "Grouch," October 12, 2019 Host David Harbour plays Oscar, a sanitation worker who feels pushed to the limit (and happens to love trash).
"Damn, Oscar, why you such a grouch, man?" his fellow garbageman (Season 45 cast member Chris Redd) asks him.
"From the studio that brought you Joker and the twisted minds at Sesame Workshop comes the next gritty antihero origin story," a voice-over says.
We meet live-action versions of famous Muppets like you've never seen them before: Guy Smiley (Bowen Yang), Snuffleupagus (Kenan Thompson), Prairie Dawn (Chloe Fineman), and Bert and Ernie (Alex Moffat and Mikey Day), the latter three having fallen on hard times.
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"And how does this make you feel?" a therapist (Ego Nwodim) asks Oscar, after he complains about the state of the Street.
"Grouchy," he says.
SNL's Joker parody gives Oscar the Grouch an origin story
"When everyone calls you trash, and everyone treats you like trash, why don't you just become trash?" Harbour's Oscar intones against a sweeping soundtrack, as we see him painting his face green with brown eyebrows and climbing into the iconic Oscar the Grouch can.
We're treated to a few more unsettling versions of Sesame Street's favorites — Heidi Gardner as a dancing Big Bird, Beck Bennett as The Count, Elmo (Melissa Villaseñor) getting arrested, and Cookie Monster — before Oscar dances down the tall W167th Street steps made iconic in Joker.
"Would you do me one favor," he says. "Will you call me The Grouch?" .
In a behind-the-scenes video with Mikey Day, SNL co-head writer Streeter Seidell, and director Paul Briganti (who also helmed the 2023 Please Don't Destroy movie), they explained that the concept came from wanting to give an unlikely property a "dark origin story."
"Oscar the Grouch was perfect," Day said.
Seidell said it was Harbour himself who pitched Oscar as the Joker parody, and they were excited by the chance to bring the other Sesame Street Muppets to life in that universe. Briganti added that the mission to evoke Joker's visual style even involved using "some of the same lenses and cameras as they did."
It wasn't SNL's only dystopian portrayal of a childhood classic: Their "Mario Kart Trailer" starring Pedro Pascal was Season 48's most-watched pretaped sketch. It was nominated for two Emmys, including one for that production's behind-the-scenes video.
Watch "Grouch" from Season 45, Episode 3 above, and stream every season of SNL on Peacock anytime
