Alert – Saturday Night Live: Padma Lakshmi spoofs HERSELF in cooking show sketch in rollicking episode… as show honors late Friends star Matthew Perry

Padma Lakshmi hilariously spoofs herself during a brief guest appearance on this weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live 

Hosted by the charming southern comic Nate Bargatze, the episode featured performances by the Foo Fighters.

Early in the episode, Nate and Ego Nwodim co-star as a pair of cookery show contestants competing over who can make the best soul food.

To the horror of the guest judges, played by Punkie Johnson and Kenan Thompson, the white contestant from Rhode Island winds up preparing a far superior meal. 

Enter Padma, dolefully handing Dougie (Nate) his prizes, while he repeatedly apologized for having won the competition.

The episode included a moving tribute to Friends star Matthew Perry, who guest-hosted Saturday Night Live in 1997 at the height of his stardom.

Matthew was found dead at the age of 54 this Saturday ‘after drowning in his jacuzzi at home,’ sources told .com.

During Saturday Night Live, in a touchingly simple movie, a black-and-white picture of Matthew appeared onscreen along with his name. 

was Nate delivered a heartwarming opening monologue, telling the audience that ‘I’m as shocked as you are that I’m here’ and riffing on his family and his age.

‘I’m 44. My daughter’s 11. When she’s my age, it’ll be 2057,’ he reflected. I don’t even believe that’s a year. My movies didn’t go that high in fake years. How am I gonna talk to someone from 2057? I have more in common with a pilgrim.’

He cheerfully looked back on his ‘old-timey’ Southern upbringing, including county fairs, which he is astonished are still running.

‘I don’t think the government knows about ‘em. ‘Cause I don’t know, we’d ride these rides that were on the interstate an hour ago,’ he cracked.

One of the attractions involved paying to fight an orangutan – and amazingly, some attendees agreed to cough up the $5 for the pleasure.

‘He would pay and then he’d go in there and this orangutan would just knock this dude out, because we didn’t have the internet to look up: “How strong’s an orangutan?”’ Nate joked to a huge laugh.

During his set, he warmly told stories about his family, including his great-aunt Helen who wa nine years old in the 1930s before the doctors discovered she was deaf. 

‘Isn’t deaf one of the easier ones to figure out?’ he marveled. ‘And the doctors were baffled, as they smoked in her face. And they’re like: “I don’t know. She’s rude, I’ll tell ya that.”‘

Nate fondly sent up his aging father, whose medical problems have advanced to the point he ‘has surgery eight times a year, probably, and he loves it! He loves it.’

Of course he also poked fun at himself for not reading books, even though ‘Reading, I believe, is the key to smart.’

One result of his antipathy to literature is that he is distinctly unknowledgeable about history, meaning that ‘every history movie I watch, I watch on the edge of my seat.’

In the showstopping line that closed out his monologue, he said: ‘I watched the movie Pearl Harbor and I was as surprised as they were.’

Saturday Night Live then barrels into the cookery show sketch, with Nate and Ego playing respectively the contestants Dougie and Kelly.

Heidi Gardner is the host, with guest judges Reverend Jeremiah Fields (Kenan Thompson), and Maddie Johnson (Punkie Johnson), owner of a soul food restaurant.

After blind tastings of Plate One and Plate Two, Jeremiah and Maddie are meant to announce which one is best without knowing the chef behind each.

Plate One is heaped with a sumptuous-looking smorgasbord of traditional soul food, while Plate Two is an anemic affair covered in tiny blobs of undefinable dishes.

‘Well, plate number one was perfect, okay? I could feel the soul,’ says Jeremiah. ‘This plate right here is the culture.’

‘Yes, yes, I agree,’ says Maddie. ‘We don’t know who cooked what but whoever cooked plate one knew exactly what SHE was doing.’

Plate Two on the other hand ‘has no soul and no food,’ per Maddie, while Jeremiah remarks simply that its offerings ‘frankly pissed me off.’

Jeremiah turns to Dougie and pointedly says: ‘Look, here, my man, respect for throwing your hat in the ring but this ain’t it.’

Maddie and Jeremiah are astonished to be informed that Plate One, their clear winner, was actually prepare for them by Dougie.

‘Dougie cooked that?’ says Jeremiah incredulously, and Dougie replies: ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ setting up a pattern that continues through his replies.

‘How?’ Jeremiah marvels, to which Dougie, clearly uncomfortable at having won, says: ‘I don’t know. I just did my best and I, again, sorry.’

Jeremiah is increasingly baffled as he learns Dougie has neither cooked soul food before, nor as a Rhode Islander has he grown up eating it. 

