“Saturday Night Live” host Josh Brolin and cast member Andrew Dismukes took to the skies in the sketch “Airplane Song,” in which Dismukes is confronted with a harsh reality at the beginning of a three-hour flight: his devices are dead. And headphone rentals cost $29.99. Out of desperation, he turns to Brolin’s screen across the aisle instead and attempts to watch his movie (2019’s “Ad Astra”) from a row back.
The sketch features both men going in and out of their present reality on the flight and an imagined music fantasy sequence akin to the 1990s stylings of singers such as Michael Bolton (think long, flowing locks and plenty of soft lighting). But once he catches on that he’s being watched, Brolin gets creeped out.
After Brolin catches Dismukes in the act, he sings, “His breath is on my neck, I can’t keep watching like this,” then confronts his fellow passenger. Brolin first offers to leave the movie on if Dismukes can tell him what’s happening in it — he can’t, guessing that Brad Pitt is playing a character named “Ad Astra.” He’s not. Brolin offers his sudoku book instead, but Dismukes slaps it away, explaining that he never learned how to do sudoku puzzles and he’s not going to learn now.
Both men are confronted by an air marshall played by Kenan Thompson, who asks, “Hey, would you two shut up?” — before he launches into song himself, encouraging Brolin to let Dismukes watch, as the rest of the passengers raise their hands and shimmy their fingers. Thompson tells the men the plane has one rule: “You must do unto others as you’d have them do to you.”
The entire plane joins the song and Brolin and Dismukes conclude the sketch with their arms around one another.
Watch the sketch in the video above.
