With time, a breakup can become an edifying event in one’s life. The immediate aftermath of a split tends to be less clear, a hazy maelstrom that can involve medicinal tubs of ice cream, insomnia by way of intrusive thoughts, and an aversion to wearing anything other than sweats. But a fresh breakup can also be a warped lens through which everyday occurrences can be newly interpreted: It’s capable of transforming, say, an innocuous song playing over the speakers at CVS into a private soundtrack that speaks directly to one’s loss. It can cause rote interactions to feel like personal taunts, or lead one to read deeply into something that isn’t quite true.
The peculiarities of these heartbreak goggles fueled a zany Saturday Night Live sketch, a standout from last night’s solid episode that saw Olivia Rodrigo doing double duty as host and musical guest. In “My Ex,” Rodrigo played a woman named Brianna who tried to make her ex jealous at a party by appearing to flirt with someone else; he did the same, leading her to double down, and vice versa. The ever increasing absurdity turned a familiar mind game between exes into a shrewd illustration of heartbreak’s capacity to create wild distortions of reality.
The sketch opened with people gathered at an intimate restaurant to celebrate their friend’s birthday. Brianna, spotting her former boyfriend, Duncan (Ben Marshall), attempted to brush off the awkward encounter. But she inadvertently made it plain that the three-week-old wound had not yet healed, admitting that she’d been thinking constantly about him and weeping nightly. She then turned to the stranger sitting to her left (Tommy Brennan) and asked if he’d pretend to be her date to make Duncan jealous. Seeing them nuzzling together, Duncan then asked the woman next to him, Beverly (Ashley Padilla), to act as though they’d arrived together that night.
Their behavior was relatable, reminiscent of the subtle one-upmanship that can so easily govern unwieldy, ego-driven social encounters. But “My Ex” ratcheted up the wackiness, highlighting the odd ways such mental gymnastics can work: In a riotous turn, Beverly played her role as Duncan’s fake date with inappropriate panache. When Brianna giggled at what her “date” was saying, Duncan—worried that this new guy was already making her laugh—told his date to act as though he’d just told a joke. Instead of chuckling flirtatiously, Beverly swerved in an unprecedented direction: “A gay joke?” she furiously yelled at Duncan, fist raised as though about to punch him. “Hey buddy, my sister’s gay!” When he clarified his request, asking her to appear to enjoy the joke, she cackled exaggeratedly and proclaimed: “What a great gay joke!” When Brianna and her date later feigned fun by smudging bits of birthday-cupcake frosting on one another’s noses, Beverly attempted to outdo them by smearing globs of mashed potatoes all over Duncan’s face and her own, goading him to lick it off while she moaned in false pleasure.
From across the room, a horror-stricken Brianna appeared to register, for a moment, Duncan and this stranger’s flailing attempts to make her envious. But instead, to Brianna’s mind, Duncan and his date embodied a sexual chemistry that was “off the charts,” despite the decidedly unsexy mashed potatoes coating their faces. When Padilla’s character later ripped off Duncan’s shirt and, inexplicably, attempted to replace it with her own sparkly cardigan, Brianna didn’t see it for what it was—a scheme gone disastrously awry—but rather saw two people who were “all over each other.”
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Padilla’s physical comedy shifted the sketch into a different stratosphere; Marshall and Rodrigo barely stifled their laughter as Beverly tried to wrestle the cardigan onto Duncan’s chest. The scene culminated with Beverly giving an unhinged speech that came across more like a formal royal decree—“We are to be wed at midnight, under the clock tower!”—than a ploy. By escalating the antics between the ex-lovers into objectively ridiculous displays of forced intimacy, the sketch underscored how often a broken heart can obscure what’s really happening. A twisted version of reality aligned with the already despondent mindsets that Brianna and Duncan had brought into the party.
The ultimate gag, though, was that the plans to make one another jealous, however off the rails, worked: Brianna stood up in front of the entire party and confessed that she wasn’t yet over Duncan, and she’d made a mistake in breaking up with him. He said he felt the same way, and the two then left together. They’d broken up for a reason unbeknownst to viewers. Yet at that moment, they only had eyes for each another—even if one of them was dripping mashed potatoes.
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