“Tiny Horse” Is One of the Best Saturday Night Live Sketches of the Year

Okay, technically it’s called “The Farm,” but nobody’s going to remember it as that. In this absurd riff on old Depression-era melodramas, host Timothée Chalamet is sad about his family falling into poverty and having to sell the farm, but he’s simply devastated by the fact that he’ll also have to say goodbye to his best friend, a very small horse. Tiny Horse, who seems to be anywhere from one to four inches high, and who changes regularly between some kind of weird overlay effect and what looks like claymation, doesn’t want to leave at first, until Chalamet has to repeatedly yell at him to git in a gag almost as brilliantly drawn out as Sideshow Bob stepping on those rakes. Over the course of his song (did I mention this is a song?) Chalamet’s farm boy realizes that he was holding Tiny Horse back—that with freedom, and the drive to be great, he could graduate from Animal University, become a cabinet member, maybe even marry a Congress member. A very specific Congress member. The sky’s the limit for Tiny Horse, as long as Chalamet learns to let him go.

SNL often seems a little afraid of comedy as ridiculous as this short. Sure, Will Forte was there for almost a decade, Kyle Mooney does a lot of weird stuff, and Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant often get free rein to do whatever kind of inspired lunacy they feel like. At best we can count on one utterly absurd sketch an episode, and this video more than fit the bill for last night. It’s weird, unexpected, and fun all the way through, and an easy highlight of SNL this year. Check it out below.