It’s Time to Appreciate SNL’s ‘Riley’ Sketch, Bitch

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Saturday Night Live was originally designed to be ephemeral: If you weren’t watching at 11:30 p.m., then you weren’t going to see what the Wild and Crazy Guys were up to that week, and that’s too fucking bad. But YouTube changed the show forever. Still, there are some sketches that have slipped away from most fans’ collective memory. For the longest time, comedian Sam Taggart thought the 2010 sketch “Riley” had been purged from the public record. “It was one of those things where you thought you imagined it,” he says. “I was like, Did I make this up, or did it actually air on TV?”

Featuring host Sigourney Weaver, “Riley” stars Fred Armisen as a teen boy who is also somehow an ancient gay man. His favorite word is bitch, and he uses it with great gusto. “That was the closest we had to gay comedy then,” says Taggart. Now, there’s so much queer comedy that it has its own hack conventions. But so does every subset of culture. Taggart skewers the generational divide in Millennial Hunter, his Tubi Original movie about a boomer who is killing Gen Y like they killed the diamond industry. The film stars SNL alum Chris Parnell as John, the Charles Bronson of the piece gunning down millennials left and right. Taggart spoke about Millennial Hunter’s roots as an indie-show character, as well as the SNL catchphrase character that time forgot.

“Riley” was a one-off sketch as far as I can tell. How’d he make such a lasting impression on you?
It was something about making fun of gay people, but doing it in a way that is funny to gay people. It’s so insane that they did that then. They couldn’t get away with a straight guy doing that. It reminded me of Bruno, too, where I was like, This is almost offensive, but at the same time, I’m happy that this is happening. They’re actually addressing gay people being bad in a way that is fresh.

It’s one of those characters that’s maybe a flop? It is a one-off, a stupid character with a jingle. They were doing this then in a way they don’t do anymore, like “I’m Carol” or “Debbie Downer.” To the point where I was like, I think this is bad. This one especially, I thought, This one is maybe bad, but they’re really committing to it! There’s a lot of things like that — that just get thrown into the garbage and no one sees them again. I’m surprised it’s online.

Do you think this sketch could do better today, when verbal tics are really having their moment in the culture?
Yeah, people could stitch it on TikTok and do lip syncs to calling people “bitch.” Obviously.

Do you find yourself repeating words like bitch? All of a sudden, your brain takes it as a shiny new toy to use all the time.
A hundred percent. I have to catch myself — sometimes it’s like, You’re not being funny, you just learned what everyone else is saying.

Right now, I can’t stop saying “tea.” I know it’s outdated already, but that makes it more fun to say. If someone says, “I think we should get a sandwich today,” I’ll be like, “Tea,” and it’s like, Stop. That’s not a joke. You have to think harder. I am very critical of others, and I also am critical of myself in the same way. But it’s not like I get better at it. I’ll just replace “tea.” I’m like, Okay, too many people are saying “tea,” I’ll do “spilled.” And it’s like Stop! That doesn’t count.

As you said, the catchphrase for Riley is just “bitch.” But the entire theme song is just “Get ready for Riley.” That’s such an interesting direction to give the audience.
It’s so funny — it makes no sense. It’s like Okay, but no one knows who this is. If this was a hit first, and then he gets a theme song, then we can be like, “Okay, America loves Riley — get ready for Riley.” But you can’t, day one, be, “Hit character Riley!”

What is your larger relationship to SNL?
I was very obsessed with it. I like this era of it. I was in college, so I was watching a little bit less, but I would watch it on the internet the next day. Like many people, it was the biggest comedy inspiration growing up. It was the only comedy you could see weekly.

Same question, but for Fred Armisen specifically.
No, I was obsessed with Fred Armisen. He’s so weird. He’s so funny. He’s really transforming all the time. Even doing this character — to use another gay catchphrase, he eats. He is eating, chomp chomp chomp. I can’t believe how much he’s eating. He is so committed in a way that is like, Why? If someone else was bombing this hard, they’d start laughing or start being like “This sucks,” and he stays completely in it.

And this isn’t even his most broad character. Look at the art dealers, the Nunis.
Nuni is so iconic.

I think those sketches made me fall in love with conceptual seating.
I think it influenced a lot of millennial design today.

Oh, that’s probably true. That’s also an incredible transition: What made you want to write Millennial Hunter, this Death Wish for generational dynamics?
In 2016, I was doing it as a character at indie shows. Then I went to L.A. for the first time and had meetings and I was like, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.” One of the things I did was try to come up with premises out of bits I had. So I was like, “Maybe there’s an action thing about this guy that’s hunting and killing millennials?” The studio was like, “Okay yeah, we like that. Let’s move forward with that.” And I was like, “Huh.”