Maddie theorizes that his ‘parents are black somehow’ but Dougie exhaustedly says: ‘Nah, my parents are white, I’m sorry.’

‘Kelly, what the hell happened?’ demands Maddie, furiously rounding on Ego’s character, who replies: ‘I don’t know! I live in France!’

Jeremiah tries Plate Two again in order to see if he ‘missed something,’ and despite giving his best effort to enjoy himself, he spits out the catfish. 

When he demands to know how it was prepared, Kelly informs him he just ate Impossible Catfish, ‘made from soy protein.’ 

Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef fame duly arrives on the scene to present the prizes, and begins her monologue: ‘Congratulations, Kelly….’

She is quickly informed Dougie has won and, to both her and the victor’s mounting discomfort, starts reading out the prizes.

His rewards are to guest-star on Miss Maddie’s YouTube show The Black Kitchen, and to appear as an honored guest at Essence Fest, and to be appointed a cultural ambassador by Howard University. 

Maddie plops her head down on her judging table in utter despair, while Jeremiah comforts her and Dougie just keeps on apologizing.

Next comes a trailer for a Hallmark Horror movie, starring Nate and Chloe Fineman in a sprightly romantic comedy about a serial killer and his prey.

Chloe plays Kelsey, who enters her childhood home, asks if her dad is around, sees a note saying he went out for pizza and so decides to wait for his return.

She gets a phone call and thinks her father is on the other end of the line, only for a mysterious voice to repeatedly tell her to ‘turn around.’

A serial killer dressed as a scarecrow advances on her with a knife through the hallway – only to stop and, befuddled, whip his mask off.

He turns out to be Mark (Nate), an old hometown friend of Kelsey’s, who is surprised and delighted to see back in their childhood stomping ground of Autumn Hollow. 

A hokey trailer voiceover begins: ‘The last thing Kelsey Warden expected was to be reunited with her high school crush-turned-hometown killer, but sometimes life comes up with other plans in A Stab At Love.’ 

Wandering through a store, Kelsey wonders whether she can stay in Autumn Hollow and pursue their romance considering her ‘career in New York.’

Her gal pal (Punkie), reasons: ‘I don’t know if that’s what he has in mind,’ inasmuch as Mark is in lurking in the corner with his mask and knife. 

The voiceover quips: ‘With two almost attractive actors with almost human-sound names, starring Gashely Greigert and Bren Cloebog.’ 

In order to persuade her not to leave town, Mark leads Kelsey into his lair – a blood-spattered barn with weapons dangling from the walls. 

Their private confessions to each other then burst forth – Kelsey says: ‘I think I’m falling for you,’ and Mark reveals: ‘I wanna kill you and your whole family,’ leaving them both overwhelmed with romantic sentiment. 

Kelsey is ‘scared’ – not of being murdered, but of ‘love,’ to which Punkie’s character remarks that ‘all y’all white girls’ are ‘stupid.’ 

The blossoming love affair between Mark and Kelsey is disrupted when her fiance Jake (Mikey Day) blows into town.

Mike storms away from Kelsey in a huff, saying: ‘I don’t even know if I wanna kill you anymore,’ and telling her to return to New York, where other murderers await.

Kelsey however decides to stay, leaving Mark overjoyed, to the point he proposes to her with one of his victim’s embalmed hands in lieu of a ring. 

In a sweet tip of the hat to Nate’s trouble with history, he then stars in a sketch based in an American army camp during the Revolutionary War.

Nate stars as George Washington, building up the morale of his troops as they take shelter in 1777 amid their struggle for independence.

Washington, much to the troops’ bemusement, is dead-set on his dream of America having its own system of ‘weights and measures.’ 

He waxes rhapsodic about tabulating weight in pounds and tons, brushing off the troops’ qualms about why there is a word for 2,000lbs but not 1,000. 

The tics in his system, he says, are there ‘because we are free men, and we will be free to measure liquids in liters and milliliters, but not all liquids.’

Liters are only for soda, wine and alcohol,’ whereas ‘for milk and paint, we will use gallons, pints and quarts, God willing.’ 

When one of the troops asks: ‘How many liters are in a gallon, sir?’ Washington replies: ‘Nobody knows,’ getting a huge laugh from the studio audience.

Kenan’s black soldier asks about the fate of ‘people of color’ after independence – and slaveholding Washington hastily switches the subject back to measurements.

One of the soldiers expresses a preference for ‘meters and kilometers’ as they are less ‘complicated,’ but Washington assures him they ‘will’ use those units also.’

