"Black Panther" Bonus: "Saturday Night Live" Brings T'Challa to "Black Jeopardy"

Saturday Night Live, NBC’s crown jewel, has always been known for its over-the-top and hilarious yet (often) socially conscious sketches.  But this past weekend the show’s comedy stock rose even higher with the latest iteration of its fictional game show Black Jeopardy -- “Where the prize money is paid in installments.”  Previous versions of the sketch have featured, among others, Elizabeth Banks, Drake and Tom Hanks (the most humorous being the latter), but with the recent success of the groundbreaking Marvel film Black Panther came the fake game show’s best celebrity guest yet -- King T’Challa himself (played by host Chadwick Boseman).  Like Kenan Thompson’s host persona, Darnell Hayes, said, “This might just be the blackest Black Jeopardy yet!”  It was; no contest.  (Leslie Jones, Chris Redd and Chadwick Boseman are pictured above, left to right.)

The whole sketch was great, and since explaining jokes has never in the history of jokes made them more funny, I’ll try and refrain from explaining all of them.  Having said that, there are three or four key moments that were pretty relentless in the comedy department and consequently ended up making the whole sketch soar.

In the category “Fid’na” (as in, “I’m fid’na go to the store bro, you want anything?”), the question read, “This is the reason your cable bill is in your grand mamma’s name.”  Maybe it’s just me, but I automatically knew it probably had something to do with one’s credit.  T’Challa had a different idea, however.  “What is, ‘to honor her as the foundation of the family’?” he answered with great confidence.  This was when I first lost it (laughing, that is).  Darnell (below left) responded, “Hmm.  That’s really nice.  It’s wrong, but it’s really nice.”  It was the combination of T’Challa’s seemingly genuine belief that there could be no other answer, and the foreign inflections and cadence of his speech that really brought the idea home that where he was from was drastically different from the more self-centered traditions of his American brethren. The real answer, by the way, was, “What is, ‘cause I’m fid’na get a car and I don’t need all that on my credit’?”

 

Ainsley Andrade

Ainsley Andrade is a freelance writer working primarily as a TV critic and influencer for MediaVillage in the column #AndradeSays. Having "cut the cord" back when cords were still a thing, Ainz, as he likes to be called, brings a fresh an… read more