So that was 2016. It was one of those things where the project kept going away. I’ve had so many things fall through the cracks and you just move on. Then in 2020 or something they were like, “Hey, we’re gonna bring this back — do you wanna pitch it?” I almost felt like, Are millennials over? In a sense, yes; avocado jokes are over. But I think it’s almost like millennials are more embarrassing now than they once were, because now we are in our 30s. When we were in our 20s and shaking things up, we were really kind of cool. And now we’re fully not cool. So I was like, Okay, this is fun again.

Can you tell me about the choice to start the film in 2015? It’s almost a period piece.
I was really adamant about starting it as a period piece, because I need people to understand I’m not trying to be hack. This was a real thing that was happening in 2015 with these articles about how “millennials are killing the [blank] industry.” The character came because I was working as a dog walker at the time, and I was in a horrible mood. I saw another one of these articles, and I just started tweeting as if I was the author of the article: “I was ready to take my revenge and hunt and kill each and every millennial until there were no more millennials left.”

If you could kill any industry single-handedly, which would it be and why?
I mean, tech. I hate it. I don’t think it’s radical to say it made everything worse. I’m ready to go to the video store to pick up a video. I’m ready to send a letter. Maybe I keep email. But no social media, period.

It seems even the millennials want to kill the millennial within.
A hundred percent. It’s self-hating.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of aging hipsters a lot recently. How much does someone need to pay attention to the mainstream, if they never cared about it in the first place?
I find this very confusing. I don’t know how to age tastefully. I consider myself a cool person. I moved to Brooklyn, New York City because I wanted to be a cool person. Because I liked indie rock and cool, alt comedy. But now it’s sad to try to be young. It’s sad to give up. And it’s sad to stay the same. So I guess I’m gonna tastefully listen to Ice Spice, but not make a big deal about it? I think maybe that’s it — it’s not making a big deal about it and trying to be casual.

There’s the John Waters thing of bribing young people with drugs to tell him what’s cool.
Yeah, that’s a good tip. But now they can get drugs anywhere. Now weed is legal. Needless to say, life is over. All my cultural capital, down the drain.

 In Millennial Hunter, you’re not really supposed to root for this guy slaughtering an entire generation. It reminds me of something in “Riley.” It has that very teen experience of still not quite knowing the difference between funny and mean.
It’s very teen, and it is very gay guy. It’s such a classic. It’s a running joke now: “Oh, you’re gay? Are you funny, or are you mean?” This kind of nailed that. Because, yeah, gays are the teens of the world. Print that.

Do you care to elaborate on that?
No, sentence over! Period, point blank.

Have you found your personal balance between funny and mean? Where is that line for you?
It’s always changing. Even with Millennial Hunter, I felt like there was an element of, Am I being mean to my dad?

I have a podcast called StraightioLab. My co-host, George, he’s more from a family where they rib each other. So sometimes he’ll be kind of mean as a joke, and there have been times I’m like, “You can’t do that to me. You have to stop. I’m not that. I’m a little too sensitive for that.”

That brings up the other big issue in the Riley sketch: the vibe at your friend’s house. The power dynamics. Depending on whose house you go to as a kid, you’d find out whether it’s a “We’re gonna cater to the guest” household or “We’re gonna cater to Dad” household. There’s always a power struggle between guest and patriarch.
Yeah, we were a “cater to guest” house. A “cater to Dad” household — what a scary environment. I would not feel safe in that environment.

Same.
I remember sleeping over at one friend’s house, and he was like, “You did good. My dad really liked you.” And I was like, No, no, no, that is not how I want to leave things. The dad at a sleepover should be invisible. My dad would come into the basement and say “Sup, dudes!” while we were playing video games, and that was pretty much it. Then he’d peace out.

I think that’s good. That communicates I am here if there’s a fire or something, but I’m not gonna intrude.
Yeah, I really miss the idea of when my dad would say “Sup, dudes!” and I’d be like “Leave us alone!” You’re not allowed to be like that anymore. The woke mind virus doesn’t let me be like that.

You have to see your parents as people now.
Now we’re all adults, I guess. Sucks.

Let me make sure I got all my questions. The only thing I didn’t ask is: In honor of the repeated use of bitch, do you have a favorite slur?
I actually do think bitch is timeless. I think it can be applied to any gender. I think it’s the slur for now, and I think it is so beautiful and powerful and we should all be saying it.

Follow-up: Do you think maybe bitch is back because we’ve overdosed on cunt?
The thing about cunt is that it really means something to some people. I’m always like Wait, that’s not my culture. I’m thinking of it in a different context. Then I don’t even want to have that argument. I’m going back to bitch. I’m going back to where it’s safe.

I also think that there’s something about that hard B at the top. People can really put some mustard on that.
There’s so much room for play. There’s B, there’s “biatch.” If we want to get vintage, we can get vintage.

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