But only in certain unpopular sports like track and swimming. For popular sports like football, we will use yards,’ Washington proclaims.

In response to a question about what ‘foot-ball’ is, Washington explains patiently: ‘It’s a sport where you throw a ball with your hands.’ 

Kenan tries to direct the conversation back to the slaves, eliciting Washington’s evasion: ‘You asked about the temperature.’

Concluding his patriotic disquisition, Washington declares: ‘This is my dream for our country, men, a melting pot of different measurements that will make European men throw tantrums. In short, a land of liberty.’

‘Where all men are free!’ adds Kenan, to which Washington walks over to him, puts a hand uneasily on his shoulder, and wordlessly walks away.

Nate and Saturday Night Live regulars Andrew Dismukes and James Austin Johnson then play a country trio singing about the joys of Drinking On A Lake Beach.

‘Slippin’ on slimy rocks all day long / The off-duty cop is smokin’ a bong,’ they sing. ‘Big snappin’ turtle just bit me on the dog / Down on the Lake Beach.’

Another one of the verses goes: ‘I drag my Yeti down a two-mile road / Every step I take I maybe squash a baby toad / Diaper in the water with a heavy-ass load / Down on the Lake Beach.’

Then comes a sketch starring Ego and Nate as a couple getting their children ready to go trick-or-treating – only for the SAG-AFTRA strike to intrude on their plans.

They are duly interrupted by Fran Drescher (Sarah Sherman), in full The Nanny mode, acting in her capacity as the president of SAG-AFTRA.

Fran is there to enforce SAG’s new strike guideline demanding that its members not dress as Hollywood characters, so as not to promote the studios. 

The children are dressed as Spider-Man, Barbie and Black Panther, prompting Fran to call them ‘scabs’ and insist that they go change.

Ego asks what costumes are acceptable, leading Fran to suggest ‘Harry Potter as described only in the book,’ as well as potentially ‘minor characters from the Bible who have not appeared in any film adaptation.’

‘See, who needs Iron Man when you have Zoheth, son of Ishi who begat Ben Zoheth?’ Fran encourages the couple.

‘Unfortunately, this year, you can’t be Yoda, but you can be Hoda!’ Fran adds, prompting a child dressed as Hoda Kotb to say: ‘The wig is fake but the wine is real!’

Fran notes that daytime and reality TV are within the bounds of acceptable costumes, putting Nate in the clear inasmuch as she assumes he is dressed as ‘one of the perverts from To Catch A Predator.’

Nate protests that he is not in costume at all but his merely in his normal attire, but Fran soldiers ahead with her union manifesto.

If people already bought non-compliant costumes before the strike, they can adjust them: ‘For example, say you’re dressed as Wolverine – just drop the claws and voila, now you’re any gay guy over 50.’

She also pitches The Nanny as a costume, and when asked if that does not violate the ‘intellectual property’ prohibition, jokes: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t call her intellectual.’

The Foo Fighters hit the stage that evening to perform their new song Rescued from But Here We Are – their first album since the death of their drummer Taylor Hawkins.

Later on in the episode came a sketch set on an airplane, where a couple played by Devon Walker and Chloe Fineman are on the brink of parenthood.

Chloe goes into labor in her seat, and when Devon begs for a doctor Nate gets up behind them, uselessly offering: ‘I’m a lawyer.’ 

When Devon protests that they are looking for a lawyer, Nate irrelevantly insists that being a lawyer is ‘the second best job.’ 

Up pops another lawyer played by Andrew Dismukes, who despite his own profession argues that engineers are in fact the second best job.

As the attorneys bicker and Chloe grows increasingly desperate, Chloe Troast announces that she is a teacher – earning herself a chorus of boos.

Bowen Yang, dressed in all white with sunglasses and long hair, offers in a creepily silky voice: ‘I’m a kind of doctor,’ but is told: ‘Not you!’ 

Heidi gets up and declares she has ‘the hardest job of all,’ before dramatically intoning: ‘I am a mother,’ to a round of applause.

Mikey Day as the pilot emerges from the bathroom and declares that he has the ‘second-best job’ what with the ‘hundreds’ of people he transports.

Revealing that the autopilot has been operating the plane while he was in the bathroom, he concedes his job is ‘easy – but not as easy as teacher!’

Dave Grohl enters in a white coat, asking: ‘Did someone ask for a doctor?’ briefly bringing a moment of relief to the parents-to-be until he adds: ‘Cause that’s my Halloween costume! Come on, man!’ 

At the end of the episode the Foo Fighters came back on to deliver a stirring rendition of The Glass, also from their new album.